New Fiction: Before the Funeral | The Gambler Magazine

Posted on by A.E. Weisgerber

First published 1 April 2016 in The Gambler Magazine.  

I tried my hand at a flash triptych.  Have you ever tried one?  The story goes in the middle, and in columns down both sides there is a bit of a running commentary.  This story clocks in well under 1k words and the structure makes a hard shell around an emotional core.  They are fun to write, and somehow sate my journalistic inclinations.

This was originally just the story in the center column, written as an exercise in zeugma, but then I added contrastive duplication, Ballantine Ale, the Beastie Boys, horoscopes, Billy Collins, and Wheel of Fortune.  A couple of rebus puzzles.  Flash is like that: Figure your pathway and pile on the layers!

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And I miss my dad. He was a very cool, quiet man.

Thanks very much to the editors of The Gambler Magazine for finding room for this little study.  I hope you enjoy reading Before the Funeral.

A. E. Weisgerber is a teacher, editor, and hybrid writer from Orange, New Jersey. Awarded first place for features from the Society of Professional Journalists, she is a Reynolds Journalism Fellow, a 2018 Chesapeake Writer, and 2017’s Frost Place Scholar. Recent items in 3:AM, DIAGRAM, The Alaska Star, Yemassee, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Gravel Mag. Her flash fiction appears in many international anthologies. She is an Associate Series Editor for Wigleaf’s Top 50, and is currently writing her first novel about a terrible family that finally gets something right. @aeweisgerber anneweisgerber.com