Your Likeness In Prose
Flash fiction starring none other than you!
I’m sure you already know this, subscriber, but librarians are some of the best ever people to be friends with.
This is because you’re more often than not going to find a brilliant and empathetic person in just about any loving purveyor of books. Diana Brawley Sussman is certainly no exception. A Cosmic Cheeto subscriber herself, she read about my recent travails and messaged me. When I told her that I had some extra books to sell, she invited me to table at the Edwardsville Public Library book festival. And let me tell you: I had an absolute blast.
One reason for this was that I met many amazing writers and readers and got to hang out in and around a gorgeous public library. Another reason was that I got to turn a favorite parlor trick of mine into a really fun way to connect with potential readers: on-the-spot prose caricatures.
Maybe it was all those typing classes in high school — shoutout to Mavis Beacon! — or possibly all that short-form improv in college, but I have the slightly freakish ability to write fast enough to produce quick microfictions in fifteen or twenty minutes. I’d only done it for amusement before, but I decided to try it out as a kind of formal portraiture at the Edwardsville Book Festival. Like a boardwalk caricaturist, I took down patrons’ names and some facts about them. And then instead of producing comical drawings, I produced flash fiction.
Here are a few of my favorites from yesterday:
Danna and Scott requested “suspenseful/absurdist Rocky Horror Meatloaf comedy.”
Danna and Scott had been wanting to have a normal date night for months. That was the hard thing about married life: you got busy, schedules filled up, and then before you knew it, you and your spouse hadn’t eaten a meal together in over a week.
“This is the best new restaurant in town, I promise,” Danna said, fixing her makeup in the car mirror. “I hear they have bottomless margaritas.”
“Now you’re speaking my language!” Scott said, chuckling.
But as they drove, they found themselves doubting the accuracy of their GPS. They passed the downtown area with its many restaurants and bars and ventured into the outskirts of their little town. As they drove, the streetlights became sparser, the road unpaved and gravelly.
“What did you say this restaurant was called?” Scott asked.
“Out of the Frying Pan,” Danna said. “It’s one of those trendy new places with stuff like deconstructed meatloaf on the menu.”
They drove on in trepidatious silence, finally stopping in front of what looked less like a restaurant than a haunted house. Danna checked the GPS nervously.
“There’s no way this is right,” she said, arching her neck to look at the road sign.
“No, that’s it.” Scott pointed to the barely lit sign. “Bat Outta Hell Way.”
“Who on earth names a road that?” Danna asked, and before Scott could answer, they caught sight of a figure descending the front steps of the house.
“What the hell?” Scott asked. “Is that…is that a man in full makeup? Wearing a…”
“…a gold lamé tuxedo, yes,” Danna said.
The figure walked up to the driver’s side window and knocked on it, lipsticked lips pulled into a garish rictus of a smile. The top three buttons of his tuxedo vest were undone to reveal a freshly waxed chest. Scott rolled the window down uneasily.
“Well, if it isn’t Danna and Scott,” the figure said in a soothing baritone. “My name is Rocky, and I’ll be your server tonight.”
Harrison requested “Percy Jackson-style hero’s journey with a griffon.”
Harrison had never thought of himself as a hero. Up until the night before, he’d just been a regular sixth grader, going to Mrs. Hephaistos’s class and eating lunch with his friends and playing his favorite video games after school. But something magical had happened the night before, something transformative. Harrison Krauss had gone from having nothing else to worry about besides math and social studies homework to being the only eleven-year-old to ever be tasked with saving the world.
It all started when he got home from school and his dog, Cookie, had run up to him as he dropped his backpack on the floor, eagerly licking at his knees.
"Not now, Cookie," Harrison said. He was feeling hungry, and wanted to eat a snack before curling up with her on his beanbag to read his favorite Percy Jackson book.
“Mom?” he asked, wandering into the living room. “Are you home?”
But Harrison’s mom wasn’t home – he checked all over the house. It was strange, given that she was usually home from work before he got home from school. Frankly, it made him a little nervous.
As he walked upstairs, he heard a very unusual noise: a strange kind of cawing. He stopped walking and listened, then heard it again.
“Who’s there?” he asked, frightened.
But then something strange happened, something that separated Harrison from the rest of the kids. He kept walking upstairs. In fact, he started running. He was still scared, but now the fear was mixed with a strange kind of excitement, a knowing.
And there in his room stood something he had never seen before: a most majestic and massive creature with the body of a lion and the head of an eagle. Upon seeing Harrison, it cawed loudly and stamped a front paw.
Harrison was surprised by how unsurprised he was.
“Did Zeus send you?” he asked, not even understanding why he knew to ask the question.
“Yes,” the griffon said in a deep, jowly voice. “He needs your help, Harrison. The light has gone out of the world, and only you can bring it back.”
Duncan and Sharon requested “speculative dystopian comedy with lots of little gray cats and magical realism.”
Sharon and Duncan were what their friends often called an unusual couple.
“Our love language is preparing for the apocalypse,” Sharon was fond of saying.
And when their friends raised their eyebrows skeptically, Duncan would finish her thought: “We’re not preppers, to be clear. We’re magicians, and we’re preparing for the end of the Real World.”
What Duncan meant was the end of skepticism, the end of normalcy, of people believing in a reality where pigs couldn’t fly, for instance, or rabbits couldn’t emerge out of hats. Or cats couldn’t talk.
Their friends found these ideas strange, and so didn’t bother to query Duncan and Sharon further, preferring instead to default back to their daily lives. But what they didn’t know was that Duncan and Sharon were right: the Real World was swiftly approaching its end, and reign of magic was soon to begin.
And sure enough, it happened. Just like that, with little fanfare – on a Thursday of all days. The sun rose on a very not-normal world, a world not of nine-to-fives and lunchbreaks and dry cleaning, but of panda bears in tuxedos, levitating cars, and rainbow chromatic skies.
And Duncan and Sharon were ready – more ready that anyone else. While the rest of the world was reeling in horror and confusion, the two of them knew exactly what to do.
“You ready, hon?” Sharon asked.
Duncan nodded. And with her typical magician’s flourish, she opened the door to the broom closet, where they’d been storing several bags of long-grain rice. But instead of rice bags, out poured little grey cats. Herds and herds of them, cute and fluffy and wide-eyed, clambering all over each other and onto the back of the sofa and the kitchen counters, where they began playfully knocking things over.
“Nailed it,” Sharon said with satisfaction.
“We’re gonna rule the world, aren’t we?” Duncan asked, but it was a rhetorical question. The order of magic had begun.
Thank you for being the guinea pigs in this really fun experiment, bookish Edwardsville!
Would you like a prose caricature, subscriber?
First, comment at the bottom of this post or email the following to frumkinr [at] gmail.com:
Your first name
The genre (or hybrid of genres) you’d like me to write in or authors you’d like me to imitate
Your desired tone (funny, somber, etc.)
Whether you want to be eased into the action or dropped in media res
A few favorite nouns (“I love dogs, oatmeal, and sunrises.”)
Any definite preferences (“Horror, but no gore” or “meet cute should be same sex as opposed to opposite sex.”)
PLEASE NOTE: Thematically, caricatures will not breach the PG/PG-13 range of content. If you’re looking for writing from me that deals with more “adult themes,” you might want to check out my books?
Next, please send payment via Venmo (@raf_frumkin) or Paypal (frumkinr [at] gmail.com). Costs are $10 for the opening three paragraphs, and $7 for each additional paragraph, not counting dialogue. Prices double with each additional character: $20 and $14 for parties of two, $30 and $21 for parties of three, and so on.
When I’m finished, I’ll respond to your email with your completed portrait as in-line text! Please allow at least 24 hours for completion of portraits.
From now until 10/13: upgrade your free Cosmic Cheeto subscription to a $50/year paid subscription and I’ll write you an 800-word portrait!
That’s it for now, dear subscribers. I’ll close with a sentiment I’m sure we can all agree with:
These are SO GOOD!! 🤩✨🤌🏼