200 CCs - January 2016

January 2016

For C & C

200 CCs
Volume I
Issue 01
Editor-in-Chief
Paul A. Hamilton
Copyright © 2016 ironSoap.com. All writing and photography is the property of their respective
authors.
Cover photographs and photos on pp 4 and 11 by Paul A. Hamilton.
200 CCs is an anthology of microfiction, collected monthly. Inquire online for submission guidelines.
http://200ccs.ironsoap.com/
Follow on Twitter @ironsoap.
Images accompanying each story are provided via the Creative Commons license as follows:
• pg 5: Justin Kern — http://thegoldensieve.com/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
• pg 6: Samantha Celera — https://www.flickr.com/photos/scelera/ (CC BY-ND 2.0)
• pg 7: Aristocrats-hat — https://www.flickr.com/photos/36821100@N04/ (CC BY-NC 2.0)
• pg 8: Ariel Waldman — https://www.flickr.com/photos/ariels_photos/ (CC BY-SA 2.0)
• pg 9: Runar Eilertsen — https://www.flickr.com/photos/runare/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
• pg 10: Crysco Photography — https://www.flickr.com/photos/cryscophotography/ (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
2

What is a 200 CC?
Microfiction is not new. Nothing is new, as a matter of fact. 200 word microfiction is
also not new, even the silly name—200 CCs—I applied to my own 200 word shorts is a
couple of years old at this point. If anything could be said to be new here, it’s the idea of my
specific aesthetic in microfiction being presented as a showcase. But even old things—
established things—are not without a certain degree of imprecision.
For example, microfiction as a term is somewhat vaguely defined. Quite a few sources
I’ve found, when they bother to define it at all, suggest microfiction maxes out and turns into
flash fiction at around 250 or 300 words. Others argue flash is inclusive and microfiction is a
subset limited to anything under triple-digits. Whatever the highly subjective truth may be, the
purpose of this is to showcase stories in the neighborhood of 200 words.
So in a manner of speaking, a 200 CC is a story—flash, micro, short-short, whatever
label feels most comfortable—that skirts the line between absolute brevity featured in Twitter
stories or Nail Polish Stories and the skillful economy of the thousand or fifteen-hundred word
flash. It’s a moment that is either a microcosm of a much broader story or a snapshot given
just enough time to fully realize the infinite possibilities before and after.
200 CC, the name, harkens clinical measurement. Cubic centimeters, and in context
they are often associated with medicine. I like the idea of a story drawn from a vial or a vein,
just enough to analyze or a specific amount to shock a system. I suppose it ought to be
“200cc” if the metaphor were to be stretched to its fullest, but let’s also celebrate artistic
license. While we’re at it, I mean.
I wrote a large number of these 200ish word stories in 2013 and 2014. Early on, they
were hasty: scarcely edited, written as warm-up exercises, posted more or less as-is in first
draft form. As I continued to create them, I began to think of them as more than just tools to
prime the pump. I began to care about them. As with anything that wraps a taloned claw
around these artful hearts, passion begat angst. It was no longer acceptable to publish braindumps
of a couple hundred words. I wanted them to be good. I wanted them to be amazing. But
bigger horizons beckoned and I can’t make throwaway blog fodder this crippling entity in my
brain. So I stepped back. But a part of me still had those talon-marks on them. I’d trace the scars
with longing now and then.
Late in 2015 I was itching to revive the 200 CCs. The uncomfortable reasons for backing away still
remained. But while necessity is the mother of invention, discomfort is the creepy cousin of the hasty, poorlythought
out workaround. I channeled the mouth-sore irritation that was the disappearance of 200 CCs into a plan
to open the site and the format—hardly original but still needing, if only for ego’s sake, my particular
stamp—into a new venture. A place to draw a specific amount from a parallel dimension or a
landscape in someone’s imagination and jab it into your eyeball.
So what is it? It’s a showcase. It’s imprecise. It’s a heart-talon. It’s on the
cusp. It’s a shock and an analysis. It’s a workaround. It’s a puncture wound. And
like everything that shares these characteristics…
It’s a story.
the draw
—Paul A. Hamilton
4

Silent Night
by Mickie Bolling-Burke
The trees stood in the silent night,
watching as the cottage door opened and
children danced out, the adults laughing
behind.
“All right kids, which one is our
Christmas tree?” Father called out. “This
one?”
“No, it’s ugly! We should put it out of its
misery.” The children laughed, breaking
its young branches. They ran deeper into
the clearing. “Here, this one, this is our
tree!”
The children shrieked with glee, counting
out each cut as Father chopped down the
biggest, greenest pine. When it fell, he tied a rope around it and dragged it back to the cottage. They
knocked the snow off and shoved it inside as they sang Christmas carols.
The curtains stood open, showing the family nailing the dead tree onto a platform and posing it in front of
the window. Showing the children hanging gaudy objects from its branches. Showing the resin tears of the
dead tree clinging to its trunk. Outside, the trees whispered to each other. Their limbs pressed forward, the
trees in the back pushing through to add their strength, shattering the window.
The trees crowded into the room, surrounding the family. Held tightly in the trees’ embraces, the
boughs suffocated the family’s screams.
Growing up on the east coast, Mickie kept her wrist watch at California time. When she
finally made it to the palm trees and Pacific Ocean of the west coast, she knew she’d come
home. Working as an actor fed her creative soul, until her beloved Los Angeles grew too big
for her. She and her family now live in a small corner of the southwest, where she finds the sky
as majestic and blue as she did the ocean. Mickie spends her time writing, reading, hiking and
watching ‘The Three Stooges’ with her much adored rescue cat, Pal.
5

Elmers Glue
by R.L. Black
It was the last day of school before summer vacation and Ms.
Sweet’s first grade class was missing twenty-two bottles of glue.
Where had they gone? Had one of the children taken them?
Another teacher, perhaps? Ms. Sweet pondered the puzzle but
could not come up with a conclusion that made any reasonable
sense. What in the world would anyone want with all that glue?
Seven year old Tabitha walked along the sidewalk toward her
home with a bulging backpack, a breaking heart, and a plan.
No one had known she was outside the door yesterday afternoon
when the family doctor delivered sad news to her parents. It was
something a seven year old should not have heard.
“How much longer does my wife have?” Tabitha’s father had
asked in a broken voice.
“When will I ... when?” Her mother sobbed.
“In the autumn,” the doctor answered in a voice so quiet Tabitha barely heard.
She’d gone to school and asked her teacher when autumn would come.
“When the leaves fall from the trees,” Ms. Sweet said.
Tabitha stopped walking, looked up and around. When the leaves fall from the trees. There were a lot of
trees. A lot of leaves. She was going to need more glue.
R.L. Black is EIC of two online journals and her own writing has been published across
the web and in print. Find her at rlblackauthor.tumblr.com where she blogs and reblogs
about writing and LOST.
6

The Finely Grooved Surface of the Sea
by Nolan Liebert
I had a phonograph once and just one record. It
was a very important record. Nobody liked to
listen to it except me. It was a shark.
"Listen to this," I'd say to my friends. I'd put the
record on and turn the crank. Out of the horn
would come the wet crack and silence of a shark
being harpooned. It was followed by a riotous
cheer, the zip of the cross-cut saw, the wet
flopping of the headless shark, and the helpless
struggle suddenly stopping.
The recording continued, seemingly forgotten, for
some time—sailors shouting, the sound of
wooden kegs being cracked, ale sloshing on the
deck, laughter, singing. The shark was not in any
of this, not from the beginning.
The sounds ended abruptly, much like the shark,
but before the end, there were a few minutes of
silence, like everyone had gone to bed. All you
could hear was the ocean and the sound of the
needle scratching the surface.
"Turn it off," they'd say. "Nobody wants to hear
that." Or, "We can't dance to that."
They didn't understand. I
didn't want them to dance.
I wanted them to listen.
Instead, they left and
slammed the door.
Nolan Liebert hails from the Black Hills where he lives with his wife and children in a
house, not a covered wagon. His proximity to the Sanford Underground Research Facility
feeds his obsession with dark matter, as his farmboy roots fed his obsession with plants,
herbs, and alchemy. His literary experiments appear or are forthcoming in An Alphabet of
Embers, Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, and elsewhere. You can find him editing
Pidgeonholes or on Twitter @nliebert.
7

Alice White Holds a Grapefruit She’ll Never Eat
by Kyle Hemmings
The boy named Mahlah came upon Alice White
sitting alone in a ditch. There was a scattering of
ruined barns, miles of hard clumps of dirt. "Why is
it," he asked, "that every time I find you, there is
always that moldy grapefruit in your hand?"
Alice spoke without turning around. "It's not just a
moldy grapefruit," said Alice. Mahlah sat next to
her, offered her a carrot with brown spots. She
refused.
"It's what's left of a boy who had beautiful green
eyes."
"Like that boy they once said had polio but had
something else?" Mahlah asked.
"No," said Alice, "It was from the last twister
before your family moved into this area. The twister
had an infectious pink eye. It spread through the
lives of so many. My brother says it gave so many a
disease of some kind."
"No way," said Malah.
"Yes. It made lives shorter," said Alice, "mixed our
souls with the dirt of the land, the fruits and flowers
that will not bloom. All I have of him is this pink
moldy grapefruit. At night, he sleeps next to me. I
squeeze him and I hear him talk. He says, ‘We all
need love but none of us will be saved.’”
Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. He has been published in Elimae, Smokelong Quarterly, This Zine
Will Change Your Life, Blaze Vox, Matchbook, and elsewhere. His latest chapbook is Cat Woman Sexy at
Underground Books.
8

The Small World
by Natalia Theodoridou
It's a small world, people used to say while I was growing up. It's what they always say. The small world is
made to look larger by the mirror at the end of it—the way you stick a large mirror on the wall of your tiny
living room to make it look
more comfortable, more
spacious, more like you could
actually live in it.
I never believed them. I knew
that the world couldn't be this
small, that they only said that
because it made them feel safe.
So I set out to find the mirror at
the end of the small world.
I crossed the tiny cities, the tiny
deserts, the tiny seas. I sailed
through calm and waves until
my boat was greeted by another
boat, sailing towards me from
the horizon.
We met in the middle of the world, the other man and I. We said hello with a wave of the hand and a nod
of the head, a tight, identical smile. Then we turned around and went back where we came from.
Back home, everyone was eager to know the truth. "Well?" they asked. "What happened?"
"It's a vast, endless world," I told them. "You were wrong."
Natalia Theodoridou is a UK-based media & cultural studies scholar and a writer of
strange stories. Her fiction has appeared in KROnline, Clarkesworld, Interfictions, Litro,
and elsewhere. Her website is www.natalia-theodoridou.com. Occasionally, she tweets
@natalia_theodor.
9

Headlines in Gooseville
by Laura Roberts
Dancing around the maypole, the elusive rantipole
and his egregiously under-dressed trollop were
eventually detained by police for public nudity
and petty larceny. Shackled and shaking, Peter
piped up with plaintive mews, reflecting hues of
his twin brother's trial for
c r y i n g w o l f , a n d
persisting in his delusions
of sanity—despite the
fact that his hygiene (or
lack thereof) suggested
otherwise.
The arresting officer
demanded, "Well, young
lady, have you anything
to say for yourself?"
Peter's petite accomplice
merely sniffed, threw
back her shoulders and
ignored the porcine grin as the querulous copper
manhandled her into the back of the cruiser.
shouted, as a crowd gathered 'round the car.
"Along with the porridge you swiped from those
poor, innocent bears, I'll wager!" a nearby
curmudgeon threw into the mix.
"Lies! Hearsay!" Peter
pouted. "Peep, pipe up
any time!"
The lovely lady simply
smiled and adjusted her
lipstick, wanting to
make a good impression
with her mug shot—sure
to grace the morning
papers.
The pickled peppers
supposedly swiped were
never located, thanks to Bo Peep’s strict Kegel
regimen.
"I'll have your badge for breakfast!" Peter
Laura Roberts can leg-press an average-sized sumo wrestler, has nearly been drowned off
the coast of Hawaii, and tells lies for a living. She is the founding editor of Black Heart
Magazine, the San Diego Chapter Leader for the Nonfiction Authors Association, and
publishes whatever strikes her fancy at Buttontapper Press. She currently lives in an
Apocalypse-proof bunker in sunny SoCal with her artist husband and their literary kitties,
and can be found on Twitter @originaloflaura.
10

y Paul A. Hamilton
the plunge
The size of the world, as
Natalia Theodoridou posits in
h e r s t o r y , i s p e r h a p s
determined by perspective and
the availability of truth in a
proper context. The question
may be, which world are we
talking about? Readers and
writers know there are worlds
w i t h i n w o r l d s , m a n y
overlapping or even hopelessly
i n t e r t w i n e d , b u t n o n e
completely alone in a vacuum.
Nowhere is this more true than
with a venture like 200 CCs.
The tiny world created in here
is built upon the even smaller
ones created whole cloth by
our featured authors. I am
grateful to these six brave souls
who gave 200 CCs a chance
very early on, before they had
even seen anything with which to
compare. Sending to an editor
effectively blind takes even more faith than
the already courageous act of offering up
bared souls to researchable gatekeepers.
There would be nothing here without them.
One Hundred Credits crew is a bottomless
well of inspiration and an enthusiasm
generation machine. That world is one I
visit frequently and the customs clerks
know me by name, our shared insanity has
somehow transmorgified into something
that feels damn near normal.
I also owe Richard Flores a debt of
gratitude for introducing me to the editorial
side of publishing. His determination and
heart is a world unto itself.
And then there is my daily world; the
sanctuary I’ve built with my wife and best
friend, Nikki. It’s my favorite of all the
worlds, both tiny and vast, cozy and
uncharted. I curate and create these other
earths to bring back bits and pieces into our
collaborative sanctuary. Words fuel our
fires.
And you, dear reader. May these words
kindle worlds of your own.
Particular thanks is due to Nolan Liebert,
who not only inspired with the chutzpah to
build his own publication from the floor up
but graced me with his wonderful words and
offered guidance freely. Likewise the whole
11

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