Miracles by Lucy Corin

The deadly black widow spider.

This will sound a little contradictory, because I am very much in favor of brevity and tight, economical writing in short stories. However, flash fiction often leaves me cold. Too often it feels like a literary experiment that’s over before it really begins, and as a result, it rarely has a lasting impression. Unless your name is Ernest Hemingway, extreme minimalism is hard to pull off effectively. That being said, Miracles by Lucy Corin is decent and works better than most. The narrator reflects on a formative childhood memory: she and her brother spending time on their father’s farm, transfixed by a jar filled with newly hatched baby black widow spiders. 

Personally, that would be an immediate hard pass. 

Near the end, the story takes an abrupt turn. The final sentences shift the tone from whimsical childhood wonder to something much heavier after a certain event, which I won’t spoil here. It's mentioned once without any further explanation. The story then closes with a series of questions from the brother, years later, as he revisits the same memory from his own perspective and adds a layer of context the narrator might not have considered at the time. Because Corin is working within such a compressed space, the story embraces ambiguity and trusts the reader to fill in the gaps. Surprisingly, it works. The result is an emotional resonance I didn’t expect from something this short.

You can read this story HERE.