For Halloween, some of the staff and associates of Flash Fiction Online wrote six-word horror stories, Pico-Flash stories. It is not as difficult as it seems. After you've assigned a word to character development, setting, plot points, plot resolution and style, you have a word left over to enrich the story, perhaps to comment on the horror genre, or deepen the character, or set up a sequel. One should be careful not to bloat the story with the last word, though.

In the way of an introduction, here is a six-word story allegedly written by Ernest Hemingway (who is neither on staff nor an associate of FFO). Wikipedia referred to this as a vignette, rather than a flash fiction story. It is rich in implication to make up for its paucity of words:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Here are the Flash Fiction Online staff/associate-written six-word horror stories:

Oliver House

• Carved jack-o-lantern teeth are soft -- usually.
• Captured trickster, well-roasted, now a treat.
• Found: a fragment of flight 2245.

Oliver has published a six-word story in one of the Smith books and which was reprinted in Reader's Digest.


R.W. Ware

• Man walks into bar, says, 'Ow.'
• No rest stops for eighty miles.

Wade Rigney

• Tiny casket. Baby fangs. Feeding time.
• Incurable sadness. Blood-slicked bathroom tiles.
• You'll never beat me again, Daddy.
• Carribean seductress's embrace. No one returns.
• Gunfire. Sanguinary peace unites the fallen.
• Darkness. Moving Shadows. Flashing blade. Blood.

Deb Hoag

• Silken descent into lust and death.
• 
  

big teeth
small fist
no contest

Sue Freivald

• Executive horror: Made the late train...What meeting?

Anne Pinckard

• Uncostumed today, blending in at last.

Gary Cuba

• Teen squeals. Zombie's disappointed: No brains!
• Hanging thought: I didn't do it!
• One bullet left. My luck: misfire!
• Forgive, Dearest. This'll hurt me too.
• Unwise costume idea: Duct tape mummy.
• Timmy squirms; doctor extracts; Mommy's charged.
• Quicksand! Help! Don't stand there laughing!
• Cop question: Who's in the deepfreezer?

steffenwolf

• Clown well done. Who's laughing now?
• "New Moon's in theatres. Wanna go?"

WouldBe

• Beady eyes, fangs, the taxman cometh.
• Vampire in my bedroom. No protection.
• For sale: daughter, shorn and shoed.