Absurd: Notes on Comedic Flash Fiction
The art of being funny in as few lines as possible
(Originally published in Lit Smithery on June 13, 2023)
The first blog post I ever wrote — about a year and a half ago — was originally conceived as a listicle called “10 Poets on Instagram Worth the Follow”, but after several hours of research I realized there weren’t even ten on the platform that I’d want popping up on my Instagram feed day after day.
So I changed the title to 7 Instagram Poets Worth the Follow.
Two of the poets who made the cut were Brian Bilston and Tim Key. What struck me immediately about their poems was the wit — and in Brian Bilston’s case it’s a clean wit: no foul language in sight (something I find nearly impossible to do myself).
After chuckling my way through Bilston’s Instagram page I decided to slide into his DMs and ask him if there were any other poets on Instagram I should include in my piece. He recommended Tim Key and Hollie McNish, both great suggestions.
But Tim Key I had a real affinity for. Each of his poems are simply titled “Poem” and, well, they’re not really poems in the traditional sense of the word. They’re absurdist flash fiction: hilarious little stories that poke fun at everyone from Boris Johnson (whom Key calls “Bohnson”) to Santa Clause.
I’m not often jealous of other writers. Professional athletes, rock guitarists, porn stars — these are the people I’d swap lives with any day. But Key’s poems looked so fun to write I wished I’d written them myself.
So I decided to try and write a few flash fiction stories in the same vein…
I wrote this first one on the Notes app of my phone while nursing a beer at Blue Earl Brewing in Smyrna, DE. (What else am I supposed to do in Smyrna?):
The name “Tony Two-Shoes” is a nickname given to a college buddy of mine — why he earned that particular monicker is beyond me. “Johnny Rhombus and the Parallelograms” is a band name I made up at a party God-knows-when. And the “Icky Stick Theater”… I’m pretty sure I put my hand in a beer puddle while at the aforementioned bar and settled on that name in a flash of idiotic inspiration.
I shared “Shapes” on IG and Twitter (back when I had Twitter) and at least one person was amused by it.
Emboldened, I began writing a few more:
Around the time I wrote the first story I was being bombarded with texts from random strangers who A) not only had my phone number for some reason but B) also appeared by name in my caller ID.
The name Loni Honeycutt isn’t made up: she (or he?) would send me texts every two days or so asking if I remembered her (or him?) and fishing for personal information.
When I checked my phone’s history I noticed spam from this Loni Honeycutt person stretching back months, hence the inspiration for the story. (I have never, in fact, bought drugs off anyone named Loni Honeycutt.)
If you thought I was munching away at a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios when I came up with “Cereal” you’d be wrong. I actually had a line from a book stuck in my head when I started writing this. From the second sentence of
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim…
There is something about the menacing cadence in the opening paragraph of A Clockwork Orange that I wanted to play with. My brain went searching for silly, unthreatening characters and I settled on Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, and Count Chocula as the unholy brethren to my narrator, Buzz Bee (yes, that’s his name-I just looked it up): the mascot for Honey Nut Cheerios.
The rest of the story wrote itself.
The idea for “Haggis” started off with the character Wallace McDougal, whom an old high school aquaintance improvised out of thin air while at Kingwood Township Community Day circa 2007. (A long time ago, but I remember it well).
It was this character plus the recent realization that I didn’t actually know what was inside a haggis that inspired the story.
Re-reading it now, I realize the penultimate line would read better as: “Wallace McDougal grimly reaches for his broadsword with a most unpleasant scowl.”
I wrote one more story called “ Random Text 002”, which you can find here, but I felt it wasn’t really that funny and, besides, Tim Key writes stories just like it — except they’re actually good. Should I try my hand at more flash fiction like this? Or am I just stealing Tim Key’s thunder? Let me know in the comments.
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