200 CCs - January 2016

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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
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Page 3: 200 CCs Volume I Issue 01 Editor-in
Page 7 and 8: The Finely Grooved Surface of the S
Page 9 and 10: The Small World by Natalia Theodori
Page 11 and 12: y Paul A. Hamilton the plunge The s

200 CCs - January 2016

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