great flash fiction from escape pod

I loved this story at Escape Pod:

“Hey, tell me, this look like Jesus to you?”

I come to Tito’s Tacos for a lot of reasons. The freeway overpass
ambience, the way the old men in the kitchen wrap the burritos tighter
than Cuban cigars, the shiny Kennedy 50-cent pieces you always get as
part of your change. A lot of reasons. But conversation isn’t among
them. Nonetheless, I dutifully look up from my lunch to see what the
guy at the next table over is talking about.

It's flash fiction, so it's just three minutes long. If you can find three minutes today and spend them listening to this story, I think you'll be glad you did.

ETA: I didn't know this when I posted earlier (the joys of quickly posting while I'm on a deadline) but I should point out that Taco was written by Greg van Eekhout, who has a recently-released novel called Norse Code that's getting some nice reviews. Greg says, "You can find some preview chapters online: chapter 1 at Tor.com, chapter 2 at Suvudu, and chapter 3 at Suvudu"

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30 thoughts on “great flash fiction from escape pod”

  3. Flash fiction has really caught on in the age of twitter! You might be interested in Fantasy Magazine’s May Madness Micro-Fiction Contest: http://www.darkfantasy.org/fantasy/?p=3436
    There are some outstanding pieces featured there. Entries had to be 10 sentences or less.
    I probably shouldn’t mention that I wrote “Tag” (but I did anyway 😛 ).

  5. I was going to recommend NorseCode as well, but I see that MentatJack beat me to it. 🙂
    @Wil: Greg is an Enigman from UCLA, another friend of Randy’s.

  6. Hey Wil thanks for sharing this, embarassingly, i did not know about escapepod. ( Um, i have to admit i googled your pic, i did not know who you were, oopss) I found you today, my very 1st day of Twitter can’t remember how now, too much clickin. Great blog and twits too.

  7. I forgot to mention… the top three in Fantasy Magazine’s contest are going to be podcast on PodCastle, which I believe is a sister publication of Escape Pod.

  8. I think I’ve found a new site to add to my daily routine. Also, thanks for linking to a great new-to-me author.

  9. Thank you for this. Hopefully I can find some time in the next few days to devote to checking it out.
    Deadline are a bugger.

  13. For instance:
    “Whlist studying a pre-warp civilization, Wesley falls ill when the Enterprise encounters an apparent duplicate of Riker which is in fact a holographic simulation, so Riker delivers a phaser blast, which means everything turns out okay, though Picard has had to deal with children. Then, finally Guinan says something cliche and they leave at warp factor five.”
    Erm… I hope you were already done with Memories of the Future?

  17. Thanks, Wil – “Taco” was a fine investment of four minutes (I dawdle when reading), and thank you too, Greg – when I have some extra cash at hand, I’ll be strongly considering patronizing you with shiny gold rocks!
    Side question, Mr. W: why do you preface your addenda with “ETA:”? What, apart from the obvious (and inappropriate) meaning, could this conglomeration of letters mean? Nonetheless, thanks for piquing my curiosity!

  23. No, you don’t have to shut up now, I was quite enjoying those! This may be Wil’s blog, but I have this really amazing ability of making my own rules up as I go along here, so you may have permission to do whatever the heck you feel like doing under my authority. As Chief of Being a Huge Pain in Wil’s Ass, you’ll find that I now outrank him in the “Do Whatever the Hell You Want” department, effective as of right now.
    Just for kicks and giggles, I clicked on the Next Gen link and my story result was this:
    “Whlist carrying out a vital mission of mercy, Geordi encounters some kind of space/time rift thingy which is in fact Wesley’s fault—as well as a godlike being which pisses them about for fun and depletes the shields to 5% and threatens to cause a big political ruckus so they do the obvious (eventually) and work out a cunning ruse and so their opponent dies, which means everything turns out okay, and the planet is saved in the nick of time. Then, finally Picard says something cliche and they leave at warp factor five.”
    See, Wil, even the plot generator has it out for Wesley for some reason. And…just to capitalize on the liberties taken by the plot generator, I’ve also decided to take a few liberties here of my own.
    The space/time rift thingy has now become all your fault, even if it is by proxy via a fictional TV character you played on a TV show 20 something years ago. And that’s in fact! Scroll back up and read it again, you will find the words “in fact” right there, so there’s no point in even trying to deny it. You will also find that the godlike being had no fault in the time/space rift thingy whatsoever. By invoking these liberties, you must acknowledge that it does, in fact count, and I didn’t even need to use my “It’s all Wil’s fault!” card because of the aforementioned liberties. [In other words, I just got you back for tricking me into taking responsibility for Budweiser.] So HA! Take that, Wheaton!
    BTW, how does it feel to be staring down the barrel of a month and 26 days of still being a year, two months and two days older than me? You can Dad voice me all you want, Wil, but you’ll find that I have also taken the liberty of not being affected by it anymore, as well, as I have recently acquired the coveted “Wil’s Dad voice has no affect on me.” card as of three seconds ago when I just made it up. Go ahead, try it out if you don’t believe me. =P

  25. “This may be Wil’s blog, but I have this really amazing ability of making my own rules up as I go along here…”
    Quick!!
    Swap the “f” in his post for “s”!

  27. Oh crap, and laying off the aspartame in his Diet Coke/Pepsi whatever, too….
    That must be the trouble with being a sick famous person – everyone has the answer.
    Bummer.

  28. Oh Rain, you’re trying to bait me, friend. It’s one thing for me to constantly tease Wil, but it’s quite another to ask me to attempt to hack his site and change the post title. Besides, as Chief of Being a Huge Pain in Wil’s Ass, I really don’t think that’s a part of my job description, anyway. lol. Nice try, though!

  29. I have to admit that I also read the word “slash” in the title of this post when I first read it. It may not fall under my job description as Chief of Being a Huge Pain in Wil’s Ass to change the post title, but anyone under my authority in the “Do Whatever the Hell You Want” department is more than welcome to do so with my blessing, however. Just throwing it out there in case anyone feels up to the task ;).

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