Flash Fiction February - Next Time Number 5
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 28th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write “an ending that doesn’t end”. This story is just over 500 words. Enjoy!
I managed to kneel on the only part of the garden tile that was uneven, and even though my kneecap cried bloody murder and my thigh shook from the stabbing pain, I held the ring steady as I looked up at my girlfriend."Will you marry me?”
I tried to judge her face, to read those stormy eyes and petite nose and the star-struck flurry of freckles on each cheek that I always loved to try and wipe away, but the jabbing nobble on the tile ate away at my mind. And I itched to get up.
“Rachel? Honey?”
For the first time, I realised she was looking down at her phone. And my heart sank.
You know what this means.
Rachel pulled an apologetic face. “God, Jake, I’m sorry.” She put down her phone, set her hand over the ring box and started to pull me up by my wrist. “But I have to cut our date short again. Its work and its urgent.”
I put on my best smile and closed the ring box, quietly reeling it back into my chest, ready for the next opportunity to slide it into my pocket. “Its alright. I know how it-”
“It that a ring?” Rachel tilted her head, eyes wide. She started to reach for me, for the box, and then she looks up at me. “Wait, why were you on the floor?”
I laughed and gently took her grasping hands by the wrists, giving them back to her. “Oh, don’t worry about that. You need to get to work.”
She eyed me suspiciously but let me steer her towards the sliding glass doors, towards her stout-faced mansion.
As she was slipping on her boots, she turned to me and said, “We’ll talk about this when I get back.” She jabbed a stern finger at me. Her brows furrowed in mock determination.
If you come back.
Trying not to sigh, I said, “Of course, Rachel.”
The box was already tucked away in a kitchen drawer. But as I leaned in to kiss her forehead and stroke back the loose whisps of blonde hair crowning her head, I didn’t feel relieved. “But first, London city needs its Crimson Butterfly to come to its rescue.” I nudged her towards the door, in all her red-cloaked glory. “Go on. Get going.”
She reached up and cupped my cheek in one hand while kissing the other. “I can always trust you to be understanding,” she said with a dazzling smile.
My chest ached.
I watched her leave, shooting upwards with the blearing whir of metal cables and the flap-thunk of her heavy cloak. My weightless hands closed the door and slid the bolt into the lock.
Next time, Jakey, I thought as I picked up her discarded slippers.
But this was next time. This was next time number 5.
And as I stood in the hallway, wondering where to go for the rest of the evening, I thought maybe it was time for a never again.
28/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - Lavender Heart
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 26th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to “give physical form to an idea”. This story is just over 800 words. Enjoy!
The family huddled around the living room fireplace, the littlest cousins closest to the fire grate while their parents drank in the kitchen. My father policed the marshmallow sticks and put smores together for the adults lounging on the faux leather coaches. Grandma’s croaking laughter filled the room, her proud, old lioness resting under the footrests of her wheelchair.
My brother’s crow peered down at me from the thrift shop chandelier, bug eyes bulging as it tilted its head from one side to the other. A buzzard nuzzled its side, it too glaring occasionally down at me whenever Gwen had enough reason to glance my way.
“It’s such a beautiful kind of bird, isn’t it?” my mother gushed, her own maine coon cat curled on her lap.
Grandma hummed as she smiled. “Ye-es, I used to pray for a bird myself. For a dove maybe, or a swan. Something regal. Something graceful.” As she said these words, she stared adoringly up at Gwen’s buzzard, and something hungry flashed in her lioness’s eyes.
Grandma reached for Gwen, and she surrendered her hand with a flustered smile more plastic than the marshmallow wrappers. “It’s a sign of a strong heart. Of Loyalty. Sacrifice.” And then with a wink and a wonky smirk, “And Fertility!”
I rolled my eyes.
“Ah, girl –” my grandma released my soon-to-be sister-in-law and waggled a finger at me. “You’d roll your eyes, wouldn’t you?”
“Ma.” My own mother gave me a sympathetic look, her huge, fluffy beast of a cat raised its head and flashed the world’s cutest, roundest, wateriest cat eyes. I ignored it.
“Leave her be. It’s not her fault.”
“No. No,” I said, raising my arms in mock-surrender. “We all know I don’t do the whole –” I waved at the two love birds snuggling into each other – “Whatever that is.”
Grandma’s lips pulled back, and her lioness drew out a long, vicious yawn, white teeth catching the blood red glare of the flames.
My father’s dachshund growled.
“You know,” my brother said, spreading out his fingers as he gestured, “and I know I’ll get heat for this, but people without hearts, just, shouldn’t be allowed to walk around however they want to. They should be in prison.”
“David!” My mum smacked his arm, but her eyes fell on me. Round and alarmed.
“What? Its true. The only people without hearts are psychopaths. And they’re just a murder spree waiting to happen.” Mum began to pipe up again, but David leaned in towards me, over his fiancée. “I mean, no offence, Maria, but you are not going anywhere near my kids.”
“I wouldn’t want anything to do with those brats anyway,” I said with a pained smirk. “Especially if they look half as ugly as you.”
David lurched, and a black shadow swooped down over me.
Instinctively, my arms flew up to cover my face. A sharp, slashing pain crisscrossed my forearms and with a frustrated cry, I snatched outwards, my fingers crushing a delicate wing into my palm.
My brother shrieked. I heard my mum shouting, begging someone to stop. My dad’s dachshund barking and a buzzards terrified cry.
Grandma’s lioness roared, and the silence that came after deafened me.
In my hands, my brother’s heart struggled, claws reaching for me but held too far out by my white-knuckled grip.
“I think you’ve caused enough trouble today, Maria,” my grandmother said. She was standing, little, old legs shaking beside her snarling, bowing lioness.
Stiffly, I relaxed my fingers and let the crow struggle free.
My brother grabbed it from the air, bringing it into his chest and preening through its feathers to assess the damage. Gwen leaned over to help with her worried hands.
“Why don’t you go to your room?”
I was 21.
Gritting my teeth and half-dreaming of my solitary city apartment 83 miles away, I stood and left, letting my blood drip from my fingers onto the white carpet.
In my own room, in the quiet, I sighed heavily and let the weight slide off my ridged shoulders. The clock ticked and ticked, and finally the feeling came back in my body.
I sat on the edge of my bed and reached to pull out a draw beside my feet. I dug around, removing dusty photo albums and broken keyrings and bent, fading postcards, before lifting out a small metal box. Carefully, I took it up to my collarbones and lifted my key-shaped necklace up to its lock. As the lid rolled back and the light filled in, my fingers began to shake. Gently, gently, I picked up my heart and held it in front of the window to catch the falling sun.
The searing red light revealed great, green veins and the outline of my bloodied fingerprints on its delicate, curling lavender petals.
27/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - Six Steps to Whisperer's Point
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 26th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to “structure your story as a list”. This story is just over 900 words. Enjoy!
Six Steps to Whisperers Point
Step 1: Arm yourself.
It is generally considered effective and good practice by experienced Travelists to bring a proficient occultist or practicing pagan with you who is in possession of variety of spiritual repellents.
If this is otherwise impossible, due either to cultural attitudes of your time or to the availability of such personnel, the Otherside Wander’s Acute Guide advises you to acquire at least 1 standard kilogram of salt, various spiritual talismans (especially relating to malevolent entities, the wills of the dead and items which increase in power with close proximity to the sea) and effective, up-to-date weaponry equipped for defence against creatures of flesh and blood, as creatures you are likely to encounter at this destination are likely to be human-like.
Step 2: Seek the Council of Local Seafolk
The best manner to approach Whisperer’s Point is from the south-west side of Agatha Town at a time of high tide where the sun is expected to be sufficiently blocked by cloud cover for at least three hours. The most suitable path is generally known by the curriers of St Duke’s Church, often tasked with bringing supplies to the Ourside Lighthouse. However, some Travelists have reported great success in consulting seafarers, such as the fishermen associated with the Glugman’s Fishery Company, as they are likely to have encountered your desired location at some point in their boyhood adventures.
The Otherside Wander’s Acute Guide always advices Travelists to use trusted sources.
Step 3: Approach the Lighthouse in the Above Prescribed Manner
The journey from Agatha Town to Whisperer’s Point may take up to two hours, therefore we advise Travelists to be certain of the sun’s cloud cover. Without low light, your desired location is unlikely to show.
Step 4: Arrive with Caution
You will notice upon peaking the crest of Whisperer’s hill that the air is thick and vision is beginning to be obscured by a horizon-wide mist. This mist is unlikely to be reported by the locals of Agatha Town on your return journey, and the Otherside Wander’s Acute Guide does not recommend commenting on it within the perimeters of the town (not without risk of persecution for witchcraft by the superstitious populace).
To the uninitiated Travelist, this mist is considered a sign of success. You are now passing through to the Otherside.
Step 5: Explore the Lighthouse
You will notice as you reach the lighthouse that its profile has distinctly changed from that which you have seen before from vantages in Agatha Town. This is natural and desired. Veteran Travelists of this location have described the Ourside Lighthouse to be of a friendly countenance and straightforward in structure, with its main body elevating in an orderly, straight-sided fashion, while Whisperer’s Point appears to be jaunty, with a tower that ascends diagonally inland before sharply angling forward towards the sea. The tower light is perpetually lit and spins with a near frightening speed.
You will notice that the sky is no longer “grey” but largely black, save for the flashes of silent lightening within the previous cloud cover.
You will also notice that the guard railing, if you have already spied it from a distance before eclipsing Whisperer’s hill, is no longer. Some remnants can be found on the cliff face beneath the lighthouse, but we strongly advise you to investigate this from behind and slightly below Whisperer’s hill, not at the cliff edge.
We do not advice that you enter the lighthouse in anyway, particularly if you notice figures passing before the windows, lights turning on and off within the tower or the sea behaving in a particularly agitated nature. However, for those experienced and tempted Travelists, if you do enter Whisperer’s Point, we strongly advise suitable ear-protective equipment or that you already possess a strong sense of self, iron will and tendency to ignore those who speak close by to you.
No matter your situation within the proximity of Whisperer’s Point, do not give precedence to the Whisperings. You must ignore them. It is not plausible for your family to have followed you. Loved ones cannot be brought back by the Otherside. Dreams cannot be granted in this place.
And for the love off all, do not approach the cliff edge.
Anyone found to have approached the cliff in anyway following their excursion to Whisperer’s Point will have their membership to this magazine immediately revoked on the grounds of self-endangerment, breach of Otherside conduct guidelines and for the wilful provocation of demonic powers, wilful completion of ancient ritual and wilful disregard of Ourside stability. You have been warned.
Step 6: Leaving Whisperer’s Point
Whisperer’s Point can be safely left by drawing a circle of salt around yourself, sitting within the circle and placing both hands over your ears. Either close your eyes completely or look towards Agatha Town.
You may notice that the town has also changed: reportedly into an asteroid crater or disserted city made of unknown material. Approaching this place is strictly prohibited. You must leave Whisperer’s Point in the prescribed way.
Continue to hold still in your salt circle until the Whisperings have entirely stopped. This may take up to half an hour. You may find that, at times, the Whisperings become louder and more aggressive. Do not be discouraged. Do not move, open your eyes or remove your hands from your ears.
If something attempts to touch you or otherwise remove your hands from their respective places, know that your salt circle is deficient and that you will likely be unable to return until the next Travelist reaches your location, which may take up to a century. You will need to continue to hold still for this time.
When the Whisperings have stopped completely, you will be able to leave. Vacate the area immediately and return directly to Agatha Town using the exact path you originally used.
If you have any questions, please mail the Otherside Wander’s Acute Guide.
26/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - He'll Come Back, They Whisper
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 25th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write “a story that ends with a promise”. This story is just over 1,000 words. Enjoy!
The wind threw his short hair in all directions, mixing this brown with the moody green of the grass beneath his head, and lifted a steady stream of salt from the kilogram bag besides his ankle, a white river snaking off the yellow cliffs, towards the restless sea. The silent, thunderous sky brooded in his empty eyes, his lips barely moving with indistinguishable words.
Governist Shearan Bleck watched the young man softly, shielding his smouldering cigar from the buffering, seaside wind. “Where’s your friend?” he said, by way of introduction.
The young man’s fingers twitched but otherwise, he didn’t move. “He went to the town.”
Bleck looked down over the ridge of Whisperer’s hill, along the winding cliffside paths and towards the dark stain among the farming fields and carriage ways. Dilapidated, lifeless, pooled in the slight depression of the chalk hills, Agatha Town brooded beneath the chocolate sky like a cluster of broken rocks before a lighthouse. “Well, that’s not good.”
Silently, the young man moved his hand from his side to rest over his heart. His fingers bunched in the material of his plain, white shirt, riding the hem high over his belly button.
Bleck drew a puff from his cigar, rolling the bitter taste over his tongue. The noise in his head started to get louder. The flash, flash, flash of the lighthouse’ beam beside them made the backs of his eyes ache. The spotty seascape at his back continued to rage on in a silent, thrashing roar.
To think the two boys had been here for at least 2 days now. That this boy in particular had been laying there, somehow still responsive, still sane, still living, even with the ever-increasing noise – the all-consuming noise – burrowing endlessly into his skull.
“The Whisperings must be getting pretty terrible for you about now,” Bleck said, nudging the young man with his boot and trying to put some good humour in his voice.
“I’m not leaving.”
Bleck sighed out a puff of smoke. Judging by the salt, it didn’t really look like he’d gotten stuck here, as the Governist had originally assumed. “Nobody said anything about leaving.”
Resigning himself to a long evening, Bleck sat beside the young man and began to tug him upright and tap his face, hoping a little manhandling might bring him round. It worked somewhat, as a small light seemed to ignite behind the young man’s eyes. But still he stared as blank as paper.
“If he left the safe zone two days ago, and he’s not already come back –”
“He’ll be back.”
Bleck’s jaw tightened. His teeth crushed one end of his cigar, squishing some of its contents out into his mouth. He took a deep breath and let the bitterness scrape his mind clean. “OK. OK. Its clear you care a lot about your friend, and I’m sure you feel you need to wait for him, but you can’t do much for him if you don’t take care of yourself. How much longer do you think you can do this?”
The young man’s lips drew back on a clamped wall of teeth, and he flew to his feet.
Bleck moved to grab him. To snatch him back before his feet crossed the threshold and plunged him into the depths of the Otherside.
But the young man stopped short. The tips of his feet brushed the invisible line as he pulled his arms into his chest. “How!” he screamed. “Howard, damnit! What’s taking you so long?”
The silence whipped his words away, sucking them from the cliff paths towards Agatha Town and barring them from ever reaching the warped walls of that cursed place.
A strike of pain cracked down the young man’s face, and Bleck’s heart buckled.
Sighing some more, he struggled to his feet and clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You’re sure he’ll come back,” Bleck said, tender and mater-of-fact. “And if that’s the case, you know he’ll be here in his own time – regardless if you are still here. Sometimes, young man, you need to take steps to take care of yourself. And there is nothing wrong with that.”
The young man’s hands balled above his heart and tears began to slither down his cheeks. He shook his head.
“In fact,” Bleck continued, “We can leave something behind us and make sure your friend is looked after when he returns. I’ve got a day’s worth of food in my briefcase and an extra bag of salt that should do him real good. Come on, what do you say?”
The young man looked slowly sideways. His eyes rippled, the murky surface of the sea. Bleck thought he looked as grey as the landscape around him. “Maybe …” he whispered, “Maybe it can just be a break. Maybe I can come back tomorrow.”
“Exactly!” Bleck tightened his grip. “In fact, you could always wait for him to pass through in Ourside Agatha Town. You know he won’t be far behind you.”
The young man nodded slowly and didn’t protest when Bleck drew a wide salt circle, set several items outside of it for his friend and pulled the young man himself to sit down in the centre beside the old Governist. He obediently covered his ears when Bleck prompted him to do so. All the while, silent tears gathered in his lashes, every blink squeezing them out onto the freckles on his cheek.
As the Whisperings began to fade for the first time in days, as the voices screaming in his head, the roar of non-existent monsters and windswept masts and drowning sailors and that incessant woman who said, “he left you”, “he abandoned you”, “you always loved more”, “you loved harder and he never cared and he never would” – even as she finally faded away, the young man kept whispering those last words, over and over again.
“Promise me you’ll wait for me, Danny. Promise me you’ll stay right here. I’ll be with you again soon, I swear on everything I have. Just stay here. Just promise me you’ll stay here.”
He didn’t have to speak for Howl to know. It was all over his face.
I promise, How.
25/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - Extreme Shorts Compliation
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 24th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write “the shortest story you can”. So we did multiple. Enjoy!
He held out a ring. She choked on her wine.
Behind the church, the girls shared a kiss.
We framed the hole in the plaster.
“Fragility” by Jerkface Ex
“Please don’t leave me.”
“Why? You left me.”
“Mum? What are you doing to dad?”
I applied. A letter arrived. “Unfortunately…”
Look, when I said, “I love you,” she said, “Ew.”
“You’ll be alright,” I promised.
“Liar.”
“Stop following me!”
But the footsteps just continued.
One gap left. No puzzle pieces left.
Flipped table. Scattered money. Monopoly: Own it All!
Divorce papers. One signature already on it.
“Is that my car?”
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“It’s still outside my house.”
24/02/2022
Flash Fiction February - Out In Ten
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 23rd February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write “a story that takes place in less than 10 minutes”. This story is just over 900 words. Enjoy!
I haven’t been able to hit dial in three hours. Even though my legs are shivering and the rain is coming down in sheets, all I can do is stare at her contact through the thin layer of droplets on my phone screen.
You know how well this went last time.
Occasionally, a bus thunders past my bus shelter and I know another half an hour has ticked by. It occurs to me that I haven’t seen one in a while, and I start to look down the road. But i don’t dare. Not as my finger hovers over that green icon.
My limbs move stiffly now as if attached to my heart by thick cables slowly becoming restricted by the terrible, swelling knot that was making a home there. Even despite the soothing spray of rain, my skin still feels rubbed raw all over. And as my fingers quiver and shake, a part of me is fascinated with words and how they had the power to pass me over a cheese grater like a prime cut of British cheddar.
The screen on my phone changes.
I stare in disbelief as the call initiates, and I realise my unsteady finger had scrapped the glass. I move to hang up, but the dial tone clicks to line-static.
“Hi, Nanna,” I grind out, my voice hoarse as I put the phone to my ear. My cheek is colder.
“Hello, Claire.” Her sweet voice works into my pours, relief spreading over me like the sooth of a high-quality moisteriser. “How are you?”
“I’m …” I wanted to match her tone, to be happy, cordial, excited to hear from my loving, caring family. “I’m … not the best. What about you?”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that!” I hear her shuffling around: the creak of the couch, the dying down of the TV already quietly talking away in the background. I draw in a breath as her worried words come through. “What’s wrong? Is your mother alright? Do I need to call someone?”
“No, no. Yeah, she’s… mum’s fine. I’m just on Peli Street, right now, erm … chilling.”
Get it together.
“Erm –” I cleared my throat some – “Dad said you had a spare guestroom? It was a while ago, but I was wondering if you, er, still had it?” My fingers tighten around the tassel on my hoodie, and I resist the urge to pull on it and ruin it, tugging it so far through one end the second tassel disappears.
Grandma remains silent, and my heart hammers. Then, “Well, ye-es, I do.”
I could hear the cogs turning under her grey puff of hair, the clack-clack as she turned a rhinestone over against her neck. “Claire, what is this about?” she asks, soft but stern. “Why are you not at home with your mother?”
“I …” I tried not to. I really did. But my throat was already closing, tears swelling in my eyes, and as I try to speak, I choke. “I-I don’t know. I can’t stay – stay with mum anymore. She won’t let me.”
“What!” There is a clatter. And I wonder if she had been holding a mug of coffee. Did she set it down in time? I hope she didn’t break it. She loved those kitschy mugs.
“Why not?” she demands. “Did you do something wrong?”
“No!” It was instinctive. “Yes – I don’t know. I might have?” I rub rain from my face and suck in an uneven breath. “What – What constitutes “doing something wrong”?”
Nanna’s silence almost killed me, but at last she said level and calm, “If you tell me what happened, I’m sure we can sort it all out.”
“I …” I wanted to tell her. I tried to force it out of me but – Her words, at least, make me feel like the rain isn’t so cold and heavy. Like it is a little lighter now. Like –
“Well, I – I brough a girl home.”
She must have been silent for seconds, but still my heart slammed against my ribcage, desperate to escape, to escape the hurtling inevitable fact. The heartbreak.
Blinking, Nanna says, “And?”
And?
I grind out each word slowly. “I’m also a girl.”
If I had a heartrate monitor, it would be howling one long beep. One that spanned the entire pause between us. As minute as it was.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
I closed my eyes and finally, the first tear patted against my cheek, heavy and thick.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry.” Her voice is so lovely, the way old peoples’ always are. Always soft, always warm. Worn in a way a familiar hiking path is behind your childhood home. “I can’t believe this!” she cries. I heard her stand as another bus hurtled past. “I thought I raised her better. What an intolerant bitch!”
“Nanna!” My smile bursts out, and I couldn’t help but laugh tearfully.
“I’m sorry,” she says indignantly, “but that’s just how I feel.” Then, “Do you need money for a taxi? Or shall I kick your grandpa until he drives to pick you up? You know, when you get here, you’ll need something to eat. I’m going to go put a casserole on, or I could order you some pizza. Tell me which you like and I’ll –”
“Thank you, Nanna,” I say, my lips wobbling as I smear my tears across my nose with my wet glove. Despite my best effort, my words collapse into a bubble of skittery laughter, “You’re just the best.”
23/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - A Woman In the Snow
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 22nd February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write “something featuring the phrase ‘the door is open’”. This story is just over 500 words. Enjoy!
I reached for the frost covered door handle, my hand passing under the wayward light of a streetlamp and the stray snowflakes dancing in the void of the night. I tugged it hard, myself a veteran of its sticky ways and an insider on its particular set of quirks – any decent amount of force had it cracking open like a busted safe, locks be damned. But alongside a panicked wobble backwards from me, the door came away light and easy.
Sheepishly, I turned to the woman stood on the sidewalk, puffing out clouds of warm air and rubbing her hands on the elbows of her thick, winter’s jacket. “Uh, hey ma’am, do you want to go inside? Because the door is open.”
She glanced at him from under a woollen, cap-like hat. Dark eyes flitted to the door, long, girlish lashes teasing her pale cheeks. “No, thank you. I’m waiting for someone.”
Cautiously, I let go of the door and rubbed my gloved hands together. “In the middle of the night? What is it now? 12:45?” I approached her slowly and came up beside her with a thorough two arm’s lengths between us. “Look, I’ll wait with you, if that’s OK. I’m not sure I’m comfortable leaving a woman out here alone. Not in this weather at least.”
She gave a shy, awkward smile and turned her shoulder slightly away. “That’s nice of you.”
After a few stretches of cold silence and more than our fair share of icy gusts, I looked back at her, away from the disserted, snow-covered road. “Who are you waiting for, if you don’t mind me asking?”
She shrugged. “Just… let’s call him an old friend.” Her fingers tightened on her elbows.
For a while, she bounced her knee, maybe to fend of some shivers or her awkwardness, but strangely, each crazy bounce pulled her further round towards me. “You know, what makes you so interested in the Paisley Bank tonight anyway? Shouldn’t they be closed?”
“Closed for some. Not for others,” I said with a wolfish grin.
She hummed and stretched out her arms. Her slender fingers stretched her silky, white gloves as hot puffs of air escaped her painted lips.
I did a double take and, despite my efforts to be polite, glanced down at her legs and the pristine tights that clung to them. Was she some kind of show girl? Sex worker? A random ballerina in the middle of snowy nowhere? Beneath her fashionable long coat, it seemed she was wearing some kind of shimmering, red dress and stiletto heels.
She turned to me, smirking as she caught my gaze on its journey back to civilization, and brandished forth one of her elegant hands. “I’m Katarina Clay,” she said, her voice soft and charming.
Stiffly, I shook her hand. “I’m –”
Her fingers clamped around my wrist, yanking me forward. Her other hand braced me by my collarbones right before I collided with her chest. My mind struggled to process, struggled to resist, as she whispered into my ear, “I know you’ve been scoping this place out for a while, and unless you want to go home in a shiny yellow-blue car, you’ll do exactly as I say.”
22/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - Everything-Phobia
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 21st February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “a character facing their fears”. This story is just over 400 words. Enjoy!
“Hello, welcome to Georgian Society Counselling. This is Eva speaking. How may I help you?” Eva waited for the line to come to life, slender finger twirling the landline phone cable in lazy circles.
Her partner, and the GSC’s only other practitioner, had left a few minutes ago to pick up his daughter. Now at the end of another long day, Eva just had to wait until the heavy wood wall clock ticked past 9 and their little business could rightfully close for the night. Desparingly, the shorthand still hovered near a golden eight.
“Hello?” The second hand had nearly completed a full loop since she had first lifted the phone. Trying to keep the annoyance out of her tone, she asked, “Is anyone there? If you’re there and having trouble communicating, or otherwise feeling unsafe, please press 1.”
After a long moment, there was a beep.
Eva didn’t really know how to see what button the caller had pressed, but she assumed it was probably the right one.
“OK.” She twirled the phone cord until it bit into her skin, then let it go. “If you would like to book an in-person therapy session, please press 1. If you would like to book a therapy session on our online and/or phone service, please press –” Ah – “1 two times. If you would like to be forwarded to emergency services –”
Beep, beep.
OK. “You would like to book an online session or a session over the phone, is that correct?”
Beep.
Eva pulled her logbook towards her. “I can do tomorrow at 6PM. Will this work for you?”
Beep.
She penned “beep-caller” into her 6 o’clock. “How would you describe your service? Do you need mental health counselling, such as for potential or confirmed anxiety or depression?”
No reply.
“Would you like life advice or support in overcoming personal challenges, such as a career change, financial insecurity, developing self-confidence and the like?”
Again, no reply.
Eva resisted the urge to tap her pen against the thick, lined pages of her book.
8:42PM
“Would you like –”
“Pan.”
Eva blinked.
“I’m pan.”
“You’re … pansexual?” Eva lifted her pen and reached for her 6 o’clock slot. “So, you would like support with your sexual wellbeing and identity?”
“No,” the lady on the other end whispered. “I’m … I have … Panphobia.”
Eva’s eyes widened slightly, and she shrugged, even though no one was there to see. “So –”
“So? SO? It means I’m afraid! I’m always afraid! I’m afraid of everything.”
Eva’s lips parted. She managed a bewildered, “Oh,” and crossed “overcoming pansexual prejudice” from her logbook. “So, you would like support overcoming a phobia or fear?”
“Beeeep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeep. Yes, lady, that’s what I’ve been saying!”
Eva nodded and penned “overcoming phobias (and antisocial behaviours apparently)” into her logbook. “OK, ma’am. 6PM tomorrow to talk about ‘Panphobia’. Can I get your –”
Click.
Rubbing a free hand over her forehead, Eva sat back in her chair and dropped the phone into its stand.
8:44PM.
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - Left Lost
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 20th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “something that is lost”. This story is just under 300 words. Enjoy!The raw light of the first springtime sunrise glinted off the uneven edge of a lonesome cell phone. It looked like it might have been an iPhone, but with its cracked screen turned up at the sky, all its identifiable features were hidden besides its distinctive shape. Slowly, the sun caressed the smooth corners, briefly filling the deep cervices caused by the cracks and racing around the spherical edge of a thousand, glistening raindrops.
Gradually, the sun crept over the damp porch boards, lighting a path to the broken glass beneath the sliding back doors. A dull green moss already grew on the haphazard shards. A vine twisted around the top post of the railing descending down the porch steps. Lush, breathless leaves imperceptivity turned towards the sun, reaching out over the quivering horizon. Faintly, the sea hushed, its long tongues licking the final step and leaving it blistering with molluscs, seaweed and salt.
Who knows how the phone got there, how it still remained there, when a hungry sea could so easily of swept it into oblivion at every successive high tide. Was it the contrast of cold night and broiling day that had reduced its glass to pieces? Perhaps the tile now on the third porch step had struck the phone’s surface some time ago, the slate eventually coming to a rest in two halves several levels below. Or whoever once owned it had had a habit of dropping it on the hardwood, wearing its screen with every accident and brutal fall until, at last, they left it where it landed, where the world could look at it and wonder, who did it belong to? What happened to them all those years ago? And who had they been trying to call?20/02/2022
To Be Proofread
Flash Fiction February - Cardboard Fears
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 19h February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to “play with a horror trope”. This story is just under 700 words. Enjoy!
Georgia rubbed her thumb over the smooth, silver surface around the camera’s monitor. The camera itself whirred and clicked, but for a while, she doubted the old thing would turn on.
When she found it in the attic, she felt drawn to it, like a shiny coin in a sea of grey concrete. And when she picked it up, she felt even more mystified.
It didn’t help, of course, that the real estate agent had mentioned the deaths of the previous owners were still considered “undetermined”. Georgia didn’t sit well with mysteries, so from the second she set foot in the old Tudor house, she started looking for clues, as if the house itself could tell her why a fit, young couple would die suddenly in the night.
And now she held a digital camera in her hands, the dust of the attic sawing in and out of her lungs.
Who had they been? Had they had a happy life together? Were things troubled? Turbulent? Or plain sailing and dull?
The camera finally blinked to life and a smiling face flashed up at her. The dim light of the screen reflected a shallow image of her own face over the picture, a compilation of a young married woman and a young entrepreneur. She smiled too, bringing on an even greater sense of glorious rapport.
She flicked through the camera roll, unravelling a life filled with camera smiles and chaste kisses and belly-bumps and baby shopping. Sometimes Georgia laughed as if remembering the photos as her own memories, as a moment she shared with these chronically happy people.
But then, she noticed it.
In fact, she noticed it several times and dismissed it almost as often.
She paged back, comparing every photo, particularly those taken in the living room with each other. With two fingers, she enlarged the image, zooming in on a dark spot in the background. She frowned into the dim of the attic, breath catching when she saw the strange, elongated shadow looming under the stairs.
She paged to the next photo, zoomed in, and there is was again, its silhouette slightly turned, slightly adjusted from the picture before.
As if it had moved.
Georgia hardly breathed, hardly moved. And even as fear started to seep into her joints and seal her inside her own skin, her hands kept moving from photo to photo. There was even a laughter filled video with bright candle lights and a white birthday cake and rowdy extended family, and still it stood in the background, the red light making it seem taller, lankier, more bent out of shape. The happy couple's cheers echoing around the attic, disturbing the shadows in the rafters and the demons behind the cardboard storage boxes.
A chill ran down Georgia’s spine.
She became increasingly aware of just how alone she was, in her big, empty Tudor house.
It took a long time before her limbs became functional again, but when they did, she put down the camera and drew in a deep breath. After a brief and panicked scour around the attic, she took up a rusty golf club.
“Alright, I’ll go and see it for myself.”
But she didn’t move for several more minutes.
When she finally made it down the stairs, when she finally managed to turn her body 90 degrees to face the cupboard door and reach for the brass knob, her fingers started to turn white around the golf club, sweat pooling on the small of her back.
“Come on Georgy,” she said, heaving in an unhappy breath, “You’ve got this.”
Slowly, she turned the doorknob, head lowering as she cringed. Her teeth ground painfully together.
The lock clicked free, and she swung open the door. Crying out her best battle cry, she drove her golf stick into the figure. Again and again. Eyes squeezing shut as she shrieked, in terror and in determination. It suffered blow after blow, screeching with a sound she barely comprehended as the golf club collided once or twice with the wall, sending terrible vibrations through her hands.
Eventually, when she realised she hadn’t in fact died horribly, and whatever it was had made no attempt to retaliate, she opened one eye and peered at the shadowy creature that had murdered her predecessors and stolen their hard earned happiness.
An extremely mangled celebrity cardboard cut-out winked up at her, charming and pleasant all despite.
Georgia growled out a self-reprimanding groan. “It’s just Andrew Garfield,” she whispered, banging her head against the cupboard door.
19/02/2022To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - Killing Time
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 18th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “time”. This story is just under 800 words. Enjoy!
The professor says that time is like a spring: a golden spring, twisting and relaxing, suspended in an unknown state of matter. And when one shimmering coil aligns with the next, that’s when the barrier of experienced reality dissolves just a little, enough for our minds to slip half-through and steal a glimpse of the future. But, as with all the huge, indescribable things of the universe, the eldritch beings and the incomprehensible sciences, we are unable to process what we see, so all that’s left in our memory is an imprint – a scene, a moment, a feeling, a vague set of words. This imprint is what triggers when we finally experience those few seconds we so barely glimpsed.
“I killed your friends.”
Daniel blinked at the clerk, lips parting. “Excuse me?”
“I like your friends,” he said with a glittering smile. He tipped his head to May and Riane, shifting his arm slightly up and prompting the both of them to grip him even harder.
“Aw!” Riane was saying. “He’s so cute!”
“Listen to that accent!” May reached over his prim suit and fiddled with a golden pin. “Oh my god, I can’t deal with Londoners. It’s too much.”
Daniel reeled herself in, shaking her head. “For a second there, I thought you said –”
“You know, Danny –” May released her captive and swished over, designer skirt bouncing against the back of her thighs – “You’ve been acting strange ever since we arrived here. You need to lighten up a little.”
Daniel opened her mouth but –
“It’s because she never travels,” Riane added, giving her boytoy one last look before joining the rest of them by a white stand.
Daniel backed up a little, gripping the make-up display. For a second, it felt warm and soft, and she whirled to stare at the red napkin lodged beneath her white-knuckled fingers. But as she blinked, the cold linoleum dissolved the soft tissue until it faded into nothing. Daniel whipped back round, mouth open, but at the concerned look on her friends’ faces, she quickly pressed her lips closed.
“Let’s go see Big Ben or something,” she said, “This place is making me feel claustrophobic.”
Danniel only ever saw the Big Ben from postcards and cropped photos and tourist pamphlets, and as far as she was concerned, the clock tower stood lonesome and towering over London, in its own kind of relative might. But looking at it now, she compared herself to a tropical fish that had just realised the worm in its mouth was actually a disguised appendage of a giant snapping turtle. With the brown, lumping parliament building bulking to one side of the tower, without any particularly appealing artistry or sculpture, Big Ben stood, in Daniel’s opinion, in the shadow of itself.
Judging by May and Riane’s barrage of selfies and drilling squeals, Daniel guessed they at least were pleased.
Six months later, and Daniel stood staring up at the Eiffel Tower quietly agreeing with herself that yes, this is much better than stupid, old clock.
May and Riane stood on the lawn behind the tower, posing and preening, occasionally asking Daniel to take their pictures while they tried to hold the metal pyramid between two fingers.
“You girl’s look like you’re having fun.”
Daniel was just returning May’s phone when she noticed the Parisian standing there. His accent was thick, his hair thicker, his as-
“Hel-lo.” May reached out her hand. “We’re having a great time.”
The man leaned in closer. “Would you like to have an even greater time?”
And that’s where Daniel found herself stood around an over-filled mansion just outside Paris, sipping chardonnay and laughing at a badly dressed gentleman’s dad jokes. For a while she had been looking for May and Riane, but only half-heartedly – she knew them well enough to know they were probably in a private room somewhere, not wanting to be disturbed. Then this gentleman, seemingly from Greece but with both bad English and bad French, flagged her down, and she only docked beside him because she spotted a full tray of drinks.
“Madam.”
Daniel turned.
It was the original Parisian, who she had since learned was unoriginally named Francis.
He leaned into her ear, and she put out her hand against the white counter. She glanced down where her fingers grasped the soft, red napkin beneath the Greek man’s glass.
“You should know, Danny,” Francis whispered, hardly audible over the live band in the foyer, “I’ve just killed your friends.”18/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - Vivian and Xena
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 17th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “an object” by choosing between a hammer, key, fishing pole, lamp, book or bottle. This story is just under 600 words. Enjoy!
Vivian knew even as she was living through it she would never forget this moment: the soft sunshine through blades of corn, the long shadow of the travelling castle over her back garden and the pampered princess knee-deep in fresh mud, a nail and shovel in her hand.
“How does a fence even get this broken?”
Vivian hefted a brand-new panel and dragged it over to the “blast zone”. It looked like something had barrelled through it with the force of a landslide, leaving shrapnel and dirt strewn inside the sheep pen, a danger to the fluffy, little animals that lived there. “My sister was trying out some new earth magic incantations my father bought her for her birthday. Apparently, it didn’t go very well.”
Princess Xena used her white-gloved hand to undo the top button of her blazer. Then she fixed her hair, a losing battle against the summer sweat gathering on her brow. “I disagree,” she said, smirking, “I think she’d make a promising cadet.”
Vivian sniggered. But as soon as her eyes fell on the pile of tools beside the Princess’ feet, she frowned. “We’re not going to get these fences up with a mini trowel and brute force.”
The Princess pulled a face.
“I though I told you to get the hammer from the shed.”
“Well, I couldn’t find it.” She pouted. “That place is like a hoarder’s nest.”
Vivian supressed a grin, remembering her father’s “methods” fondly – essentially throwing anything and everything in the general direction of a reasonable storage place. “You’re just too used to your maids.”
Xena sat back on her hands, knocking a trowel with her boot. “Isn’t that why I’m here?” she grumbled out, eyes closed, face turned up to the warm sun.
For a moment, Vivian indulged in the sight – those long lashes, the light dancing in her hair, the relaxed expression usually crossed with stress lines and sleepless shadows.
Xena was right though. She was only here because things had gotten a little . . . hurtful during their first couple’s row. In short, Vivi had accused of being “out of touch”, and farm work was apparently the solution.
At least it’s a step, she reminded herself, sighing almost fondly.
A creaking-rolling sound started quietly in the distance but gradually became louder until it was practically on top of them. Vivian watched the bewitched wheelbarrow with a friendly smile. “Hello, Mr Barrowson,” she said with a polite wave.
Xena raised a brow and peeked open one eye. The corners of her lips tilted down, and Vivian rolled her eyes at her barely contained contempt.
A bright, green wheelbarrow came to a halt a little ways from Xena’s elbow and rocked noisily from side to side, jangling its contents.
Smiling sweetly, a vision in a strawberry print summer dress, Vivian held out a hand to the Princess, which she took and grumpily used to get to her feet. Together they surveyed Mr Barrowson’s contents.
Xena lifted up a hammer. “Uh, been looking for this.”
Proudly, Vivian patted her trusty companion’s rim. “Mr Barrowson is extremely helpful in that way. He always has whatever you’ll need.”
Staring pointedly at her girlfriend, Xena raised one finger from the wheelbarrow’s bowl, a set of lacy undergarments dangling from it.
Vivian blushed. “He also has a vile sense of humour.” She looked away, trying to hide the heat in her cheeks.
“Right.” Vivian heard Xena shifting around rummaging through the miscellaneous items and setting down her haul in the grass. “So, how about this fence then?”
17/02/2022
To Be Proofread. . .
Flash Fiction February - In the Shoe Cupboard
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 16th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “a hoarder”. This story is just under 800 words. Enjoy!The two women watched Brian from behind their prams, leaning in to each other with concerned comments, both of them dismayed and intrigued simultaneously, as the old man lifted a white shoe from the river bank and into a black plastic bin bag.
Rachel stole one last glance at her friend from the town nursery and then sucked in a breath. “Excuse me!” She waved emphatically at Brian. “That one’s mine!”
The old man lifted his head, gradually removing his hand from the bin bag, little white shoe pinched between two fingers. “This one?” He lifted it.
Rachel nodded. “My daughter kicked it off into the stream a few minutes ago.”
Brian looked at the shoe and then at the little girl fussing quietly in Rachel’s pram.
One sticky hand reached down to grab her ankle, jelly knees lifting and bending until her salmon pink skirts rolled back over her thighs. She brought her frilly, white sock to her mouth, but Rachel reached down to block. She whined and flapped an unhappy hand.
Noiselessly, Brian crossed the small, red-brick bridge over the river and approached the two women, causing Rachel’s companion, Diana, to draw away from the unkept man’s parasitic goatee, wild hair and stained workman’s jeans. He lifted the shoe and pointed it tip-to-tip to the little girl’s remaining shoe.
“Well, I’ll say,” he said, “It’s a perfect match.” Then he handed the shoe to Rachel, a worn smile spreading on his face. “You didn’t happen to lose any other shoes lately? I’ve got quite a few at home you might want to take a look at. See if you recognise them.”
Diana and Rachel exchanged a look.
“I don’t know –”
“Katie does like to kick of her shoes around here.” Rachel pushed her hair out of her face, surrendering to a weary, motherly smile. “If you have any pairs in good condition, would I be able to have those too?”
“Eh, there aren’t a lot of those, but if you take a liking to them, I don’t see why not.”
Despite Diana tugging on her elbow and whispering a warning in her ear, Rachel found herself following Old Man Brian to his bungalow a few side streets away. The area was surprisingly well lit, with ornate streetlamps and noisy, uneven flagstones. Brian’s bungalow sat behind historical storefronts in what must have been a repurpose courtyard. Vines and other shrubs grew down over his roof from a high wall set into a natural hill, a dirty iron railing hinting to the popular footpath that curled up beyond it, over his house. The space was quiet but full of echoes – from Brian’s heavy breathing to the creak of the pram’s wheels. Fortunately for Rachel, the bungalow had been built with disability in mind, so a wide, concrete ramp stretched out from the door, a doddle for her clunky pushchair.
“Just in here,” Brian said, ducking into a dark room, the space so filled with objects the windows were almost completely barred. “You can leave your pram in foyer as I reckon that’s the safest place for your little one. I’ve got all sorts in here, so it’s definitely not babyproof!”
Due to the single space cleared on a beaten-up couch, Rachel supposed this had once been a living room. Now it was closer to a shoe cupboard. Racks lined every wall and occasionally came out into the middle of the room, slicing the carpet into three vague isles. Abandoned shoes, mostly small and child-sized, were strewn across the floor where they couldn’t fit on the racks. Black bin bags were squished into corners, their contents supposedly still awaiting their day to be sorted. Some shoes, Rachel noticed, were incredibly old, perhaps made 30, 50 years ago.
But one set really caught her eye, a shiny, red pair set on a pedestal and protected by a square box of glass. It was so strangely highlighted, set back between two racks and almost burred in bags.
Rachel let out a good-natured laugh. “I guess I won’t be leaving with those.”
Brian followed her gaze and furrowed his brows. “No, no. Please leave them with me.” He spoke softly, his fingers shaking a little where he had gone to place down his newest bin bag.
Rachel thought she ought to apologise, but the silence growing between them was so thick she could barely find the will to oppose it. Instead, she began to browse the shelves, trying not to notice as Brian hid tears beneath a calloused, paw-like hand.
She remembered Diana, how she gripped her arm. “He lost his daughter by the river a long time ago, and he’s been sick ever since. Though, I don’t really blame him. The case was never closed, because, well, all they could find were a pair of her shoes left bone-dry on the promenade.”
16/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - A "Norwegian" Hobby
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 15th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “a hobbyr”. This story is just under 600 words. Enjoy!
Alice liked hiking. So much so, three months ago she booked herself out of her rent, work and family obligations for a full year so she could hike the full length of Europe with nothing but the bags on her back. So far, she’d seen many things – beautiful skies, beautiful landscapes, beautiful cities. Today, however, was the first time she stumbled upon an undeniably beautiful man.
From his accent, she guessed he was German or Dutch, but he started to talk to her in fluent Swedish, his legs sprawled out over the edge of a Norwegian valley, a pleasant smile gracefully taking in her incomprehension. As a full-blooded Brit and a useless linguist, Alice’s brain ran into several critical failures when he asked sweetly for her name.
“It’s Wonderland Guide,” she said, voice buckling.
He laughed, adjusting his grip on his camera. “An alias?”
“It’s the hiking culture.” Her words felt detached from her. Just like her body was every time she went out walking.
“I see.” His long legs shifted a little against the rock beneath them. “Make sure you’re careful around here,” he said, almost apathetically. “There are many things wandering around that are unfriendly.”
Unfriendly.
She wondered if this was a betrayal of his first language or just the way he liked to talk. She wondered if he liked stalking around, spooking strangers with ghost stories. Oh, well, at least he might make an interesting afternoon.
Seizing the opportunity for a break, Alice set down her bag and took up a position beside the beautiful man. Privately, and hopefully without his notice, she tried to decipher what about him seemed so appealing to her. Was it his sharp jaw line? His piercing eyes? The way his jacket sat around his shoulders? She reckoned he was probably like the dramatic Norwegian landscape, which milled about in the background of his silhouette: beautiful in its culminative angles, mundane in its basic elements.
“Can I see?” She pointed at his camera.
He grinned and bumped shoulders with her as he came in close. He angled the small screen towards her and navigated his camera roll via a small cross of buttons.
Alice leaned in, squinting to get a better look.
An ordinary stream. Some rocks. Clouds streaking across the skies. A woman stood in the grass.
“Wait –”
He paged back.
“What was that?”
He smiled, mischievous and bashful, eyes meeting hers as if to share an established joke. “One of the things I mentioned,” he said, pleased.
Alice eyed the image again.
There was something strange about the way the woman stood. Alice couldn’t decipher it through the fog closing in all around her and the sweeping nature of her gown. Her bare arms twisted in the cool winter light, as if in a dance. There was something so... unnatural about it.
“When was this taken?” she said, watching him cautiously.
“Just an hour ago,” he replied. His eyes glittered. “Maybe a little more than that now.”
Alice frowned. There hadn’t been any fog for all the miles she could see coming up on the valley. Hell, the last time she saw fog must have been in early September.
“What is it –” she searched for the words. “What is it you do up here, anyway?”
He laughed again, withdrawing his camera and bringing up one of his knees. He draped an arm around it and pulled it close to his chest. Still amused, he looked out over the valley at the odd little town in its basin.
“Let’s just call it a ‘hobby’.”
15/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - The Train Guard
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 14th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to include “an animal character”. This story is just over 600 words. Enjoy!
The cocker spaniel rested its chin on my knee. “So, you want to get on the train?”
“Yes, please.”
He grumbled, removing himself from my lap and coming to a rest over my sandals. “People always want to get on the train.”
“Do you know where it goes?”
“No.”
“Nobody does then.”
Around me the station was empty. A dry rain pattered on the slick concrete and over the iron tracks. The clouds moved in stark, grey clusters over a surreal, light blue sky. Beautiful, defined sunrays sliced down where the roof ended, like a privacy curtain for the short line of historical, wooden benches and closed concession stands.
“When does it get here?”
The spaniel bashed its tail on the ground once, golden hair teasing the light. “When it gets here.”
After a few moments of tense silence, he added, “You people are always impatient.”
“Have you ever been on it?”
“I’ve never needed to.”
“Has anyone… come back after they’ve gone?”
He stared up at me. If I hadn’t already gotten used to his gruff, intolerant attitude, I would have said his big, watery eyes were cute. But I got the distinct impression they were brimming with malice instead.
For a while, I thought I wasn’t going to get an answer from him either.
And then, “Most people do. But they don’t usually come back the same.”
I contemplated this, my fingers twisting on the hem of my skirt. “Does change always have to be a bad thing?”
He looked pointedly away from me, drawing half off my shoes.
Then the grumpy spaniel got to his feet. “It’s here.”
I looked down the track but saw nothing. I looked the opposite way up the track, but there was nothing there either. In fact, where the distinctive rumble of the earth and clack, clack, clack of the train wheels should have been, there was only a long stretch of silence. My eyes searched the jagged light and empty platforms, the dripping stairs and the white gravel railway but found no reward.
“I don’t see it –”
The spaniel sat behind the yellow line, tail swishing absently. He glanced back at me. “Look harder.”
And then I noticed it, the thin disturbance of light that sprung up vertically from his head. The more I stared the clearer it became. It helped, I realised after a few points of a second, to follow one line of distortion until I reached the sharp right angle of an intersection of several lines and to keep branching out from there. Eventually, a largely translucent train cart sat beside the platform, still as the face of the sun.
It looked cold, as if it had never been moving.
When I looked down its body, the other carts slowly began to fade into the sunlight, morphing into the scenery, into overgrown hedges and grass paddies and undistinguishable concrete structures and powerlines.
“Its not going to wait for you much longer,” the spaniel said, amused.
I eyed my ride a little more but rocked myself to my feet anyways. I approached slowly, as if it were a cat I didn’t want to scare away, or to attack me in a wild fit of rage.
“Should I get on it?”
“You’re eligible,” the spaniel said. “But it’s not mandatory.”
In an epiphany it occurred to me – “Does everyone get on the train?”
The spaniel smiled, wide and uncanny. I thought there was something strange about it but began to dismiss it anyway, until I realised what was wrong.
He had human teeth.
I opened my mouth to speak but he beat me.
“No,” he said, only grinning wider, eyes glued on me in some sick fixation – “Scarcely anyone makes it past the doors.”
14/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - Now She's Possessed
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 13th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “something possessed by something… unnatural”. This story is just under 600 words. Enjoy!
“Why is Ginger on the floor?”
The girls looked down beside their tea table at “Ginger” who was laying face down against the hardwood. Slowly, she began to move forward, without moving her limbs. Then slowly, she moved backward again.
Fray pressed her lips together. “She messed up a spell. Professor says she’ll be alright in an hour.”
Leaning against the doorframe, coffee mug in hand, Helena crossed her arms the best she could. “Ginger, what did you do?”
“It’s not my fault!” the girl whined as her face scrapped across the floor once again.
“Can’t we help her up?” Wenda said, tapping her fingers against the tea table, rattling the various cake plates and cheese cracker boards. “Her constant fidgeting is starting to get old.”
Fray just shook her head and switched out her crossed legs. “You can try. She’ll just fall on her face again.”
“OK.” Helena still didn’t look particularly pleased. “But how did we get to this?”
Wenda pulled a face. “She tried to summon a demon, but she accidentally drew part of her pentagram over a tea towel. Now she’s possessed.”
Helena frowned. “By a demon?”
She glanced around as if expecting black slime to start dripping from the walls and the shadows of the multi-layered cupcake stand to elongate across the lounge, stretching up onto the wallpaper and ceiling, menacing, red eyes peering down on them from the gloom.
Fray took a sip from her mug. “No, the tea towel.”
They heard a moan from below as Ginger's mop of red hair trail behind her, her white blouse wiping the hardwood clean. “Why is this happening to me?” Ginger near wailed. “Tea towels don’t have consciousnesses! They don’t have wills!”
“It must be a magical item or something,” Wenda said, reaching for the towel in question. Her red-painted nails lifted the blue striped cotton and held it up for Helena to see.
One corner was black with charcoal, but other than that it was pristine, un-frayed, unstained and as limp as lawn chair.
“Do you think its doing this out of revenge?”
“No –” Fray smirked down at her friend, who, despite how it might seem, she was immensely fond of – “I’d say this is more out of a sick sense of duty.”
They stared at the quietly weeping girl for a minute longer, watching as her hair bunched up when she went forward, then fanned out like a flame as she withdrew, her shirt rolling up around her midriff in the process.
“Hey Ginger,” Wenda said, beginning to point with her finger, “I think you missed a spot ri-ight –” she waved towards a chair leg – “There.”
13/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
Flash Fiction February - The Real Master
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 12th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “magic”. This story is just over 800 words. Enjoy!
My master is good in only one way: the way he allows me to wonder the halls of his great mansion, doing the rounds and petting the many wilting servants and slaves. I have little ability to ease their pain, little choice but to ignore their heart’s hardborne wishes, as I stroke my many ringed fingers through their hair and bid them farewell into beautiful dreams full of honest and worthy desires come true. For the master who stalks the halls, black and booming, tailcoats moving in whisps of smoke, lips clacking in time with the steal-lined whip, the master who commands me holds the amulet I treasure and am forced to call home.
The Djinn is safety mechanism of the natural balance. A protection against the unreasonably powerful mage.
Magicians of the current order refuse to explore the very real fact that most Djinn are women. Contrary to the assumed enraged hypothesis, nature is not in fact against women and their attempted rise against the patriarchal magician’s order of then and of now. No, it speaks rather to the fundamental flaws of both sexes.
Where typical men, often those in power, enjoy perfecting the craft of success, often requiring themselves to sacrifice greatness for sustained lifestyle, status and financial stability, love drives most renowned women, particularly the passionate and beloved ones, to perfect themselves, their magic, their craft and the world. To women like me, it seems all too reasonable that the excessively powerful should be naturally obligated to do the bidding of others, for the greater good, lest their own flawed selfishness conquers their better judgement, as intoxicating surplus often does.
And its not as if Djinn are unable to live in comfort, as they can will themselves almost anything they could want. So our state, as it was originally defined, seems only fair to us.
Something that is unanimously understood between the Djinn, but ignored by the amatonormative majority, as their dominant sex continues to be, is that Djinn are often bereft of sexual or romantic desires, often preferring to form friendly or even familial relationships with their masters, associates, reoccurring immortal beings in their region and other eternal Djinn. This aversion to coupling seems to me like yet another safety mechanism of nature, one that is more concerned with the happiness and sanity of those caught in the aforementioned mechanism of Djinnism than with the “balance” of the world. As a consequence of this, I, and my brethren, find much of our daily satisfaction in bringing joy to others, in relieving pain and in making impossible dreams come true.
Pity then that we Djinn are considered “subhuman” by this order.
As if in nature’s breath we could become something entirely unnatural.
No, as with anything made conveniently easy to control, we are bought and sold to the wealthiest buyer. As with the muddy slaves by the riverbanks, as with the brothel fodder and the master’s bedroom keeps, Djinn are kept as animals are, often bewitched into objects too significant to our history to break with our powers.
And with the powerful comes the corruption of surplus. With our wills bound to powerful masters, those unfortunately tending to be male and often bent on maintaining themselves and unbalancing others as the natural masculine cycle goes, we watch granted wishes undo the pride of the greater peoples, dash down the dreams of hopeful youths and burn the happy camps of thriving homes.
As some weak safety measure, nature limits us to 3 wishes per master, but a master of one is usually a master of many, with options to breed more wary children or coerce struggling fathers into giving up their wishes to the whims of their lord.
Nameless, without real will, this is the reality of the Djinn, the consequence of power.
Little known, even to Djinn themselves, is our power to lose our magic, and quite easily too. But why would we? When our original passions are so strong? When that original hope, that original elation when we granted our first wishes to the unfortunate and the poor, that eternal hope that we will contribute to something great and good still glows strong?
There is one solution that I understand as viable.
Djinn’s, like their sex, sexuality and autonomy, are themselves greatly ignored.
This is the mistake.
To anyone understanding enough of magic to be honoured as a Djinn, they would recognise nature as the only master of the wish-granters. As she holds so many safety mechanisms, so many spells and technicalities and complexities, in being changed beyond our rightful birth, we become extensions of her. Mechanisms ourselves.
And her will is all.
Where there is a highly converted man, one who took himself to the highest, safest pedestal of magical proficiency, there is usually a lack of care towards the divine complexities of his craft. As Djinns are tools rather than people, magic, to him, is to be used instead of enjoyed. So, why should he know? It wasn’t studying that brought him this far.
Why should he know how easy it would be to send him over the precipice?
12/02/2022
Flash Fiction February - Unwanted Egg
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 11th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about “something being somewhere they shouldn’t be”. This story is just under 600 words. Enjoy!
I was born with an egg timer in my hands.
Sometimes I would just sit there watching it as it turned, the bottom half dead still on the desk, on the bed sheets, on the carpet, while the top spun, clicking past measureless white intervals.
I used to think it was strange that we made egg timers in the shape of the eggs they regulate. Isn’t there the chance they will be mistakenly boiled instead?
Yes, that’s exactly how my mother’s timer went, cracked and mutating at the bottom of a soup pan, the water long boiled away: her blank face staring down at it, weightless fingers still steering a wooden ladle.
I had been careful with mine. Kept the red plastic clean and repainted the white lines with permanent marker when my fingers began to rub them away.
Sometimes I imagined a little bird slumbering inside of it, and I’d cradle it gently, patient as an old hen for the day it finally hatched and flew free.
Sometimes I’d see it in old pictures perched on my shoulder, ever turning towards an indistinct, unknowable deadline. Hundreds of photo albums then, and hundreds of camera rolls now, featured that little red egg. Regularly in my hands, scarcely on my knee, almost never in the background, forgotten or abandoned by me, when I look through those old photos of us it just serves to remind me how much this egg had adsorbed onto my personality – or how much of my personality had formed around it.
When I look at it, I see myself as if it’s surface was the clearest kind of mirror.
Matt and unreflective, maybe it’s hard to see any resemblance between us in practice. But something about that shade of red, something about the spacing of those valueless intervals, the inevitability of each click as the timer starts a brand-new cycle, the mystery of what is hidden inside beneath that plastic eggshell – it just reminds me of myself in a totally earnest and indescribable way.
My parents don’t acknowledge it, and that hurts almost all of the time. They know something is strange, that there’s some part of their beloved, perfect son that just shouldn’t be there. They feel it when they look at me. They see it when I stare at that egg, holding it so gently in my hands, wondering when that timer will go off, praying, hoping that it would be someday soon.
I am dying to know. I am dying to meet her.
They have all the money in the world, big ships, cruisers, cars, mansions, and for as many doctors they can pass me under and questions they can ask and extended family they can shepherd away, I find more reasons to side with this strange, unwanted egg timer.
Because, the more I think about it, I already know.
I am the part of me that should not be here.
I am the strangeness that looks out of my eyes when they look into me.
I am the bird nestled within that plastic casing, anticipating my time to fly, so unbelievably scared of being boiled away or scooped out by a surgeon’s hand.
What is it counting down to? The question keeps me up all night, watching the top turn, a feint, beating light dotting red on my ceiling – sniper lens, warning siren, traffic light, oven finally finished baking?
Is this the countdown to the day I stop hurting and start feeling... free?
Or is this the ever shortening peacetime before the day the real agony begins?
11/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
February Flash Fiction - At Least . . .
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 10th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about "romance". This story is just 113 words. Enjoy!
It was impossible to move without colliding with a barrier of mess. Pinned to the doorway by burnt food, catapulted chocolate boxes and crushed white roses (they didn’t have red at the store), crinkled petals discarded over a patchwork of muddy footprints and melted candle wax, I made no attempt to disguise the disaster. She’d already seen it.
As it was happening.
“Oh, man, I didn’t think it was possible to be more useless at romance.” I turned to her, a cry for help on my face.
But she just laughed and wrapped her arms me. “It’s ok,” she said, kissing me sweetly on the cheek. “At least, I still love you.”
10/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .
February Flash Fiction - The Alright Girls
This flashfic is inspired by a prompt posted on 9th February 2022 by the Writer’s Digest to write about "something being regifted". This story is just over 500 words. Enjoy!
The velvet covered box made a soft shushing sound as I pushed it over the dresser, my fingers lingering on its gentle surface as I abandoned it there.
Beside me, her peaceful face pressed, delightful and serene, against the cream-coloured pillows, a statement of bliss and contented pleasure. Even despite everything we had gone through, the sight still stirred up my heart and reminded me that it wasn’t all broken after all.
I resisted the urge to push a stray lock of golden hair behind her ear, to reveal those long lashes teasing shadows over her cheeks, to brush against her skin again, to feel that love again.
If only we could forgive. If only we could move on.
One last night going through the motions, round after round of cat fights and hate sex and “I hate yous” and “I can’t believe I thought I loved you” and I leaving. And staring at her, feet glued to the floor, begging me to stay – maybe just another day, maybe just another week, another month, another year thrown away, wasted, gone – how long has it been this way? Has it been this way all along? When will I realise that it’s time – it’s time to let go. Just leave. Run away. Find something – anything – new.
But I love you. I do.
Your smile, your hair, your style – the way you laugh when I say a word wrong, adjust your hair when I tell you you’re beautiful, the way you look at me when I talk until three AM about my family and my troubles and that stupid TV show I keep watching over and over again, no matter how bad it was from episode one.
And I remember how I melted when you pulled out two jewellery boxes and handed me one.
You said, “Two halves of one whole.”
And the two of them glittering in the cold winter sunlight, their silver chiming as they rubbed together, dangling each from our lingering fingers as we tried to match their jagged lines together. The jeweller told you they were one hundred percent unique. No other piece could replace mine, could replace yours. At least, not as perfectly as it had before.
So, it would be wrong for me to take it.
Of all the things I’m leaving behind, the little, red box is almost as important as the girl I love. Maybe she will be whole when she fits them together. Maybe she will move on, forget me, find somebody more suited for that serine, beautiful face. Someone who doesn’t live by truces when they can have open borders and lavish bouquets.
The door handle shocked my fingers with cold as I pulled it shut behind me, one final slap for a cruel thing I’ve done. And when the lock clicked in place, I knew my final sin was over. There’s redemption on the road ahead, I tell myself as I start to walk. Salvation on the horizon. Cleansing on the icy pavement and frigid air.
There’s just a free woman now. A condemned soul. Everything’s going to be alright.
09/02/2022
To Be Proofread . . .