• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY

  • Culture
    • Interviews
    • Reviews
    • MAYDAY:Black
  • Nonfiction
  • Translation
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • About
    • Submit
      • Contests
      • Contest Winners
    • Masthead
    • Open Positions
    • Contributors

No Story
by Himan Heidari

May 30, 2022 Contributed By: Himan Heidari

This story was selected as a finalist in the MAYDAY 2022 Flash Fiction Contest. 

No Story Sophia Kaufman
Photo by Sophia Kaufman

“Once, there was a little girl” no, not a girl, let’s make it a boy this time and wait, this is not a good way to start a story at all. I read somewhere that it’s much better to start the story in medias res like, “The boy was wandering around in a daze, not quite sure where he was headed.” Much better this time, but still, why is he wandering around or what is the reason for his confusion? Probably something or someone is chasing him?

Ok, so I have to think of the plot first, break it down to myself and then commit to writing. Should I create the characters as they come to me or do I have to know precisely how many characters my story should have beforehand? Oh, and there must be a climax and a cool ending, like open-ended? I guess so. Or maybe an unhappy ending, and… a philosophical tone? How about that? Let me organize my thoughts and I will be back on it later, this time with more determination and a fresh idea.

Oh man, how wonderful it would be to get my story published and maybe become famous, wealthy, attract the girls’ attention, travel. I forgot marriage, I would definitely get married, but I heard celebrities usually end up getting divorced and all. Ok, no marriage, but I might want to have kids. Damn, I got confused, I shouldn’t get ahead of myself, remember what happened to dad? Slackers are no go-getters. Phew, let me go grab a cup of tea for now.

“What are you doing? let the tea steep for a couple of more minutes,” my mom said. I pulled my hands away from the pot, stood by the kitchen window, and looked up to the sky: “it’s going to snow tonight, that’s what the weather app says on my smartphone, anyway,” I trailed off. The next thing I knew, I was sitting at my desk again, staring at a blank page which reads “He was wandering around in a daze, not quite sure where he was headed.”


HIMAN HEIDARI is a Kurdish-Iranian scholar and translator. He did his M.A in English Literature and has published many short stories, poems, pieces of translation, and articles in both online and local magazines and journals.

Filed Under: Featured Fiction, Fiction, Uncategorized Posted On: May 30, 2022

Further Reading

Verge
by William Cordeiro

You walk beside the crick as light is rushing 
off. Afterglow molts lavender and saffron.
Each house you pass is built of falling dust.

Off the Circuit
by Sara Saadlou, translated from the Persian by Siavash Saadlou

It was clear to me now that I was on a hospital bed, suspended in a coma that teetered between life and death.

Villain
by Holly Laurent

This essay was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.I want to kick the shit out of Facebook and Fox News. It’s an instinct I get from my dad. Whenever I got hurt as a kid, he’d launch into a physical comedy routine, beating the hell out of whatever hurt me. If I fell out of a […]

Primary Sidebar

Recently Published

  • The Best Short Films of 2022
    By: Lisa Ströhm Winberg and Clement Obropta 
  • Ligatureless [an Anatomy]
    by David Greenspan
  • The most punk thing you can’t remember
    by Gion Davis
  • Review: Time Stitches by Eleni Kefala
    translated from the Greek by Peter Constantine
  • Revision
    by Lior Torenberg

Trending

  • Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
    by Aya Kusch
  • Three Ai Poems
    by Chandra Livia Candiani
    Translated from the Italian by Elisabetta Taboga and Roy Duffield
  • Villain
    by Holly Laurent
  • I Know Who Orville Peck Is
    by Robin Gow
  • You’d Just Be Different, That’s All: Revisiting Catcher in the Rye in 2020
    by Sam Rebelein
  • The most punk thing you can’t remember
    by Gion Davis
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Business


Reprint Rights
Privacy Policy
Archive

Engage


Open Positions
Donate
Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.