Tag: flash fiction

  • Unresolved

    Jeff stopped slogging his parka bundled pine green self and stood stock still, which would have been fine if the wind hadn’t been blowing and the chill threatening to turn my cheeks pale to grey and my gaze had been down on account of those things, all the while leaving me wishing for a scarf that none of us had. I was focused on doing the not-ass-over-teakettle dance, looking at my feet instead of his Levi-denimed butt. There wasn’t much to look at there, not that I swing that way anyhow.

    He risked the wind-penetrating cold to point with his mitten ahead. Knowing Jeff, he held a single forefinger extended inside, though no one could see it no how. That’s just the kind of guy he was, pointing at things when it made no sense to point.

    There was that razor crust of snow, curled to sculpture by the wind, polished and shaped to stone. Alone, that wasn’t all that interesting or, honestly, something we hadn’t seen a thousand time in our cold trek seeking some kind of shelter from the long winter. I almost slugged the S.O.B. for wasting time for us to get out of the storm. Then I saw what he saw and wondered if they might not let us back if we went back to the stadium, made our mea culpas and offered to pay for the damages neither of us was responsible for except by way of association.

    Below that iced blade of frozen snow was blood.

    A lot of blood.

    And I fancied I saw some boots that might otherwise be worth corpse-robbing to acquire, but all that black, already frozen sanguis was a mite discouraging, if I am being entirely honest.

    Those growls coming from the neighborhood of those boots help none either.

  • Silver

    [originally posted on sceadugenga.com, October 18, 2020]

    Lucas heard the feral dogs before he saw them. They were whining in frustration, growling and intermittently barking as if doing all of these things would somehow get their quarry to acquiesce and come out from whatever hidey-hole they were in and subject themselves to being made dinner. Even pigeons, largely lacking a sense of self-preservation even now, when there were no people to cater to lazy feeding habits by tossing out breadcrumbs, wouldn’t succumb to such tactics. Yet, the dogs carried on barking, whining and growling in their denial of “things as they are”.

    Lucas hadn’t had a very high opinion of dogs before the fall of civilization and this, he felt, was a perfect example of why he needn’t bother to change his opinion to be more generous in his opinion of them.

    (more…)

  • Going to the chapel…

    Another four prompts from Jolene.

    Another absurd little tale. Okay, maybe not that absurd.

    The prompts:

    1. laundromat 
    2. shocking announcement
    3. person who takes shortcuts 
    4. person who needs to remove a tattoo right away
    Gee, I really love you
    And we're gonna get married
    Going to the chapel of love

    The sunlight was more blinding than it had any right to be, piercing even eyes closed tight against such insults and it sent my head spinning. Or the room spinning. Or, the whole world had become a giant tilt-a-whirl and I fought the urge to vomit up all the liquor I had consumed at the—

    Umm. Record release party on the Strip. That sounded right, the answer hiding just behind the pounding on the inside of my skull by some wee gnome with a steel hammer.

    After which, I think it was followed by an an after-hours rave.

    I think. Things went all wobbly right after hailing the Uber with Jessie and that producer she had the hots for that we were chatting up at the release party.

    (more…)

  • On bounty

    “You saw the bounties, dinja?”

    I took my time looking up.

    That ragamuffin had been quiet as a sceaducat padding her way through and behind rangy scrub, mustering courage to speak out. Spooky quiet. I might have missed it had I been ranging like most folk do through here.

    But I’d heard her all the same. And I had a mystique cultivated to protect, so I drew out the minutes in a yarn stretched taut to lend it further credence, showing her all brim on my widehat until my eyes slow-locked onto hers.

    She’d be the pretty type some day, that much was clear. But now she was more Jack than Jane and all gangly-limbed. Those eyes would eventually kill at fifty stride, if the storms didn’t take them first. Or some reaver.

    She earned my respect right off, staying silent like she was. Said her bit, expected answers. Weren’t gonna beg for nothing.

    “Bounties?”

    (more…)

  • Drone of ice

    I drone of ice. Crystal. Pale luminescence.

    I show him how I shuttercock the gun to skate the lake in tin flechette under a neon sky, dancing somewhere between Nijinsky and ictus rigor, near both wolf and dog on the Betweens.

    In a word, I say: They cannot see me.

    In yet more: They cannot hear me, save for the hollow of my entrance.

    And: They cannot taste me, for their screams.

    Explaining: They all have sharp ends, just as I will have a sharp end. It is the only way we can be. When you waltz with knives and cold eyes blue, everything becomes razor cuts through the gloom.

    “And you never tire of this?” he asks, knowing the answer.

    Of course I do.

    I shrug. But I know nothing else. I only know the northern cold.

    An exchange. As agreed, fifteen in advance. To hold me, to unspring my aching need. There was crimson spilled the last time, the time they thought to give me mere seed instead of what we had agreed.

    Word travels, as they say.

    “Fifty more when it is complete?”

    I stare. He knows. I have no desire to bleed him for more. Yet anyway. Perhaps later. In his mistress’s boudoir, as I smoke his expensive cigars.

    He does not know it, but he is lucky.

    Ahh. Now he sees, coughs. Chair screech, standing back from my obsidian eyes empty.

    “Em. Hum. Contact me when you have done the deed.”

    I knappedflint smile. Only a smile.

    It is already done, this job. Before we met. For joy. But he can wait for that news. Make him wonder.

    He stumbleleaves, does not even finish his drink, does not count the jack he leaves on the table for the tab for all his hurrying. Out the door, letting in winter.

    I am tired. Yet, I have pride.

    I am drone of ice.

  • Forfeit

    Here’s another short bit of fiction based on writing prompts from Jolene Rice. They are the following four items with the only rule being that you cannot kill off your main character

    1. attacked by squirrels
    2. what nobody wants to talk about
    3. mascot for a professional team
    4. animal psychic

    Apologies offered in advance.

    I do lost cats, mostly. Colic in horses if the vet’s backed up. Twice a year somebody’s parrot stops talking and I sit with it for an hour and tell the family what they already know, which is that the parrot wishes they would ask for more than “Polly wants a cracker.” One, in particular, had a secret habit of shouting “Fucking hell!” whenever the house was empty, it told me. Practiced it all day long, most days, by his reckoning.

    (more…)

  • Dawnstar

    He goes to Dawnstar’s back room to listen to the speakers. Got a lifetime full access to all the courses from back when they still sold such things. Tomorrow night, they have a guest speaking on certain secrets who might be able to help illuminate passages in a certain book he keeps on his person for the past month.

    Consider me squared up on the debt to your grandmother. Forget who I am. I never want to hear from you again.

    Dawnstar.

    She checked the timestamp. The email was sent yesterday. Tonight, then. An accounting.

    “Coffee?”

    She did not look up from her laptop, but continued staring at the screen, an absent-minded wave of her hand — long, lean fingers made longer by fingernails at the fringe of staying a sensible length and painted matte black — a universal gesture in cafes around the world that said, “Fill her up.”

    She considered typing a response that would remind the recipient that they did not get to dictate the terms of the balance of their debt, but decided against it. It would just land on empty ears in the dustbin with other spam.

    She made a mental note to remedy that with an in-person visit after her business had concluded.

    Last week, she would have taken in the scenery as her server refreshed the coffee in her cup, watched the hip-wiggle as the young woman walked away. She had done it enough over the past few weeks since arriving in the city, taking up residence in the overpriced rental rising above the already-broad Mississippi.

    She was worth it. And that delightful rear end was given the backseat in her mind as she pondered how to catch the fraud who had absconded with her family’s secrets and probably was responsible for the murder of her grandmother. He had an alibi, of course — they always did. But that did not mean he was not responsible.

    The stains left behind, the lingering smell of brimstone detectable to her nose — it was all she needed to know to put Marcus Kane, or whatever his name was, at the scene.

    And he had finally made a mistake. Eagerness to unlock those secrets from the written word were a regular part of the downfall of people like Kane. They were intemperate by nature, something she had counted on since she came back to reclaim what was her birthright.

    She sipped at her coffee, black as sin.

    He would regret his life’s choices by the end of the weekend. He just did not know it yet.

    But now she had the information she needed to begin.

  • Reunion

    Participating in Jolene’s (Chico’s Mom) prompts where the only real rule is that you can’t kill off the main character. Oh, and use the four prompts provided:

    1. not so Good Samaritan
    2. vampire
    3. reunited
    4. pills

    Here is my humble offering below.

    Vladimir opened the heavy wooden door on the third knock, as though he’d been expecting this all along. Which, of course, he had been — for eleven years.

    “Aldric.” With warmth, arms outstretched. That slight lisp that came with elongated canines. “Come in, come in. You’ll catch your death.”

    (more…)

  • Grave situation

    Flash fiction using Jolene’s prompt. Rules: Must use all four of the following and not kill your main character:

    1. This time it’s bound to work
    2. what is that smell?
    3. mortician
    4. toy maker

    “Gah! What’s that smell?”

    The shoveling did not stop. Nor did the speaker.

    “Gah! I say, Nate — What’s that smell?”

    “It’s called ‘death’, Jeff. I could go into the chemistry of putrescine, cadaverine and butyric acid but I’m afraid it would all go over your head and we’d still me forced to hear your heavy panting and repeated ‘Gah’ utterances because you have absolutely no respect for science.”

    “Why didn’t you just say ‘science’? That’s all I needed to know. Not those ‘ines and acids.”

    (more…)

  • Heads will roll

    For Jolene Rice’s Storytime prompt.

    Must include the following:

    1. person who laughs at inappropriate times
    2. butcher
    3. wishes come true
    4. shhhh!

    When you are the Queen they let you laugh at inappropriate times.

    “Off with her head,” followed by a mad cackle. Or three. And then they say: “Oh, it’s just the Queen being a Queen,” and they join in once they realise there are consequences involved to not joining in the reverie.

    Then everyone is laughing.

    And it becomes less inappropriate to laugh because of reasons.

    The last one had the audacity to call Us a butcher. How very droll. And still, We made his head roll. Because when you are the Queen, they let you order someone’s head removed on whimsy. The laughter was nervous, but all courtiers laughed the same.

    When you are the Queen, people tend to laugh when you do. And rhyme when it suits a Queen to rhyme, too.

    One of Our subjects said, “I wish I wouldn’t hear my Queen laugh when she beheaded someone.”

    “Shhhh,” We said. “Your wishes have come true.”

    He smiled.

    “Off with his head,” We said.

    And We held Our laughter until his head dropped into the basket. Then We let peel a mad cackle or three.