Flash Fiction Friday

Ran across this game/writing exercise at http://purgatorian.blogspot.com. Check his blog for the rules and other writer's answers to the (Halloween) challenge--writing a short short story beginning with the phrase "It was just a bad feeling..."

It was just a bad feeling I had about those shrimp. They were slightly limp and spongy on that parsley-laden, silver tray. And the pink may have been off-hue now that I think about it but the room was dark and I had a little plastic plate in my hand, which is usually turns out to be a culinary blank check. Don’t know what that brown dip is sitting in the colorful donut of vegetables? Just try a dab then. Can’t pronounce babaganush? Doesn’t mean you can’t eat it. I mean, it’s free food. It’s an open bar. And with the open bar, the free food is the only thing that keeps most of us off the floor.

Free food. Open bar. Plus, costumes. No, John, I’m not me. I’m Count Chocula on the prowl for some mini-quiche and dipped strawberries. Have they put some more out? Throw on a latex mask, putty on fake blood and all the inhibitions go up in the puff of cigarette smoke that you quit inhaling three months ago. Or, if you are a girl, strip off as much clothing as possible and add the word “sexy” to whatever you have laying around the house—sexy cheerleader, sexy witch, sexy maid, sexy cat. Meow. Just call it what it is and say you’re dressed as a porn star. Or, on second hand, that might sound the moral alert inside a girl’s head and signal her decency to put on more clothing and, come on, it’s the only night of the year when fishnet stockings aren’t kinky or slutty and I wouldn’t want to take responsibility for the end of that little tradition.

We were all feeling good, artificially or not, feeling good enough to ignore my bad feeling about the flaccid seafood, waiving it off like extra rental car insurance. Diving into the cocktail sauce as from a bridge with a bungee cord around my ankles. Whoo hoo. What a dare devil. Check him out, ladies, the thrill-seeking shrimp-eater with no fear. And when the nausea struck at the strike of midnight, I thought it was just the pumpkin martinis, who lord knows had enough sugar in them to put an elephant into a coma. Midnight, pumpkin time, bye bye to the ball, bye bye Cinderella in your sexy southern belle costume and your hoop skirt, even though your corset is bursting with fabulousness. I’d prefer not to vomit on your scintillating lace.

I just made it through the door when the bad feeling I had about those shrimp returned to me through a martini-ed fog, just as I threw up those still chunky buggers (I was never a good chewer) on the grass in the ultimate surf and turf combo. I wrote off the vampire teeth. Even if they did cost twenty dollars and I had justified the expense at the time by saying, yeah, I’ll use these so many times, it’s worth it to not get the hollow plastic jobbies. But even if they were twenty dollars, who wants to fish the teeth out of the fish, regardless of price?