On Tuesday, May 1, 2018 at 6:30 p.m., there will be another installment of Graphic Flash, a collaborative project that includes work from fiction writers, filmmakers, music students, and high school artists. The fiction writers write a flash fiction story of 250 words or less, the filmmakers adapt those stories into short movies, then the music students create soundtracks, and the high school artists create movie posters. The Graphic Flash event will showcase all of this student work.

Graphic Flash is one of those rare moments early in an artist’s life where they not only get to share their work with the public, but also with other artists in their respective disciplines. As a fiction writer in the process, I stayed in close contact with a filmmaker who adapted my flash fiction story into an animated short film, and I couldn’t be happier with the final product. She turned my story into something that was interesting and vibrant. It gave a new life to a story that just started as an idea. There’s nothing more interesting than seeing an abstract idea turn into something concrete, but that’s exactly what this collaboration did.

It’s more important than ever for people to work together toward a common goal. Our goal for this project, which is the goal of all art, was to capture some small part of the human condition. There is no doubt that every story, film, piece of music, and movie poster accomplished this.

The event is being held in the Marano Campus Center Auditorium. Check out a preview of Graphic Flash below.

“Family Portrait” by Keturah Hancock – Creative Writing Major – Class of 2018

“You’re so pretty,” he said under his breath. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard him use a word like that. He told his wife—my best friend—she was pretty all the time. But it was different now. The word stumbled out his mouth. He knew he wasn’t supposed to say it and he couldn’t take it back now. He said it so low that I probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it if I wasn’t lying right next to him.

“You’re drunk,” I told him. I had been drinking too, but not enough to be as honest as he was. I was drunk enough to be somewhere I shouldn’t be, but sober enough to be ashamed of what I was doing.

I felt his fingers grab mine and I didn’t stop him. In fact, I intertwined my fingers with his until we were holding hands. His hands were warm and I wondered how good it would feel if they were under my shirt, unhooking my bra.

My breathing became uneven, I let go of his hand. He finally looked over at me before sitting up on his elbow.

“Don’t go.” He reached for me. “Please.”

“We can’t.” I moved away, but pulled back too far and knocked something off of the nightstand. I was too late trying to save it. The frame had shattered all over the ground.

“Dead Letter Office” by Emily Rundle – Biology & English Major – Class of 2018

Rule number one of being a postman is, don’t open the mail. Simple enough until you’re trapped in a room full of it, and there isn’t a single man, woman, or child around to speak to. So, with a silver letter opener in hand you pretend the paper is talking instead.

You slice open the twelfth letter written by a mother to a clearly deceased child and you write her back, wondering if the letters are in this room because she’s gone too. You take all the Santa Claus letters and write a response to them as well.

“You’ve been very good this year.”

“Listen to your mom.”

“Be happy for who you have.”

Your letters settle next to theirs and nothing goes anywhere. No one ever stops by to find what they’ve lost, and the whole room is white pages and red ink in the shape of a finger: “Return to Sender”.

Words fill your eyes, your mind, your heart but never your ears, not even when you go home for the night to your empty house. Often you sleep in the office, just to have the company. When you wake up in the morning there is sometimes a sound.

“What did you say?”

“What did you say?”

“Smilin’ Eddy” by Adam Neider – Creative Writing Major – Class of 2018

I woke up one morning and as soon as my sister sees me she says, “Eddy! What happened to your lips?”

So I says, “My lipsh? What do you mean? My lipsh are on my fashe.” But in something of a panic, I looked in the mirror, and sure enough, I don’t got no lips. What’s a person to do when they realize they don’t got no lips? And the worst part, even though I was in a panic on account of waking up and having no lips, my reflection’s just smilin’ back at me.

“Stop smilin’, Eddy. We gotta get you to a doctor,” my sister says.

So we go to the doctor, but what’s a doctor gonna do to a guy with no lips? He says something about putting my butt skin on my face, but who wants to have butt lips? Then on account of the smilin’ on account of having no lips, the doctor thinks I’m smilin’ at the thought of having butt lips. So he and my sister all start laughing at me, because from then on it’s either I’m gonna be Butt Lips Eddy or Smilin’ Eddy. What choice did I have?

So we drove home, and I’m looking at my face in that flap down mirror that cars got, and no matter what I do I’m still smilin’ away. Even though I don’t got no lips, even though I don’t got no reason, there I was, smilin’.