It’s Saturday afternoon. Giant wet droplets creating pools in the backyard make going outside an unpleasant option, so instead we’re partaking in an activity all parents do when they have children at home, bored and full of excess energy. It’s a promise, really, that we’ll load them up with sugar. But first, we must bake it ourselves!
The creaming of sugar and butter is a whizz-filled drumming from the egg beater. Crack. Gently, gently against the counter top. The first egg goes in, then the second. Flour is sifted and its snowy texture covers every available surface, leaving ghostly hand prints on our trouser legs. The final ingredient: a big scoop of chocolate chips.
Now we mix the dough. Put your elbows into it! Make sure you go clockwise, just like Grandma showed you. Quick, don’t forget to lick the spoon!
A dollop of dough each and we start to roll. Sticky globs form misshapen spheres that we line up on crunchy baking paper. The preheated oven glows warm. Into the heat our dough balls go and now we must wait for them to expand. Suddenly ten minutes feels like ten hours, and the kids hop from one impatient foot to the next.
Hot hot hot, out of the oven they come. Golden brown with the scent of sweet deliciousness. I have to swat their little greedy hands away.
“Wait! They need to cool!” I say, “Come back in five minutes.”
They scurry off, laughing excitedly. I turn to start the dishes and that’s when I hear the crash. I whip around just in time to see cookies scattered across the floor, a wagging black tail and the gobbling snap of a canine jaw. The Cookie Monster has struck….
We should know better than to leave things unguarded.
Word count: 298
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What is Flash Fiction?
Flash fiction is a genre of fiction, defined as a very short story. While there’s no set word count that separates flash fiction from more traditional short stories, flash fiction stories can be as short as a few words (while short stories typically run for several pages).
Flash fiction is also known as sudden fiction, short-short stories, micro-fiction, or micro-stories.
Backyard tales 