Salvatore Buttaci

My scrapbook of Italian postcards ranks high on my list of conversation pieces. “I’ve always wanted to see Venice,” says my neighbor Bill.  “Oh, the Bridge of Sighs,” says his wife Pauline. “I saw it in a movie once.” Venice. Florence. Pisa. Rome. Four postcards to a page. A scrapbook of colorful wish-you-were-here attractions: churches, the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica, paintings by Renaissance masters like Giotto, Titian, Fra Lippi, famous statues by Michelangelo, and the Trevi Fountain, All there in my scrapbook. I admit my collection is eye-catching, a memorabilia of vacations spent in Italy from 1965 to 1995. But there is a second scrapbook I love more, one I don’t usually share with others. It boasts no touristic postcards to woo the eye of the italophiles who visit my home. When Italy comes nostalgically to my mind, it is this scrapbook I take down from my bookshelf and sit comfortably turning the pages. If you look at these photos, you will see an Italian mountain looming in the background, a close-up of the Arno River Bridge, tables and chairs in the shade of an outside caffè in Savona, a parked school bus on a cobblestone street in Asissi. All these tell stories of the Italians captured in the photos. As a tourist visiting Italy, I carried my travel guide of what to see or where to go, checking off each site after I saw it and snapping a photo or purchasing a postcard for the scrapbook I show my...

I’ve led you on and I am sorry. You came in good faith to discover precisely how to end another’s life and walk away untouched by the law.  In other words, you hoped this article would explain, step by step, how to exact justice without fear of reprisal.  Come on now!  In this technological age of advanced forensic science and DNA testing?  You’d be caught in a heartbeat.   Would you consider another option? One that does not lead to the death sentence or life in prison?  How about writing a flash story about someone who gets away with murder?  In 1,000 words or less you can lay it all out: the weapon, the motive, the murderer, the victim.   Okay, so you’ve changed your mind about ridding the world of some undesirable.  You’ve decided to let the cold heart of your oppressive boss go on ticking.  You’ll put up with that neighbor of yours who poisoned your collie last spring. You’ll learn to forgive. Here is something else you might want to learn: how to write flash fiction.  Pick a genre and go with it. Make readers laugh and cry.  Explore alternate-history plots. Hop a sky ship and head out to the Earth colonies light-years away. Here are 13 suggestions to help you write flash fiction. Every flash writer out there could impart at least 13 different bits of advice to help you write flash fiction. The following 13 I’ve learned from my own experience.  Maybe they’ll make sense to...

This ain’t gonna sit right with most of you out there, but I’m swearin’ it’s the truth. Every word of it. And I’m puttin’ the lingo down here ‘xactly like it happened.  First off, I’m about as simple as God breathed life inta. Growed up in a little Texan town in Bandera County. Hill Country. Little town called Pipe Creek, population less ’n two hundred back in the 50’s an’ most of ’em my blood kin. I worked daddy’s farm, growin’ mostly pecans that with little rain an’ too much sunshine ended up worth less ‘n a hill of beans, but we Floyds kept a-plantin’, kept our achin’ backs an’ skin-raw hands to the plow. We was decent folk, believers in our Maker where every Sunday we sat in our family pews at the Little Rock Church. Like I said, simple. Far as smarts go I never passed the fourth grade ‘cept on a bicycle,   No, I ain’t got smarts, but my word is good. I never told a lie, even times when fibbin’ mighta saved me a thrashin’ from daddy, meanest of the Floyds, a man who could stare down a deer soon to be dead in its tracks. As for us young’uns, daddy had a hard time sparin’ the rod, savin’ money for food, an’ turnin’ down hard likker. I got the scars to prove it an’ what with daddy gone some years now I ain’t still put on much new skin on these here bones. But I’m...

If anyone were to ask you to pinpoint the precise moment of your epiphany, that statement you made to a large enough audience to assure your reputation as a thinker, perhaps not brilliant, but at least a notch or two above average, what would you say? I can tell you what was on my lunch plate yesterday, but probably would say mash potatoes instead of carrots; however, I can most accurately recount to you, word for word, my almost brilliant observation in my college class of World History II forty-six years ago. Professor Stern sat at his desk nearly the entire class period delivering his nonstop soliloquy on Adolf Hitler, or perhaps filibuster, since it had all the earmarks of Stern’s modus operandi: to conduct class as if his captive audience were all ears and nothing else, so we were surprised when he paused and asked, “What compelled Hitler to attempt world domination?” None of us raised a hand, assuming one more rhetorical question. He had given us something to which we were not accustomed––silence––so a few of us raised hands and offered suggestions. After each one Stern either shook his head or rated the suggestion a vocal and vociferous “Absurd!” Then it came to me in a weird flash: a logical reason why the Austrian madman with the silly mustache and that diagonal swipe of dark hair over half his forehead was so maniacally driven to conquer the globe. Smugly satisfied with myself, a college junior on his way to...

When I had finalized a thorough lavation, I withdrew a murderer’s hands from the rose-tinted water. The hideous deed was done, and now the chimes struck 4:00 A.M.  In haste I swaddled trembling fingers with the old man’s blue monogrammed bath towel. “V.E.,” it read, “Vincent Exeter,” who now in death could only signal to my wracked brain the appellation, “Vulture Eye,” and the blue towel, the milky blue of that hideous eye. Hark! A pounding on V.E.’s front door. A phantasm of the mind, perchance? “Gentlemen,” I proclaimed, then perceiving silver badges of law affixed to their overcoat lapels, I added, “Is there something amiss?” “Apologies, Gov’nor. Been reports of foul play in these parts.” Innocently I retorted, “Fowl play?  I no longer maintain a chicken house in the yard, Sir.  The clucking proved exceedingly much too raucous, and I likewise sold the impassioned rooster to local farmers.” “May we come in?” “Most certainly.” In a boldness hatched from the egg of self-pride, I led the two past V.E.’s sitting room and into the library where I had less than an hour before buried the old man beneath the nailed-down floorboards and upon which I had draped a brown woven cane mat and upon that I now dragged three oak chairs for me and my unwanted guests. Between the cracks of one of the planks, a hint of white bone, but no matter. “May I offer you libations, Gentlemen? The night is drearily cold.” One of them furrowed thick dark...