Flash Fiction #7

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece.

I've haven't quite succeeded in "a piece a day," but I'm getting there! It really has been fun to create all these short pieces.

Today's image is:

Image courtesy of jam343 via Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

Hannah was the first to scent the child outside the cabin. The others told her that she was imagining things, that there was nothing that succulent for miles around. Besides, they'd already had the snack. The bones were still stacked neatly beside the fire. 

Nan, who acted as caretaker of the cabin, living in the abandoned mining town most of the year, reminded them that she had personally chased off the last backwoods homesteaders three winters ago. It had been pretty dull since then.  Dull, but safe. After what happened to Eloise, you couldn't be too careful.

The coven gathered back around the fire, chanting and tossing small items into it.  Hannah's senses settled back down and she had just pulled her concentration back to the work at hand, when they all  stopped. Hannah chanted alone a second or two before she noticed the silence. "What?" she asked, annoyed.

Nan raised a finger to her lips. Hannah cocked her head, waiting.  Then she heard it too, a soft snuffling sound. Sad child. It was unmistakable. It was delicious. She cackled, then covered her mouth. How embarrassing--to actually cackle. The others were listening intently to the sobbing outside the cabin. Maybe they hadn't heard. 

Nan gestured with her head at the door. She was right. What were they waiting for? From the sound, the child was practically on their doorstep. Hannah could almost taste it. She grabbed her broom from the rack as they stepped into the night. 

The child was huddled under a tree, a beam of moonlight shining on her long golden hair.  She wore a white gown and no shoes. Her feet were filthy and the gown was streaked with mud. She looked up at them with big blue eyes full of tears and said, "I can't find my Mommy!"

Hannah concentrated a moment and cast a glamor over herself, something mom-ish she hoped, though not like her own mother, of course. That would send the child screaming into the night. "Oh, you poor dear. Come inside, honey. We'll get you some nice cocoa and see if we can get a message to your mother." The child hesitated. "Come on, love, you'll catch your death out here!" The girl stood on wobbly legs that still bulged at the ankles in rolls of baby fat. Hannah licked her lips. 

Once inside, the coven circled around the girl and began the incantation to bind her to the spot. The child looked around the room quickly, but there would be no exit for her. The women brought the circle in tighter.  Hannah's stomach growled in anticipation.

Hannah was the first to sense it when the change began to happen. She stopped in mid-syllable, eyes darting wildly to the door. The child smiled, and with the smallest gesture of her hand slammed the door closed from the center of the room.  There was a kind of bulge in the air around the girl and the glamor fell away from her. A tall thin woman with black eyes stood where the child had been. Eloise?

"Well met, Sisters," she said, her hair blowing in a wind that affected no other part of the room. "You worked so hard to save me, didn't you?" The accusation was clear. All of them bowed their heads.  "Well, I'm home now. No thanks to you." Eloise spread her arms wide and grinned, the grin you didn't want to be on the receiving end of.  And then cabin was alight in flame. 

Flash Fiction #6

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is:

Image courtesy of jenny downing via Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

 Here's my piece: Element of Surprise

Obviously she wasn't dragged. There were her footprints, long toed and slightly clawed. They moved steadily in a column. She was either a willing member of this party, or had decided not to resist.

They must have her flanked by the big girls--Thunderfeet. The footprints are wide and close set, pressed deeply into the sand.  He wasn't sure what they were, exactly, but they were tanks.  Hard to kill. He'd need some serious firepower and some luck. It would be like killing a polar bear. What doesn't kill it, pisses it off. And there were two. He missed Angelique. They used to do this sort of thing together. "You want the one on the left or the right?" Famous last words. May the Spirit Guard her Soul.

There must be a robot of some sort with them, too.  Something with a narrow track. That meant that they already knew he was coming. Downwind makes no difference to heat sensors and long range tracking. There would be no element of surprise.

Moreso than the robot, though, he was worried about the tiny holes in the sand. Those tracks came later and were intermixed among all the other tracks. There were a lot of them. Someone else was tracking them, too. He suspected their intentions were even less honorable than his. If it was who he thought it was, none of them were coming out of this alive.

If he could get her back, he was planning to sell her back to her family.  The Thunderfeet group probably wanted her for a breeding camp. It would kill her eventually, but she'd be treated well enough till then.  The Slashers probably didn't know or care who she was. They just liked to get at what was inside, to pull apart the soft things and study the pieces. 

Suddenly, he stopped. His entire body tensed. He whirled, just in time to dodge the first blade. The tracks must circle around up ahead. Damn he missed Angelique. No one had his back this time. Maybe he could surprise her in the afterworld.

Flash Fiction #5

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is:

Image courtesy of Rakesh Rocky via Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

Here's my piece:

Look at him up there. Really somebody now, huh? With his club patch and his shoulders all pushed back. The press loves him. They love to tell us how he grew up poor and worked his way through university cleaning swimming pools. A real rags to riches story. American dream shit.

They leave out the part when he was terrible at it.  Half the time he was late, the other half of the time he didn't show up at all.  They do the work when you're not at home, you know, so sometimes we thought he'd been then when he hadn't. A dirty pool doesn't show right away. 

We fired him when my little sister ended up with a bacterial infection that we traced to the swimming pool he was supposed to be maintaining for us.  I saw him sometime after that and threatened to kick his ass. He deserved it--him not doing his job sent my little sister to the hospital! But my friends tugged me away before I could get a good swing in. Probably a good thing. I'd have felt better then, but it would've opened a whole different can of worms.

His side of the story? I've heard it. It's not about race or class. I couldn't care less what color he is or where his family came from before they lived here. I hate him, but it's not because of any of that stuff. I just say that if you take on a job, you do it do the best of your ability. I don't really care that he can run fast or that he's good with the ball. To me, he's just the guy I fired. I hope he gets his ass kicked.

Flash Fiction Piece #4

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is: 

Image courtesy of TheDreamSky on Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

My piece:  Falling in Love

It had come to that moment.

It had been an excellent dinner full of light banter and flirtation. She'd been pleased to find that the step between "friend" and "date" hadn't been as awkward as she'd feared. She could still eat in front of him like a normal person and laugh at her lack of grace with chopsticks. He still ducked his head when he said something witty, just as he always had in all the years of their friendship. If anything, it was less awkward now. They could acknowledge the subtext.  It was the first time they had both been free at the same time.

After dinner, they decided to walk a bit. He offered his hand, and she took it, pleased at the way her fingers fit into his. His hands were very warm. Hers were usually cold. It was nice. It felt so easy. It scared her at little. Love had never been easy. She worried there would be a catch.

He suggested a direction leading to an overlook, a view of the city below. She wondered if he was staging a kiss. She hoped he was. She knew him to be a man of romantic gestures, a man who thinks about things like lighting and ambiance, who holds snapshots of memory in the deep pockets of his heart. She giggled a little nervously.

He began to swing her arm, like they were children skipping together. She laughed again and, looking up into his face felt a lurch, a tug somewhere in the depths of her. It was then that she tripped. He followed her a step later, stepping into the same hole. Somehow they didn't end up on the ground, but  standing holding each other's arms for support. The world stopped and they breathed together, still giddy.

If this had been a movie, they would have kissed there. But, this is real life, and they both felt suddenly shy, so they linked elbows and walked around the hole in the sidewalk together, to the overlook. Standing, looking at the lights of the city and its bridges below them, she slid her hand around his waist in an easy way, as if she'd always known how to fit their bodies together. "You think that's why they call it falling in love?" she quipped.  He laughed. And that was when he kissed her.

Flash Fiction Project: Piece #3

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is:


Image courtesy of radcarper on Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

My piece: Lucky Bastard

My brother has always been the lucky one. We went to the same schools and earned the same degrees, but who scored the prestigious job right out of college? We played on the same teams as teenagers, him two years ahead of me. I was the one to make all-state, but everyone remembers the homecoming game that he won with a last minute mid-court shot. It was true even when we were little kids and Mom would give us quarters for the gumball machine. My quarter would get stuck and I'd get nothing. His would spin and the machine would spit out an extra prize. 

It's not that I haven't had successes of my own. I own my own company. I won the John Fritz Medal--the bragging rights alone will keep me in jobs until I retire even if I never have another good idea.  I'm the one who got married to the right girl, stayed married and has three amazing kids. But I didn't get here by luck. I earned it. 

Even Max's worst luck is lucky. After his first marriage ended, he took a trip around the world to find himself and ended up in India, out of money and phoning our parents for a plane ride home.  It was the lowest point of his life, he says, even while spinning adventure tales for my daughters after Sunday dinner. On that trip, he saved the life of the millionaire who employs him now. This spring he's going to marry that millionaire's daughter.

So, when we took the fishing trip, I admit to being more than a little competitive. It was ridiculous really, how important it was to win. I wanted to catch the biggest fish, the most fish, to have the best story about the one that got away.  I'm surprised Max could stand to be with me I was such a pain in the ass. 

I was going on about something, bragging probably, when Max fell off the boat on the third day. He didn't resurface for one long second, then two, then three. I jumped in before it could be four. He had gotten tangled in a piece of netting, and was hanging upside down beside the boat, flailing. Lucky for him--I had my knife on my belt. 

When I told him later that he's always been a lucky bastard, he laughed. "You are my luck, Steve," he said. 

"So does that mean that I'm the bastard?" I asked. 

"Guess we'll have to ask Mom."

Flash Fiction Project: Piece #2

This week, I'm participating in the Flash Fiction Project founded by +Becket Moorby. Each day, there's an image for inspiration and we all write a piece. I'm excited about participating just for the promise that I will, indeed, write something every day. 

Today's image is: 

Image courtesy of Martin Burns on Flickr Creative Commons. (Attribution Link)

Here's my piece: 

It had been a very good party indeed. Ralph was a little wobbly, so Ted and Dan decided to walk him home. Ted promised to pick him up in the morning and get him back to his car.  

Ralph walked with his head down, watching his feet. He had not dressed for a cold snowy walk and regretted now his shiny shoes with the slick bottoms and the absence of a hat. Even a ballcap like Dan's would at least have kept the snowflakes from obscuring his glasses.  Ted's dorky anorak now seemed much less dorky. Ted wasn't freezing his ass off because his coat actually repelled the moisture.

But Ralph had hoped to make an impression on Jenn, who worked at his office. so, he'd worn the dressy coat an ex-girlfriend had told him made him look like he came from money. Not very warm. Not very practical. But quite nice looking. Of course, he hadn't even been wearing the jacket when he saw Jenn, so he probably could have worn his usual barn coat and been more comfortable now.

Between the alcohol and the snow, Ralph was finding the walk a little too 3-D for his taste. So he trusted to his friends to steer him true and let his thoughts wander back to Jenn. She was very pretty, but not in that untouchable, over the top way.  He hoped she wasn't out of his league. She'd looked lovely in the soft white sweater and grey skirt. He'd told her so and she had smiled. He wondered now if commenting too specifically on the sweater put off a gay vibe. But it seemed too pushy to comment on her body directly. It was so hard to make sure you made the right kind of impression.

 Ted grabbed Ralph's arm at the corner, stopping him from wandering out in front of delivery truck that was taking the corner a little too tightly. They were just across the street from his apartment now. 

Ralph thanked his friends and turned to salute them after he got the door unlocked. He had just closed the door behind him when his cell phone rang.  "Hello? Oh! Hello, Jenn!" 

Yes, it had been a very good party, indeed.