My Uncle Ugo worked as a pan greaser in a south side bakery in Chicago. It was a good job, because he could bring home broken biscuits. We had more biscuits than we could eat. I fed the stale biscuit pieces to my pet pigeons. That worked out okay until they started demanding strawberry jam.
He stood at the rail shivering and watched the seagulls glide along the gray water. He pulled his coat tighter and raised its hood. His core body temperature was plummeting as a result of the three Mai Tais he'd downed at the ship’s lounge. In another minute or two though, it wouldn't make any difference.
Very short fiction, variously known as flash fiction, micro fiction, or nano fiction, among other things, is a kind of genre all its own. The form challenges the writer to capture the essence of a story in the minimum number of words possible. Pen Pricks carries the challenge one step further, requiring its authors to write a complete story in exactly 55 words. Gray Water is my attempt to do this.
