Tag Archives: flash fiction

Friday Flash Fiction: The Beast

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She was just a girl.

With a trust fund none knew about.

A girl born into the wrong time.

I should have lived in Victorian America, when melancholy was in high fashion—she’d whisper as I lay spooned around her. More often than not, I found her curled up in bed, staring at the wall. Only I witnessed her bravery in rising after days of feeling like nothing. She remained alive by sheer will.

And my cooking. I loved to cook for her. She ate everything and delighted in it, even when the beast held her tighter than I ever could. Food comforted her, and kept her alive, if not lively.

She rarely left her little home overlooking the river. The little house hung like an afterthought upon the bluff, threatening to come unmoored at any moment and tumble into the river. Incredibly, she worried not at all about the inevitable possibility. Her reason—This house will fall when I’m ready.

I love this house—she said quietly—Did you know it used to be a hermitage before this area was developed? I did, but shook my head, encouraging her to continue with the story about our local river king, whom most called a saint for the miraculous happenings during his time in this home.

Susurrations of gossip followed her through town as she walked, head up, eyes straightforward, never lingering to purchase anything beyond necessities.

Until I followed her home one day and she invited me in as though she were expecting me. From that day on, I made her purchases along with my own, but nothing staved off the beast, her modern day melancholy. The conversation that first day immersed us in an ongoing dialogue of slightly differing philosophies and worldviews, with matching intellectual curiosities. Love blossomed that day.

I saw it happen.

On my way up the switchbacks with an angelfood cake and a handful of wildflowers, the ground trembled. A cracked formed on the edge of the bluff just under the overhanging edge of the house. It shook, and slowly shifted downward.

Until it tumbled and slid down into the river. A hand may have appeared out the window. Perhaps not.

There’s no explanation for my continued climb to what was now the top, where I found the beast dangling. It lives in me. I shall not love in that way again.

Flash Fiction Friday: That Little Lock

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In the quiet of twilight, when everyone else was gone, I went out to Dad’s garage behind the house. He was working on our old Ford Ltd.

Again.

Sitting on a stool in from of his worktable, I posited, “Daddy?”

“Yes, baby?” He responded while putting parts together. He’d tried teaching me mechanics, but it didn’t take, leaving him so frustrated that he yelled at me to go back inside and learn how to cook. I can’t cook neither.

“Daddy, I need a lock on my door.” The silence expanded to fill my head with his rising anger.

“What the hell do you need a lock for? You’re not locking me and your mother out of that room. We pay the rent here. Whatever you’re hiding we’ll find out anyways.” Holding the part, he dropped onto the creeper and rolled under the car.

“Daddy, I’m tired of Sam coming into my room without knocking. He comes in when I’m dressing and won’t leave no matter how much I scream. I gotta grab my clothes and go past him to dress in the bathroom.”

The creeper flew out and Dad sat up, looking at me with his crazy eyes that scared me, but I held my ground. “Are you serious?”

I nodded.

He stood up, wiped his hands on a red rag, and paced the room, shouting, “That little sonuvabitch! That little bastard! I didn’t raise no son of mine to be a pervert. I didn’t raise him to be peeping at his sister.” Daddy stopped, looked me straight in the eye, and asked, “He never touched you, has he?”

“God, no! Ain’t it enough that he’s looking at me? That he’s coming in my room without permission?” I hugged myself and shivered, having not thought of that possibility.

“Alright, baby, I gotcha,” he reassured me as he looked for a lock in his tool box. After picking up his drill, he left the garage, me following him inside and down to my room. A simple latch lock went onto my door in a few minutes. Daddy kissed my head and returned to his garage.

That evening, I was reading in our downstairs family room when my brother got home from his after school job. Daddy was waiting for him. Soon as the door opened, he launched into him, reamed him out clean. He didn’t even show up for dinner.

Halfway through dressing the next morning, Sam’s voice boomed through my door, “You awake in there, Serena?” A little chuckle turned into a BAM as he hit the door that wouldn’t open. I stood quietly in front of my closet, one leg in my pants, as he pounded the door and hollered to be let in.

My journal is filled with possibilities of what coulda happened without that little lock.

Flash Fiction Friday: Werewolf Museum

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Photograph by Max Braday
Dungeon and Torture Museum
Burghausen Castle, Burghausen, Germany

The dozen or so individuals gathered around the display while one read the placard out loud.

During the seven centuries long Bloodluster-Lycanthropy War, torturous atrocities were committed on both sides. Here you see “harmless” non-silver metal spikes that were driven into a small coven of vampires onto a silver slab, thus preventing their escape. Placed in an isolated cave deep within the Eurasian forest, they were found 157 years later by chance, after the war ended.

Of all the names, why do they insist on that one—a voice lamented from the rear. Dude, you’re not even a vampire; you’re a simple wraith—scorned a tall, dark, handsome vampire. The wraith whined—But I want to be. Laughter spread through the group as the reader rejoined them and said—the winner gets to name the war, bloodsucker.

Flash Fiction Friday: The Enemy Comes

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“No one is my enemy.”

“Sure, Hank, no one is your enemy. We know. But let’s keep our tazers at the ready just in case, okay, my friend?” Waltraud snagged the book from Hank and stuffed it in the front of her shirt, bumping his tazer up with her own. “Why does your book smell like puke? It’s overwhelming my own fetid swamp in there.”

“It’s regurgitating the hate that surrounds–“

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. Sorry I asked.” Shoulder to shoulder, they strode stealthily through the starship’s upper deck, three starkiller robots on their heels like big dumb dogs with 4317s holding ammo that detonated on contact. When one hit a human head, it was a fireworks of organic material. Hitting a robot endangered them all. Sometimes the difference wasn’t obvious. The starkillers were programmed to follow the instructions of Waltraud alone.

When she turned the corner and her head disappeared from a blaster ray, the starkillers turned to Hank, who said, “No one is my enemy.” They fired.

The Pollening

Flash Fiction Friday,
drone photo by jeremy gilchrist

Yellow air dusted everyone who dared go outside. We all looked sickly, most of us miserable. Sneezes caused the powdery tree sperm to be flung off as a wet dog shakes off the water. Snorfling followed, a disgusting, yet necessary action. The spores lingered throughout summer. Hearts clenched.

This piece was originally written for Flash Fiction Friday at Inner Circle Writers’ Group.

Flash Fiction Friday: FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real—Zig Ziglar

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Something was crawling on my back inside my shirt. I ripped off my shirt. Standing there in my bra, I flicked the shirt across my back until the creepy crawly feeling diminished to a tolerable level. Then I saw the spider on the last button, wrapped around it like a child clinging to the head of the person holding him on her shoulders. I dropped the shirt, then snatched it back up and ran to the washer. Only after I threw it in, and listened to it fill up, did I realize that the dead spider would not go down the drain with the rinse water, but need to be removed by hand. I shivered. Probably I could procrastinate for a couple days. Maybe someone would drop by in that time.

That night a sleep paralysis nightmare washed over me like a thousand spiders. It felt literally like spiders walking all over me, an army of them, a family of them. Oh, God! Its family! The spider’s family. How many spiders could there be in one family? I’ve seen those eggs hatch; it seems like a never-ending supply of baby spiders, far worse than all those horrifying clowns popping out of that stupid little car.

In the morning I felt itchy everywhere, but not the itchy that cries out for scratching, rather the kind that makes you feel as though you’re being watched. I forced myself to check the washer. I gently pulled the damp shirt from the belly of the beast, shaking it frantically and tossing it in the dryer. Half-expecting the spider to launch itself at my face, I peered in slowly. It was nowhere inside my machine. Maybe I needed a better look. I grabbed a flashlight from the whatsit drawer in the kitchen and aimed it in the washer. The light circled the barrel, faster in case the little critter was still actually alive and running from the light. I did the same in the dryer, shaking the shirt again like a woman on meth, not that I knew anything about that. No spider. No carcass.

Again the same sleep paralysis nightmare overtook me. I woke breathlessly, crying. The spiders crawled all over me, as I lay there unable to move or even open my eyes, repeatedly all night, alternating with gasping wakefulness, great gulping sobs by morning. The itchiness continued unabated. The paralysis attacks me nightly. My work is suffering. What can I tell people? Where is that stupid little spider?

Flash Fiction Friday

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Writing Bad prompt

“The ring, please.” Father Monahan turned to Jeffrey, whose gaze sent everyone’s eyes to the back of the room. Whatever he was looking at was not apparent, and all returned their attention to the couple.

“Jeffrey,” the groom stage-whispered angrily at his best man. He couldn’t be bothered right now that his lifelong friend’s unrequited love hadn’t shown. For god’s sake, it was his wedding. If Jeffrey ruined it, their friendship was in question. It had been faltering ever more as this obsession had grown.

Laila slowly opened the heavy church door, hoping for a quiet entrance. She was late, hadn’t been expecting to come at all. Susanna had begged her to come. Her little sister’s wedding was a must, but she understood that HE would be there. They agreed that no one wanted the commotion that would ensue from her presence. Yet she desperately wished to see her baby girl she helped raise marry the man of her dreams. The door squeak echoed around the three-stories’ tall ceiling. Acoustics were fantastic in here—as a singer, she was impressed. Then all eyes turned again to the back of the room.

Halfway up, Laila’s ex-husband Henri sat with two of their children, both of them excited about baby sister as flower girl. Upon seeing Laila in the doorway, with sunlight haloing her auburn hair, he stood up, snapped his fingers for the kids to follow, and headed to the door. As he walked down the aisle, he heard a gasp from the front, but didn’t turn to find out from who. In his peripheral vision, he noted a tall man in black on the left get up and head in the same direction. He did not want to know who this guy was. Henri reached back for his children. The sound of little feet running behind him assured him that all his kids were coming.

Flash Fiction Friday: A Fish of a Different Color

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Jake pulled on the line reeling out. “I got one!”

“I see that.” I placed my pole in the holder and moved over toward him. He gets so excited, no matter how old we get. The kids are all grown and having kids of their own, but Jake still acts like a kid at Christmas every time he hooks a fish. I love going fishing with this man.

He grabbed the fish, a decent size, not one I could name. It was a color and shape I couldn’t quite place.

“What is it, Jake?”

He held it up and looked closer, the fish inexplicably still in his hands.

And then it spoke, “I will give you three wishes if you throw me back.”

We froze, gawping at it.

Finally, I took a breath and whispered, “Did you hear that?”

Jake nodded.

We looked at each other and frowned.

Jake stated firmly, “I wish this fish to be gone.”

I swear the fish grinned before it replied, “You cannot wish me out of exi—Aaaaaaaah!”

Jake threw it as far as possible.

I hugged my man hard and whispered, “Thank you,” into his ear.

He sighed and retorted, “That shit never works out well.”

Flash (Essay) Friday: little town, oregon

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We lived in a tiny town on the coast of Oregon for only a year, but I miss it a lot. It seemed to rain all the time, yet I never used an umbrella. Clouds sat on the ground, so walking to work was hazy and misty, like a dream. Sometimes the wind whipped the rain right up your nose and you had to cover your face to avoid choking. We lived a five minute walk from the beach, down a steep hill that at the end of an hour’s walk we had to climb back up. At the beginning of the year, I thought I would die. At the end, I was chattering all the way up to the house. I forgave that little town everything for the tidal pools, the ocean vistas, and the consistently cool weather.

Flash Fiction Friday: Are You a Girl?

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“Where’s my robot? I’m cold and I’m thirsty.”

“She’s coming, Grans,” said Carloni.

The small, pink and blue android strolled into the room with a blanket under one arm and a steaming mug in the other hand.

“Ah, thank you, Lazonea.”

“My pleasure, Grans.”

Grans smiled. She would take all the grandkids she could, and her android lived to please her, though one must ignore the fact that they were programmed to do so and simply enjoy.

“Lazonea, are you a girl?”

The android tilted her head and replied, “I’m not sure,” and tilting her head the other way, continued, “what that means.”

Carloni eyed Grans with a frown, “Grans, androids aren’t girls or boys. That was eons ago. Androids are androids.”

Grans’ face went slack. She turned to Carloni, “Are you a girl?”

Her grandchild came to her side, knelt by her chair, and spoke softly, “Grans, I told you, gender went out of fashion 50 years ago, before I was born. I’m not a gender. You’re one of the last females.”

“I’m so confused,” said Grans as tears welled in her eyes.

Carloni held her hands and placed their head on her lap.