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 . . .