Short Narrative Fiction

Elizabeth leaned forward in her chair as the police interrogator paced across the room again for at least the twentieth time. He wanted to know the details of her child's death, and it was clear that he suspected her as the murderer. He asked her why she had allegedly left the child alone in her room for several hours on the night of her death.

"Well," answered Elizabeth, "I thought she was asleep. Once she's asleep I just let her sleep except for checking in on her once or twice during the night." She knew what the interrogator was really asking-"Why are you lying about leaving her alone, when I know that you really murdered her yourself?" She pictured him standing over her with a huge searchlight shining directly into her face, yelling "Admit it!"

The interrogator was actually standing still now, however, and gazing at a nondescript bulletin posted on the wall, looking lost in thought. Elizabeth said nothing. She knew that he was trying to trick her into saying something that would compromise her position in the case, and she was determined not to go along with it. When he finally turned around again to face her, the interrogator looked puzzled. He could not figure out why a woman with a four-year-old girl sleeping in the next room would turn on rock music. Wouldn't that wake up the child?

"Well, I didn't turn it on until I knew she was asleep," Elizabeth answered uncomfortably. "Once she's asleep, she doesn't wake up

Related Essays

Minimalism in Contemporary Short Fiction .... Metafictional short stories, then, as an experimental literary mode .... from their more traditional narrative counterparts. .... shifted the locus of fiction, as Murphy .... (7031 28 )

Female Asian-Americans and Fiction .... issues raised in two works of fiction by female .... perverse" (Ozeki, 9), and her narrative dominates and .... considerably more depth than Hagedorn's short story, but .... (2667 11 )

Aspects of Works of Fiction .... or obsession in a way that explanatory narrative could never .... lyric poem is roughly described as "a short poem expressing .... Kennedy, XJ Fiction, Poetry, and Drama .... (2282 9 )

To the Lighthouse .... and narrative structure, for the portrait of family life that Woolf so to speak paints is nothing short of social commentary by way of narrative fiction. .... (2685 11 )

Willa Cather's Fiction When Willa Cather left home and went to col .... and theatrical criticism as well as short fiction for the .... sentimental romantic, so called "women's fiction" and toward the kind of narrative that deals .... (2268 9 )

Category: Literature - S