Tag: prompted fiction

  • 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.

  • Gerald’s Game

    With apologies to Stephen King for the title.

    Another fiction prompt from my good friend, Jolene.

    It’s story time!

    Here are your story line (+ can’t kill MC):

    1. Person who has broken something that cannot be replaced
    2. Person in professional disgrace
    3. Aquarium
    4. Forget to pass along the information

    Gerald Hailstone had the necessary paperwork. What he didn’t have, as it turned out, was authorization to share that paperwork.

    An oversight. Obviously.

    (more…)

  • Flash fiction from prompts — 31mar26

    Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

    Another writing prompt from my good friend, Jolene. Must use all 4 elements, not allowed to kill your main character:

    1. lucky underwear
    2. clown school
    3. Person who asks what nobody ever asks
    4. person who did something bad a long, long, time ago

    I regretted telling my therapist about the lucky underwear. Sure, it brings me luck. You know what I mean. They’re good for increasing my chances at winning at meat raffles, make it easier to score some digits from the ladies at the bar, helps on loot raids with my guild… that kind of luck. They aren’t my shield, for chrissake. They just make me lucky.

    But she insisted I use them for therapy. Ugh.

    “Are you wearing your lucky underwear today, Steve?” she asked at the far end of the strip mall where she had asked me to meet her.

    (more…)

  • Epilogue

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Epilogue

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    The Meridian Club had been a monument to high-stakes vice; now, it was just an open wound catching the city’s freezing rain. Red and blue police lights pulsed through the ruptured doorway, casting long, fractured shadows across the pulverized baccarat tables and the sea of abandoned chips.

    In the dead center of the devastation, Cross stood up from the gray ash and dusted off his suit.

    (more…)

  • Case File #15: Absolute Zero

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Case File #15: Absolute Zero

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    Kogan’s lead ampoule shattered under my bandaged knuckles. The purified salt and cold iron filings scattered across the green felt, but the dead quicksilver didn’t just spill… It leapt. It shot from the broken glass like a liquid soul, violently drawn to the impossible shape of the Black Sulfur token.

    It hit the velvet exactly as Cross’s rotting entropy and Gallow’s crushing stasis slammed into the table.

    The ignition didn’t produce a fireball. It produced an execution.

    (more…)

  • Case File #14: Lead Comes to Dinner

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Case File #14: Lead Comes to Dinner

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    Cross’s amused smile vanished, replaced by a look of ancient, profound annoyance.

    I sat dead still in the crushing quiet, my breath shallow and held tight. The dull, rhythmic ache from the deep cuts on my left hand from the shattered neon glass was a sharp, ordinary pain, the only thing anchoring me against the impossible physics tearing the air apart. My bandaged fingers held steady over the lead ampoule, caught in the dead center of a hurricane where absolute stasis was locked in a brutal collision with pure, corrosive entropy.

    (more…)

  • Case File #13: Quicksilver

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Case File #13: Quicksilver

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    “I’ll pass on the gin,” I said, keeping my posture relaxed but ensuring my right hand rested casually near the slit in the midnight blue silk. “It dulls the reflexes, and I prefer to keep my head clear when I’m collecting a fee.”

    Cross’s smile didn’t waver. He leaned back, his tailored suit seeming to absorb the harsh glare of the chandelier above us.

    “Fair enough. Though I notice you are traveling remarkably light for a retrieval job, Miss Locke. Tell me you didn’t leave my property sitting in the back of that rented hack you took from the Brass Canary. It would be a terrible shame to lose our investment to a common cab driver.”

    “I wouldn’t insult either of us by being careless,” I said. My left hand, wrapped tight in fresh white gauze, went to the velvet clutch resting in my lap. My burnt fingers brushed the velvet, feeling the unnatural, freezing weight of Kogan’s ward humming against the escrow token.

    (more…)

  • Case File #12: The Devil’s Doorway

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Case File #12: The Devil’s Doorway

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    The scalding water of the club’s cast-iron shower felt like an exorcism. I stood under the sputtering spray until the hot water tank coughed its last, watching the black, sulfurous grime of the past eighteen hours… Had it only been eighteen hours? …swirl down the drain like a broken promise.

    I stepped out into the humid, cramped bathroom and dried off with one of the thick, luxurious towels The Canary kept around — one of several small luxuries afforded the employees who worked the club. I winced, tracing the deep, clean glass cuts across my left hand, then carefully redid the bandages. A girl gets used to the sight of her own blood in this city.

    Margot had left a dress hanging on the door. Midnight blue silk, the kind that whispered promises. It was cut on the bias to cling like a second, dangerous skin, but with a slit high enough to allow a full, unimpeded draw from a thigh holster. I strapped the heavy snub-nose to my leg, the cold steel a comforting anchor against the soft fabric, and slipped the silk over my head.

    A sharp knock rattled the frosted glass of the door.

    (more…)

  • Jake’s Superette

    It’s story time!

    Another prompt from Jolene/Chico’s Mom. I’ve not participated in the last few because I was focused on Vivian Locke’s noir, but I thought I’d give this one a quick stab between my longer efforts.

    Not quite clocking at 1000 words, I followed the prompt on her site which included four elements (and a wild card)

    • Vet
    • Ex-superhero
    • Lottery tickets
    • A door that won’t open
    • Wild card! Tell your story as a romance

    The story was only lightly edited after it was written, so forgive me if there are any flaws.

    Comments are always appreciated.

    Jake’s Superette

    Sad beep. Sigh.

    Sad beep. Sigh.

    Sad beep. S—

    “Nuthin’?” asked the little shit at the register who couldn’t be more than fifteen, judging by the he sparse, fuzzy apology for a moustache boys his age favored.

    (more…)