Flash Fic May

So...I forgot to post this. Oops. 60 hours to write a 2k word story using the words "Anonymity, Drift, and Radar, and of course the photo on the right of this text.

 

Last Night

December 21st, 2012
11:47 p.m.

When the wind howled outside, drowning out the Christmas music coming out of his hand-crank emergency radio, Elliot wrapped his dirty blanket more tightly around himself and stared out the window. Even by the light of his sputtering candles he could see that the snow that had been steadily falling all night had begun to creep up to the midpoint of his windows. If the windows he was looking out of hadn't belonged to the house's second story, this might not have seen so strange.

Elliot had been forced to abandon the ground floor months earlier, around the time when his house's southward drift had caught the public eye and a popular photo of his abode made the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, dispelling the soothing fog of anonymity that generally surrounded someone as mousey and boring as Elliot was. Now people passing by stared in, not only because a house slowly sinking into the earth was such an unusual sight, but because they were eager to see the man who stubbornly refused to abandon the property.

One blog he'd read, before the power and gas companies both dropped him as a customer on the grounds that leaving the power or gas on would be inviting fire, compared him to the Titanic's captain, a man who had gone down with his ship a full century earlier. Other people were not shy about speculating what reason Elliot might have to stay in his obviously doomed house, and those who did not suspect an undiagnosed mental illness tended towards pity: They thought of him as a victim of circumstance, as a man who literally had nowhere else to go.

Although Elliot preferred the pity to reticule, the way one might prefer moldy bread to moldy meat, he also felt an overwhelming reciprocal pity for both those who in their way supported him and his detractors too. None of them had any sense of the true reason he refused to leave his house no matter how low it sank into the ground, and tomorrow morning would find them all in a world of hurt and pain if indeed it found any of them at all.

Back before his life had begun to mostly consist of reading and trying to find new ways of jazzing up foods that came out of boxes cold, Elliot had been a scholar. No one peering in the windows and catching sight of a pale stubbled face or shoulders wrapped in a plaid blanket would believe that the body parts they could barely make out in the house's scant light belonged to a man who held a PhD In world history.

He had never been the life of a party, not even amongst his equally bookish peers, but Elliot had been respectable once, if not well-liked. His colleagues occasionally came to him with questions, and his students always gave end of the semester reviews that indicated that he was an apt if not exciting educator. His life had been normal if a little predictable and more than a little lonely.

All that had changed the December before when a website that tried to pass itself off as a news source rather than the entertainment gig it was ran an article about the end of the Mayan calendar. Reading it, Elliot had first laughingly dismissed it, but it got under his skin. Late that same night he'd found himself getting out of bed and pawing through his books, looking for references to the ancient civilization that had been wiped out of existence long before their calendar predicted they'd meet their end.

He'd stayed up all night, then, and at six had been so red-eyed that he'd barely been able to make out the numbers on his phone when he dialed to call in for what was at that moment an almost unheard of sick day. But other days soon followed as he became obsessed with studying the Mayans and became more convinced that the popular conceit that another calendar would have followed had they not been the victims of genocide was a candy coating dipped onto the truth by academics too scared to admit that a population of people they considered charmingly primitive had had the right idea.

Eventually Elliot's obsession had predictable results, and the university included his position amongst those that they axed in the name of cost saving methods. If he'd secured tenure they wouldn't have been able to be so easily rid of him, but he'd only been teaching for a handful of years, so the union claimed that their hands were tied. Not that he'd demanded an explanation or assistance: Elliot hadn't been bothered by his dismissal because he wanted the extra time to study, anyway.

As soon as he'd been released from his duties at the end of the spring semester, Elliot began to devote most of his waking hours to trying to figure out how the Mayans had made their prediction so many centuries earlier. By then he was no longer remotely skeptical about the veracity of their prediction. Instead he just wanted to know how they had figured out that the world was coming to an end in 2012.

Because the end of everything was a forgone conclusion as far as he was concerned, Elliot was not dismayed in late May when a mailman dropping of a new book he'd ordered pointed out that the house seemed to have shifted. He'd merely agreed with the man that it did seem to be a few inches shorter than it ought to be, and had taken his new book inside to peruse.

As the months passed, two things happened: Elliot found himself increasingly obsessive about what he considered his "work" and the house continued its downward drift, much like a quicksand victim panicking in the old black and white adventure films Elliot's father had been obsessed with before lung cancer carried him, and Elliot's mother too, away.

Elliot had always been rather shy, so he had faced a moral quandary when it had become clear to him that the world was coming to an end: was it his moral duty to inform others that some event (even in December he was still undecided as to what he thought it would be) would destroy the world? Being a harbinger of doom and dismay was hardly the sort of thing a man like him took on willingly, after all. A nagging sense of duty propelled him to at least try, so whenever some concerned soul came to talk to him about the sad state of his ever-sinking house, he earnestly explained that a house slowly being swallowed by the Earth's gapping maw was the least of his problems, and theirs too.

To say that people were not receptive of his warning would be a gigantic understatement and after a couple of worried people tried to suggest he get therapy, he decided that he better try to avoid being on the radar of the mental health network and keep the knowledge to himself. In the end warning people didn't seem to serve much of a purpose anyway. What could people do with the information? It wasn't as though we'd gotten around to colonizing mars, so there was no option but to stay and die.

In what felt like a tacit agreement, people decided they were quit of him too when he gave up on them. If he'd been more of a social being the cutting of all ties would have hurt more, but as it was it remained a manageable if dull and nagging ache. There was really nothing left for him to offer people, so he allowed them their illusions, let them plan for Christmas, for New Years, for next summer with just a sad knowing smile. It might have been a comfort to reach out to someone, but he couldn't. Not any more. Not knowing what he did.

Despite his acceptance of this self-imposed isolation, realizing that telling people about the coming danger would change nothing left Elliot in a permanent state of despair. Despite using a considerable amount of his savings, none of the books he devoured had a solid idea of what would end it all, so it wasn't like he could warn the government and encourage someone, anyone, to take action against whatever was going to kill them all. By Halloween he was swathed in a sense of nihilism that was so thorough Nietzsche would have been envious. The people who pitied him didn't realize that he could have left at any time but simply failed to see what the point of leaving would have been. He might have been more comfortable elsewhere, but no safer.

Truly, the only thing that kept him from climbing through a window and heading to a gun store was the perverse need to see it through to the end. He wanted to see that he was right. It was wrong and terrible to feel that way, but he couldn't help it any more than a James Bond villain could help being evil.

As the days slide towards the inevitable, Elliot found himself increasingly inert. He endured the lights going out, the water stopping when the house's movement ruptured and severed its connection to the well in the backyard. His brain learned to become indifferent to his belly's insistent cries and he lost fifty pounds that hadn't been extra weight on his fame. Nothing really mattered except bearing witness to the inevitable because he'd come to realize that that was his role. Maybe he ought to have taken fiddle lessons back when he still bothered interacting with others.

Hours wore on during the night of December 21st and Elliot found himself becoming annoyed about the snow. It reduced visibility and was piling too high in the windows to let him continue his vigil with a clear line of sight. Eventually he decided that he would need to go down to the basement and find a snow shovel even if the thought of going so far underground made him break out into a cold sweat.

The trek to the basement had been scary and difficult with a feeling of suffocation as he went down into the parts of the house already entombed, and he'd been overwhelmed with relief when held returned to what was still higher ground. His next move was to pull on a coat that seldom left his sight lately before opening a window and squirming through it.

Despite the coat cold gnawed as his bones and he found himself repeating a bit of doggerel about the world ending in ice or fire as he worked to clear the snow from in front of the windows. It took a long time before he was satisfied and pushed his aching body back through the window, dragging snow in with him. At least he wouldn't have to worry about a mess he thought, because the end would be coming any time now.

Out of habit his eyes sought out his clock. The face read 12:43 a.m. in its bright red font. His watch agreed that the battery-operated clock told the truth.

Elliot looked around his floundering house and began to sob in utter despair.


"How could you  know what I need when I'm the last thing on your mind?" - Trapt, Disconnected

Flash Fic January

First flash fic contest of 2012!

60 hours to write a story of no more than 2000 words using the photo to the left and the words "Drag," "Corporate" and "Invert."

I looked at this beautiful photo and immediately, after deciding that Harry Potter fanfic was unlikely with this group, thought that there would definitely be time travel stories, and maybe some steampunk. Well, no steampunk so far, and there are fewer stories involving time travel than I'd guessed, but someone did make a Harry Potter reference :)

I'll let you decide the genre of my story. I think it's a hybrid of two, personally.

 House of Regret

It looks like a temporary mausoleum, I thought as I reached out to touch the dark weathered stones that were not interrupted by even a single window. I'd never been there before, but I knew it wasn't a temporary anything: this building had stood on the outskirts of our village for hundreds of years. No one remembered who had built it, but we all knew why.

Glancing back over my shoulder, I could just barely see the coffin I'd begged be dragged up here. It couldn't, wouldn't, work if the dead wasn't near. The dead. My brain tried to skitter away from the thought of Jesse being dead, but I knew he was there in that box, waiting for me to rescue him.
No one could understand why I was willing to enter the House of Regret... they didn't know my crushing guilt. If he hadn't snuck out after dark to see me, he wouldn't be dead.

There hadn't been a clear cause of death. Instead his body had been found inverted in the crotch of a tree, alabaster pale, and limp like the discarded dolls still littering the back of my closet. Of course, there were suspicions about what had killed him, and that's why I was standing in front of an iron ring, trying to will my fingers to grasp it and open the door.

The villagers wanted to burn his body as a precaution against the evils their overheated minds conjured up, but he'd told me twice over the past few years that he would rather be wormfood than given a cradle of ash. I couldn't let that happen, so I told people I'd come here and bring him back. Everyone said "Elizabeth don't" but how could I listen to them when Jesse had been so fearful of flames?

People visited the House of Regret only once or twice a generation, and my mother swore that no one had since her grandparents were children. This was meant to be a seed of doubt, a worry that the magic wouldn't work any more, but I owed him. She couldn't understand that, none of them could, but I owed him.

Enough delay. I pulled the door open and it moved with a hideous groan. There were no lights of course. Never had been. None were needed. Once I stepped over the threshold, I pulled the door closed behind me and mourned the passing of daylight as it shrank down to a thin line, then disappeared.

I stood there waiting, shivering in the damp. It would have been pointless to worry about what sort of things might have been in there with me, those that skittered or crawled, because what I'd see when I could see again would be far far worse. Be brave, I counseled myself. Once I get through and reach the clock, I can turn it all back.

That was the point: face your fear and you gain the power to turn back time; not all the way, just a little, just enough. Or so the theory went. Everyone claimed to know someone who had tried it, and more someones who had failed. But they could never back their claims and give them a face, an actual body to ask questions of. It hardly seemed possible given that so many people knew I'd come here, but maybe Mom's insistence was true and no one had been there for ages.

"What do you regret the most?"

I whipped my head around, looking for the source, but that was ridiculous. There was nothing to see. And I knew, knew, that the voice hadn't come out of a throat.

Did I say it aloud, or did I just think it? I wondered, wishing that I'd asked someone that before walking up here. Maybe I didn't even have to think about it I decided as the room began to lose some of its dampness.

Several yards away a pinprick of light began to grow, and I wrapped my arms around myself. When the confusion of lights and images before me began to corporate into a familiar scene, I had to fight a keening that desperately wanted to be voiced. Somehow, when I thought about regrets in the days since Jesse had been found, this wasn't what had come to mind. But it should have.

Our schoolyard. The school had held only the fifteen of us because the hard years during our earliest childhoods had stolen many of our siblings from their cribs, if families had dared to have babies at all. Once there had been two teachers, teaching in separate classrooms, but now there was one and the other room was boarded to reduce heating costs.

While I watched, little Betsy came into view, trailing Jesse and Aaron. I'd been eight, Jesse ten, and Aaron was a great big boy of fifteen. Aaron had once been the oldest of four but was now an only child, which is why he tolerated the little kids' hero-worship. Older than him now, I realized that he missed his siblings, but hadn't then. Not that awful then.

We'd had pails in our hands, and had been charged with picking berries for snack time. The teacher trusted Aaron to keep an eye on us, and he took this duty fairly seriously. But then he had to pee.

"I've uh, gotta go," he'd told us, cheeks warm. "Stay here, okay? I'll be right back."

"Okay."

For a moment we'd watched in interest as he searched for a tree to duck behind, but we soon lost interest. Instead Jesse pointed at a tree. "Look at that."

"What about it?"  I'd asked, distracted by the thought that life would be easier if I could pee outside too.

"We should climb it."

"Aaron said to stay here," I reminded Jesse.

"And we wouldn't be going anywhere," he insisted. "The tree is right here."

This seemed logical enough, so I began to follow him as he climbed the low branches. "Not so fast," I complained, my dress slowing me down. Life would also be easier in trousers, I decided fiercely. Boys had all the luck.

Jesse ignored me, and I struggled to keep up. I was so focused on not being left behind that I was hardly aware that we'd climbed so high. But when a branch snagged my dress and unbalanced me, I was made aware of it.

The ground met me with a rattling thump and I screamed. Jesse was so startled that he almost fell out right after me, but managed not to somehow.

Aaron must have heard my yell because he came running, his trousers still halfway unbuttoned. He blamed Jesse, not me, but I protested saying that he hadn't forced me to climb the tree.

When they tried to get me to stand, I couldn't. So Aaron picked me up and carried me back, yelling at Jesse the whole way.

I expected there to be trouble when we reached the schoolyard, but not the way it happened. Our teacher looked at Aaron carrying me, and at his flapping trousers, and whispered to one of the big girls who took of running. I didn't know then, but she'd sent the girl for the sheriff.

When the sheriff came, he took Aaron aside and spoke sharply to him. From where I'd been set to wait for the doctor, all I could see was the sheriff's angry face, and Aaron shaking his head. Jesse had gotten close enough to hear and I grabbed his hand when he walked by me. "What's going on?"

Jesse's face turned red. Whispering, he said, "Teacher and him think that Aaron did... something... to you."

"Did something?" I repeated, uncertain.

"You know," Jesse mumbled.

I didn't, so I shrugged. "Tell him Aaron didn't."

"Can't."

"Why??"

"Aaron's in trouble, not us. We tell the sheriff what happened, we'll get into trouble too. This is better."

"No it's not," I insisted.

Jesse pinched me. "Yes, it is."

As much as I liked Aaron, I liked Jesse more, so I held my tongue and that might be why we'd grown up as thick as thieves and had become more once we were grown. Neither of us said anything. Even when the sheriff led Aaron away just after Doc Addams arrived to set my broken leg. Even when Aaron and his parents were driven from the village. Even when villagers set their empty house to fire so they daren't move back.

The last image before me was one of people bathed in firelight, shouting as they threw burning brands through that house's windows.

I moaned as the scene faded into nothing, leaving me in the chilled damp again. "Now what?" I asked the dark.

"Amends."

Amends? I didn't even know where to start. It had been nearly a decade since I'd last seen any member of Aaron's family. "I will," I promised aloud, though inside I doubted I would succeed. How could I?

My promise must have been sincere enough because once again the darkness was incomplete. Bracing myself, I looked, worried to see another memory given form, but that's not what I saw at all.

The new light was a cool green in an improbable clearing, and there was a single sapling planted there. From one of its spindly branches hung the prize: a small clock suspended from a chain. While beautiful in its own way, it hardly seemed any more special than any of the clocks bartered in neighboring villages.

I ran towards it, scared that the light would fade before I reached it, but it didn't. My fingers trembled as I reached for the clock, and I half expected for my hand to close upon nothing, but it was a chilly solid weight in my palm.

"Ring the bell once for each day," I whispered to myself, studying the small bell attached to it.

Four thin peals later, I let the clock go, watching it swing for a moment.

And then I felt a force at my back, pushing me out. I tried to dig in my heels, hoping I'd see a sign that it had worked before I was expelled, but resistance was futile. I was nearly flung out of the building, and found myself stumbling outside, trying hard not to fall.

To my amazement, it was night. Inside I'd lost all sense of time. Hours must have passed.

When I heard branches snap, I froze. The logical conclusion was that it was someone from the village had come to see what had become of me, but that didn't necessarily mean I'd see a friendly face. Over the years many people have muttered about how we should tear this place down because it was unnatural, and somehow I was sure that they visited it more often than people who held it in reverence.

Moonlight filtered out most colors, but the person I saw was familiar enough. The night bleached him pale, but his dark curls and dancing eyes were the same.

"Jesse?" I squeaked.

"Have you seen Aaron?" he asked.

"Aaron?" Maybe this place had brought Aaron so I could apologize. We both could, now.

"He came to see me a few days ago," Jesse continued. "We talked about the past. He wants to see you too."

"Oh. I need to speak to him, and I will," I promised. "Jesse, I thought you were dead!" Such a stupid comment. It had worked. I'd brought him back.

"Oh, Elizabeth," he murmured, gathering me in his cool arms just before twin dots of fire burned my neck. "I am."
 The End


"You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness, like resignation to the end, always the end" - Gotye, Someone That I Used to Know

Flash Fic October

This story came to me almost all at once. I hope it makes sense to readers too! As usual the stories must be no more than 2000 words, and they have a photo and three words to "inspire" the stories, which must be written within sixty hours. (I have, oh, 57 to spare, so I have time to revise if necessary.  

Anyway, the words are "Album", "Bizarre" and "Perspiring" and as usual too any form of the words are acceptable. The photo is apparently of some sort of wishing icon in Europe, and that's what ALL of the stories so far are about, so voting will probably be fiece considering how pointed the photo part of the prompt is.  Ready?

The Judas Tree

 

"We can't," he said, voice throaty and strangled.

 

Ignoring his protest, she stroked his thigh, making him groan. Clarissa knew that was too close to the full moon to be trying to seduce Chase this way, but a naughty little part of her wondered. What would it would feel like if his bones began to lengthen and he started to sprout fur, to change while insi-

I snapped the book shut with a sigh. The premise had seemed so promising when I read the summary in the bookstore, and I'd thought it'd be just the thing to lift me out of my sour mood. I mean, how could werewolf themed erotica not yank you out of reality? But then, the werewolf just had to be named Chase.

Of course the book was a failure, Chase was my problem in the first place. God damn Chase.

I'd had a crush on him since the 8th grade, and he finally noticed me in 11th. We went to homecoming together, and it felt like all my dreams were coming true. The feeling didn't last, though, because two weeks later, just days after I'd printed out pictures of Homecoming for my photo album, he was caught with Alison McCreary at Ben Long's party.

 

If he'd only kissed her I might have forgiven him. But they weren't kissing. Even that literary whore Clarissa would have blushed if she'd seen what I'd walked in on.

Chase tried to apologize later, but I didn't want to hear it. I mean, really, what could you say to excuse yourself from accidentally forgetting you were dating someone and screwing another girl at a party? He was now dating her, of course.

After letting myself stew over it for a week or so, I tried to find distractions from it all. In so many different ways, really. None of them worked, though, because I'd almost get to a happy place and then the memory of seeing Alison under him at the party would surface and blot everything else out. Reading urban fantasy porn as escapism was attempt number 67. Number one had been sending that page of my album through Dad's paper shredder.

Maybe it was because it was Halloween, but after the werewolf story, I knew what I had to do. If I couldn't be happy with Chase, Alison damn well wasn't going to be either. Going back inside, full of the pleasant fire of determination, I gathered up my supplies and jumped on my bike.

I knew exactly where I was headed, and I should have done it a week ago, just like Kenna and Hunter told me to. Back when they made the suggestion I thought I was a bigger person than that, but it turned out that I wasn't above revenge after all. A visit to the Judas tree was the answer to my problem.

~*~*~*~

 

 

From a distance the first thing you noticed about the Judas tree was the stump next to the trunk. Part of the tree, actually. Once the tree had been a set of Siamese twins, but one of the trunks had gotten diseased, so someone had hacked the sick half away to save the rest over a hundred years ago. The stump was no mere humble reminder of a tree's better days, though. It had a sinister look to it now, and the coins sticking out of it resembled nothing so much as the raised scales of some prehistoric beached sea creature. It was only as you walk towards it that you noticed that the scales were in fact metal, coins. Malicious offerings.

 

 

There were always thirty coins. From what I had been told, and in fact could see on the tree itself, more than thirty people had availed themselves of the Judas tree's dark breakup magic, but if someone took the time to count the coins, there were always thirty. People said that as time went on some of the coins worked themselves deeper into the stump, which was probably true. But how that meant only thirty were visible at a time, I couldn't tell you.

 

 

The stump was an ugly thing, when you came right down to it. The living part of the tree on the other hand, was much more lovely. In bloom it had rich pink flowers, but now in October it was bare. People didn't come to the tree to admire the flowers, though. No, it was the bark that was of interest: it held the name of dozens of lovers. Many of the names were crudely carved, but some of the names had a scrolling ornate look to them, as if they had been placed there with a great deal of care. Some of the pairs of names were surrounded by hearts that were quite ironic.

 

 

The irony, of course, was that every pair names on the tree represented a couple who did not stay together, which was the tree's spiteful gift to the lovelorn. In my high school, people like to tease couples and tell them that they would they did something to piss the teaser off. A lot of people acted like the threat was hollow, but deep down, I think most people did truly fear that they might come upon the tree and see their name there.

 

 

And it wasn't just students, some of the names had been carved by vindictive ex wives, ex-husbands, ex-somethings, stalkers, and shy adults still too cowardly to ever do more than long for the object of their affections to suddenly become available.

As the legend went, you had to do two things: the first was, with malice in your heart, carve the names of soon to be doomed lovers into the bark. The second was to pound a coin into the stump beside the tree as an offering.

When I slipped the coin out of my pocket, it shone in the autumn light, more silvery than it had looked when I'd scooped it off my dresser. No one told me which order you did things, so I took my hammer out and pounded it into the stump. I could almost swear that another coin sank from view while I worked, but it might have been the sun in my eyes playing tricks.

That done, I picked up the knife my brother had given me before he left for college, and examined the tree. I found a bare spot just barely within reach, and began to carve the C first. By the time I was done I was perspiring, and my back and arms ached from having spent that much time reaching up. Chase and Alison's names were neither the neatest or messiest there, and I left with a bitter lightness in my step, satisfied that I'd done the only thing I could to get revenge.

~*~*~*~

The next morning seemed like any other, at least until I got to school. The hallways hummed with whispers, and I felt happy when I finally heard someone say "Alison." I looked forward to someone blurting out the details of their break up.

But it wasn't to be.

Instead, as I slid into my seat during first period, I noticed that Mrs. Creek looked like she was barely holding back tears. As soon as the last person sat, she sighed and addressed us. "I'm afraid that there was an accident last night. Chase Holt and Alison McCreary were in a car wreck-"

She didn't get any farther than that before someone else who hadn't known about the accident already asked her if they were okay. She shook her head slowly. "They think Chase will be okay, just a few broken bones, but Alison is in Intensive Care. Things...they don't look good."

I sat in class, and wondered if how terrible a person I was showed on my skin. It was all my fault, all because I'd decided that they needed to break up too. Had I been too full of malice when I carved the names? Was the coin supposed to have come afterwards and I'd somehow bizarrely intensified the spell by doing things in the wrong order? That hardly seemed possible. I couldn't be the only one to give the coin first, and no one had ever been hurt, physically anyway, before.

By the end of the day my guilt was threatening to swallow me whole: after lunch Alison's brother had been pulled out of class to go to the hospital "just in case."

We all knew in case of what.

**

I felt more than half-crazy with remorse by the time I got home. But I had a plan. I was going to fix everything. My parents didn't even know I'd gotten home before I'd darted into the basement for my bag, and left again.

The tree seemed to glower at me in the distance as I pedaled up to it. Had anyone else ever come to take back their misdeed? I thought not, but I had to try. Chase and Alison didn't deserve what I'd done. No one deserved that.

"I'm, um, I've changed my mind," I muttered, not really feeling strange to be talking to a tree.

If it had been a fairytale, the stump would have immediately spit out the coin, and the broken bark smoothed over. But it wasn't, so nothing happened.

"I'm calling it off, okay?" I asked, looking down at the stump. I thought I saw my coin, and tried to pull it out. It didn't budge.

This wasn't supposed to be happening. I poked at the coin with the tip of the knife, and barely felt it as the sharp edges of another one bit into my skin.

"I'm sorry!" I wailed, tears streaming down my face. "I didn't mean it!"

Looking at the tree, leaning over the remains of its twin, I think I finally understood what made people so sure that its curse would work: it was forever separated from its other half, and looked so unhappy. Why wouldn't it inflict that on others?

I shook my head, strangely convinced that the tree was merely trying to distract me from my task. Determined anew, my fingers scrabble against the stump, and I couldn't pry the coin back out. If it was even the right coin. The coin wasn't going to come out, I was pretty sure of it. So I turned to the tree's trunk instead.

Frenzied, I attacked the bark where I’d so happily carved the day before, using my knife to score over Chase and Alison's names again and again. Eventually the knife slipped and gashed my thumb under where that other coin had already cut it. I ignored the pain until the slipperiness of my blood made it too hard to hold the knife any longer. The bark was a smeared mess of lines and a red wetness I didn't want to think about. Maybe it was a good thing, though, a blood offering to show I was serious instead of a mere quarter.

When the knife fell from my aching fingers, I was startled to see that the cuts on my thumb and palm looked almost the same as the C I'd carved the day before. That had to mean something.

By the time I got home, my sweater was red to the elbow, and my mother screamed. I didn't whimper or cry out once on the way to the e.r., though, because I was gone on a feeling of serenity. I'd erased my mistake, and everything would be okay.

~*~*~*~

Three Days Later

It took seventeen stitches to close my wound, and all I could think about was how white the bandage looked on my hand as I stood in the cemetery during Alison's funeral. It should have been dirty, dirty to match the new darkness in my heavy heart.

The End

"Got my hands full, so full of trouble. There's something evil when it's double" - Starflyer59, Something Evil

Flash fiction July

A story of no more than 2000 words that must incorporate the photo to the left and the words "Vie", "Carton" and "Plumb." IMHO the last is the hardest because 98% of the time I hear that word it's in reference to the green spinny thing above sims' heads.

We had 60 hours to write our stories as usual, and again this tied for second. Why must first be so elusive?

Sugar-Free

Smuttynose Island had a beer company named after it, and felt eons away as I piloted a rented boat towards it. By the time I reached the shore, the fading daylight had tinted the water the color of cheap cola. I sighed at the thought: the whole point of the trip was to escape the excesses of modern life that followed me, over fifty pounds worth of it since college.

Bringing the boat against the dock, I was pleased that it was whole. The rental guy had me imagining planks missing or ready to give way under my weight, though my aunt probably would have mentioned it before suggesting I stay there for the summer. The guy might have just been yanking my chain, but his alarm at learning my destination had seemed genuine. "What are you going out there alone for?" he'd asked. "Don't you know that's a murder house?"

I had known that; Grandma kept a macabre scrapbook of articles about our most famous dead relative and I'd poured over it as a child. "She wasn't a beauty, Jenna, neither of them girls were but they didn't deserve to die like that," Grandma, finger hovering over the photo of slain Anethe, would say every time she caught me. Maybe it was meant to be comforting, that notion that even ugly people shouldn't be murdered, but I figured she was trying to nicely say I was homely too.

Sighing, I tried to shake off the old insecurities, and checked to make sure the anchor chain was sound. I never did answer the rental guy's first question. He probably would've laughed to hear that I was hoping that shutting myself away from easily accessible supermarkets and bakeries would be the kick in the pants, the oversize pants, I needed to get serious about dieting.

Docking the boat myself wasn't easy, but I managed. The house was visible from the shore and it wasn't a beauty either. Aunt Katherine had someone out to fix it up, twice, but the repairs were never quite finished, and the worn building advertised its age and state of neglect. I trudged up the path, hoping that the interior of the little building would be nicer.

It wasn't. Opening the door, I could imagine Katherine saying: "Give it a chance, Jenna. You said that life has gone off plumb for you. Maybe this will help." Maybe it would. I could hardly see myself baking in that kitchen - the batter would be as much dust as flour.

At least there was electricity. Katherine might be fond of hoop earrings, gauzy skirts, and prattle about chakras, but even she didn't believe in denying oneself the comforts of modern technology. How else would she have sold power crystals on eBay?

Even with electricity, I found myself clumsily tripping over carton of small tools that someone had left on the bathroom floor. Clearly it belonged to one of the unreliable workmen because the new toilet showed evidence of work in there. Fortunately, the vanity I braced myself against to keep from tumbling into the ancient tub was sturdy.

I hadn't thought to bring a duster, so I found a rag and set about trying to smooth the dust off various surfaces. It was probably a futile effort without a vacuum cleaner, but the burst of activity helped keep my mind off of cake and other forbidden delights. Even without sweets there to actively vie for my attention, my thoughts kept circling back to the fact that I would have gladly killed the rental guy for a Snickers bar.

**

Everyone I trusted enough to ask about weight loss had told me that the longer you go without sugar, the weaker the cravings become. It only took me three days before I realized that none of these people had actually ever tried their own advice. Having nothing sweet in the house drove me to distraction and I couldn't even bake anything. Fruit just wasn't cutting it, and I had bought more of that with me than just about anything else. Horny men thought about sex less often than I craved carbs.

Eventually I found myself looking up sugar detoxification, hoping that webMD might have a page on adverse reactions because I was beginning to imagine suffering tremors or hallucinating a chorus line of Hostess baked goods. A websearch revealed that no one, at least not with the initials DR after their name, had ever seriously researched the matter. It didn't help me much but at least I didn't have to worry about a pie visiting me with rattling chains.

By the morning of the fourth day, I realized that my grand plan had a fatal flaw. I had only thought of how stranding myself on a tiny, otherwise uninhabited island would force me to behave myself, but I hadn't given any thought to what I would do instead of snack. An amateur historian might have combed the property for clues about the semi-unsolved crime, but I had spent only a short while exploring the two outbuildings before deciding that anything of value had probably been eaten by time, so that was no way to occupy myself. The classic hobby, writing the great American novel, was right out because I was as distractible as a kindergartner.

I could clean though, so I pawed through my purse, hoping to find a pen and paper for a list. Quite unexpectedly, my hand found half of a Kit Kat bar. Without even thinking about it, I unwrapped it, and popped it in my mouth. Bliss.

I was still savoring the taste of chocolate when I heard an explosion behind me. Whipping around, I saw that a canister of flour, one that had probably seen the Eisenhower administration, had dashed itself on floor. I stared at the broken shards in the powdery drift, and wondered how it had happened...at least, until I remembered the open window. Sighing, I picked up the biggest pieces, and added a new dustpan to my list of cleaning supplies.

**

Later, as I headed back to the mainland, I was thankful yet again that I'd done a lot of boating as a kid. At least I could escape if someone showed up with an axe, I thought morbidly. It must have been terrible, for the two women who died, and the one who didn't, to have been trapped in that house when someone came.

The mainland hardware store had everything on my list, though I knew that I was being screwed over on prices: Katherine told me flat out that prices got raised in May so summer tourists could be fleeced. After that, I popped into the grocery store, intending only to buy some bread for the seagulls. Without quite thinking about it, I found myself leaving the store with a box of doughnuts and break-away cookie dough too.

On the way back I rationalized it. It has been four days, not counting the chocolate, since I had indulged in sweets. Everyone said that the key to a successful diet was to not deny yourself, so I was just following good advice.

**

"It's good advice," I muttered as I entered the house. Could houses be disappointed in you, I wondered idly. Of course not. Going sugar-free really was making me lose my mind if I was personifying the house so someone could be disdainful about my purchases.

The strangest thing happened when I put the cookie dough away: the refrigerator shuddered, bouncing my endless supply of fruit. I stared at it and made a mental note to check if there'd been an earthquake. People think the northeast doesn't get any. It does, just too small to be noteworthy.

I got the donuts put away without incident, but I thought I saw the cabinet door move a little out of the corner of my eye. It was just nerves, I decided.

Truth be told, I was a little disappointed in myself for those thoughtless purchases, so I took the L-Glutamine a friend swore by, and tried very hard not to crave anything but sleep. I made it a whole night without caving in, and it felt like a victory.

**

The victory only lasted until three, when I found myself being drawn to the fridge like a redneck in an alien tractor beam. I was only going to eat one dough blob, not even giving myself the satisfaction of warm cookies.

Next thing I knew, I was opening the dough, and a flicker of movement froze me. For a second I'd been sure someone had been staring at me, but no one was there. I slammed the fridge shut, stuffed the dough in my mouth, and dashed back to bed. The house's history was getting to me, that's all.

**

The house suffered another tremor as I gathered bread and donuts and headed outside. Maybe it was built on a small faultline. I promised myself to ask Katherine about it later.

As soon as they saw me, seagulls gathered along the shore and I spent a while tearing bread into pieces and tossing it to them, only slightly bothered that their hungry cries sounded like lost toddlers. Some were more daring than others, and I found myself laughing at their antics between bites of donut.

But only until something horrifying happened. A hand made of water surged out of the ocean and smacked away everything I was holding. I shrieked and jumped back, fully expecting that a closer look would provide a logical explanation.

What I saw was watery fingers waggling disapprovingly at the food scattered on the ground. The seagulls didn't mind and dove for what I'd dropped. But me? I ran screaming all the way back to the house.

**

My heart pounded as I slammed the door behind me. If I thought the house would provide sanctuary, I was wrong. Something sticky immediately fell on my head, and I felt for it, hand trembling, only to discover cookie dough. Before I quite knew it, several more unseen assaults were launched, like someone was firing the dough at me from a paintball gun.

In the kitchen donuts hung in mid-air until they noticed me, then they flew at me, leaving powder all over me as I ran away. I stopped only long enough to grab my phone before shutting myself into the cellar.

**

Somehow, there was a signal. "Aunt Katherine," I cried shakily when she answered. "I think the house is haunted."

"Why, dear?"

"This is going to sound crazy, but every time I eat something sweet, weird stuff happens."

I'm not sure what I expected her reaction to be, but laughter wasn't it. "Of course it does."

"What?" I asked blankly.

"I suggested you stay there for a reason, Jenna."

"What reason?"

"Anethe hated sugar. She wouldn't allow it in the house. So..."

"You're saying that I'm being haunted by a sugar-hating ghost?" My voice rose at the end.

"I think so. Both those workmen who skipped out on me, they complained about rattling and stuff moving while they finish their lunches. So it only stood to reason-"

I hung up on her.

**

You probably think I jumped back in the boat and left immediately, but you'd be wrong. I stayed as long as I'd planned before everything weird happened.

I needed help with my sugar addiction, and Anethe was more than willing to provide it. I can't think of a better way to stay in line than knowing that a sugar-hating specter is ready to pounce poltergeist-style, can you?

Anethe and I made our peace - with just a few more sweet slipups - and I left the last week of August feeling better about myself than ages. When people ask my weight loss secret, I'd just smile and say I got some help from an old busybody relative who helped me break my bad habits.

The End

P.S. the murders really did happen, late in the 1800s. Google "Smuttynose Murders" for more info.


"Everyone has respect to uphold, you lost mine when you screwed me over tenfold." - Captain Phoenix, Pistols & Hearts  buy 

Flash fiction May

I've been meaning to upload this story for a couple of weeks, but...even if I told you how much of my free time has been spent gardening, would you believe me?

Anyway...

We had 60 hours to write a 2000 word or less story, use the words "Phrase," "Detract," & "Thankfully," and draw inspiration from this picture.

I barely finished on time and wrestled with whether I should try to write a story when my muse wasn't being cooperative. I guess it turned out okay all things considered.

Spring Break

The first time it'd been a warthog, and Devin Green had gotten away with it. Later on things got more complicated, but right at the beginning, it had started out almost consequence-free...

~*~*~

Despite the fact that Devin was dutifully packing his duffel bag for spring break, it didn't stop him from making a last ditch effort at avoiding the trip. As soon as his mother poked her head into the room to check on his progress, he went on the attack. "I don't want to go, Mom. Don't make me."

Ellen Green sighed and looked towards the ceiling, as if she could find words of wisdom written up there. "You know you have to, Dev. You spending school breaks with your father is written into the custody agreement."

"So? Am I gonna go to jail if I miss a spring break with Dad?" Devin asked irritably.

He thought he'd been a pretty good sport about things up until now, but this year, when he and his friends were actually old enough to do something interesting over break, his plea to stay home had been met with a resounding no. It wasn't fair, he'd been packing up to wander all over creation with his father every spring since he was seven and he was sick of it.

"No one would send a fifteen-year-old to jail for missing spring break-" Ellen started to say, only to have her son cut her off.

"Well, would you go to jail then? For being a bad custodial parent?" Devin asked, getting more wound up.

"No-"

"Then why do I have to go? It isn't fair. You have an affair after Dad ditches you for work, and I'm the one who spends the next eleventy-seven years paying for it every spring and summer. Where's the justice in that?!"

"Devin!" Ellen's eyes flashed dangerously, and Devin knew that he'd pushed her too far. "You're going and that's the end of it."

"Fine. Whatever. I'm going to go to college in Australia and never coming home," he said petulantly as he dragged his duffel off the bed and stalked out of the room.

"If you can find a way to pay for that, power to you," he heard his mother muttered behind him, and it did nothing to improve his mood.

Three more years and they'd stop being able to shuffle him back and forth like a rook on a chessboard. He couldn't wait.

~*~*~

Three hours later Devin got off the bus and went into the station to look for his father. Rich wasn't much of a father, but he usually had drinks and snacks with him when Devin got there, which was a point in his favor. This time was no exception and Devin spotted him clutching a Dunkin Donuts bag and bottles of Sprite.

"Hey, Sport!" Rich greeted him in the same way he had since before Devin could tie his own shoes. It was something his son found both annoying and endearing. "How was the bus ride?"

"Long. Hot. I sat next to the last living member of the Spanish Inquisition and spent the trip answering stupid questions about how I liked high school," he said, taking a bottle and opening it for a long swig.

Rich gave him an uncertain smile, obviously not sure how to react. "Well, at least it's over."

"Right. Where to now?" Devin asked. "Are we backpacking in some dry place that's never heard of plumbing, or are we going somewhere it rains twenty days a month?"

Neither possibility would have really surprised him because his father usually spent spring breaks dragging him to places that people who didn't have "investigative" TV shows to host knew better to stay away from.

"Nope." Rich shook his head. "This year we're staying stateside."

"Did you get fired?" Devin blurted out before thinking that through. Though, it would be interesting if the job that he'd picked over Devin and Ellen tossed him out on his rear.

Rich's eyes narrowed. "I did not. I'll have you know that we're investigating urban magic this week."

We're. Rich always phrased it that way, even though Devin usually spent the entire time trying to keep out of the camera crew's way, and definitively off-camera himself since his mother flatly refused to let his dad "exploit" him that way. During a good spring break he might get to lug some equipment for the crew so he had something to do other than miss his friends.

If his dad had been a suburbanite commuting to and from a job in a nearby city, maybe these breaks every spring and summer might not suck so much because he'd have neighbors, and neighbors often had kids. The idea of friends he saw at his father's might have been okay.

"Urban magic?" Devin asked when he realized the conversation had lulled. "Really?"

"Yup. We're heading to Detroit."

~*~*~

"Here we are," Rich announced, but he was speaking to the camera, not Devin. The show liked to tape arrivals, even if it meant "arriving" six or seven times to get the intro right.

It wasn't a burned-out building, but both neighboring buildings were. Devin got out of the van and looked around. "Shithole" didn't even begin to cover his opinion of the place.

A door opened and a wizened old woman the color of mahogany began to slowly approach, which one of the cameramen captured in loving detail. Devin didn't stay close enough to hear his dad or the woman speak, but he could pretty much imagine the exchange. Viewers didn't seem to notice that it was basically the same stuff over and over again, or maybe they did and they actually liked it. Either way, Rich's show 'What's Out There' usually made good ratings for something on cable.

After the whole meet and greet was captured on film, the cameras went off so Rich could speak to the witch, if that's what she was, off camera to strategize. Viewers might think that everything they saw was completely spontaneous, but nothing could be further from the truth. It was in the best interest of everyone involved that both the host and the gracious guests were both put into the best light, and every detail of that was planned.

"Dad, I'm going to poke around," Devin called before wandering off.

He contemplated exploring one of the gutted buildings before he decided that falling through a floor might be more exciting but not more fun. He was at a loss until he realized that he could see someone waving to him, so he went to check it out.

The someone turned out to be a girl about his age, and she had a complexion just about the same shade as the old woman. It made Devin feel absolutely pasty in comparison. "Hey," he said cautiously.

"You're with the film guys?" the girl asked. "You don't look old enough."

"'cause I'm not. My dad thinks that dragging me from film site to film site is father-son bonding," Devin groused. "I'm Devin."

She smiled at him. "Belle, and I'm totally with you. Grandma's got the same idea, but I usually just get dragged to her clients' houses."

"So...is she a witch, or something?" Devin asked, not really worried about sounding rude. Belle didn't strike him as the touchy type.

"Or something," Belle agreed with a nod. "Fact is, anyone here can do what she does, they just don't know it."

"Just here?"

"For like the next four blocks, yeah." Belle glanced around. "There's something screwy about this place since everyone left. Grandma said that 'the divide is bleeding,' whatever that means."

"Are you talking about magic, or..."

"Right. Magic."

"Okay..."

"Really," she insisted.

"So you're saying that I could do magic?" Devin asked dubiously.

"Yup."

"Uh huh."

"No really. Close your eyes and think of something, anything, really hard. Concentrate on it, and when you open your eyes, it'll be real."

"Whatever."

"What, are you scared?" Belle taunted.

This got his back up. "I'm not scared."

"So try it."

Sighing, he closed his eyes and thought really hard about something that would never wander through a half burned-out urban neighborhood.

Before he even opened his eyes Belle was squealing. "What is that? It's so ugly!"

The warthog standing in the road didn't seem to think much of Belle either, and glared at her with beady eyes. "Holy crap!" Devin yelped. "How do we get rid of it??"

"We-" Belle started to say, but she stopped when a speeding car barreled into the warthog and erased it from existence. It didn't simply disappear, but the red, slightly furry remains would be hard to identify.

"Ewww." Devin looked away. "So, can you make anything just by thinking about it?"

"Almost anything," Belle amended. "I've never been able to get a giraffe right."

"You've tried to make giraffes?" Devin looked surprised. He'd thought that replicating the warthog that'd attacked their jeep last summer was pretty clever, but it was disappointing to learn that the neighborhood had seen other exotic animals already. "Why?"

"Dunno, I just like them."

"How do you 'almost' make a giraffe, anyway?"

"You kind of make them headless," Belle muttered. "It's not on purpose, I just have trouble with animal heads. Usually I stick to non-living things."

"Uh..." The thought of a headless giraffe struck him as pretty unpleasant, but it did give him an idea. "Hey Belle, you want to make your grandma, like, the most famous person ever for a while?"

"If it'd get us out of here, sure. What do we have to do?"

"We've gotta wait until..." Devin outlined his plan, and Belle nodded along.

~*~*~
It wasn't until people began to scream later on that the plan seemed like a bad idea. Devin had tried hard to imagine what would happen if, just when Belle's grandma looked like she was concentrating hard, a headless giraffe suddenly appeared. But his imagination hadn't done the image justice.

The poor beast lumbered around, swinging its long neck to and fro, before thrashing against the brick wall of Belle's house. It gamely tried to get somewhere, but the lack of eyes, or a brain, made it hard for it to find its bearings, so it was more sad and horrific than anything else.

Everyone but Belle and Devin shouted in alarm, and at least one of the camera crew dropped a camera as they tried to do something, anything, about the headless ungulate. Belle poked him hard in the ribs. "Holy shit, we're going to be in so much trouble."

Devin shrugged. With everyone screaming and failing about, no one even seemed to know they were there, thankfully. "If they blame me, maybe I won't have to spend the summer with my dad." He couldn't imagine that his mother was going to react well to a headless giraffe incident, so maybe it'd work out in his favor.

~*~*~

Later on, after the photos were published (a reporter got wind of it before the giraffe was banished) two things were crystal clear: one, 'What's Out There' had never enjoyed higher ratings. Two, even if he was forced to spend more school breaks with Rich, it'd be hard to top the excitement of the magic in Detroit...but as mid-June rolled around, Devin found himself looking forward to what his dad had in store next.

The End


"I break my wooden bones for you. You took my crystal heart and shook it through and through" -Sea Wolf, O Maria

Flash fiction V-Day

You know how it goes: 2000 words written in no more than 60 hours. To be frank, I wrote this story in 70 minutes. Hopefully it doesn't read like a story written in just over an hour, but it probably does. Edit: tied for 2nd, again, so maybe it doesn't read like it was written in an hour.

<-- All stories much incorporate this photo
and the words Imagine, Sob, & Initially.

Plus, the story is to have a Valentine's Day theme...not my favorite holiday, but I think I made it festive enough =)

Straight Through The Heart

When Ellie broke up with you three days before Valentine's Day, she'd said that she was worried about you. You were, in her words, unstable, if not worse. She looked sad as she said it, a portrait in angst, but she meant it. You were through. Forever. In a teeth-gritting way, you were glad you hadn't married her, because if she sincerely believed you were ill, she definitely wasn't going to live up to the 'in sickness and health' clause of traditional wedding vows.

Maybe it wouldn't have gone down that way if you hadn't been so honest with her. Your mother drilled honesty in all things into your head, and even as an adult who should know better, you found yourself still desperate to live up to parental expectations. So, when you realized that you and Ellie had a deep connection, you told her. Initially she seemed flattered, but as you elaborated, you began to notice that fear was creeping into her eyes.

The break up hardly came as a surprise a few days later. But that didn't mean it didn't hurt. Having your heart ripped out and stomped on, no one gets past that without a whimper or two. Without waking up with the desire to scream when they realize it's all real, not a nightmare that would soon dissolve away.

So, you learned two lessons. One: honesty is not the best policy. Two: when it comes right down to it, Ellie is a bitch. These two thoughts grappled in your mind like dogs fighting, and eventually you began to wonder if revenge was a better policy than honesty.

Revenge sat across from you as you sipped cold coffee and mechanically chewed toast that had been burned because you hadn't wanted to leave the toaster on the setting Ellie had preferred before she walked out on you. And revenge put its arm around your shoulder when you stood in the bathroom and contemplated suicide. The ring that you slipped out of your pocket then, as you thought about it being smeared red, sparkled in the light from the open window. The stone scored well in all the qualities you were supposed to look for, clarity, cut, color, and caret. Sitting in the palm of your hand, it represented 200 hours of listening to people complain. Jared's wouldn't take it back, you'd asked. Begged. Ranted. Been asked to leave the store. Snapping the ring box shut, you walked away from the straight razor, the clock radio close to the bathtub, the bottles of pills Ellie left behind. They'd wait patiently, if it came to that.

If the ring couldn't go back, and the hours it cost couldn't be unlived, and you couldn't unlive either, maybe you could perform alchemy instead. After you called into work, you hit the streets, looking for someone who could help you transform the ring into something different, something that you had more of a use for, considering you weren't going to be asking Ellie to marry you on Valentine's Day.

All the stores along the strip were dressed up like cheap whores, flashes of red everywhere you looked, and you could almost smell the cheap chocolate crammed into every one of them. It didn't matter. Your head was full of 1929, and cheap paper hearts weren't enough to lift your thoughts to the present. But even more, as you concentrated on the task at hand, you were able to ignore the thread that stretched out before you, leading back to Ellie.

It was the thread that had you thinking of revenge, of Lincoln Park, of Ellie...when she broke up with you, you assumed that the thread would snap, that cold and moiraeic, she'd take shears and cut through the fabric of a shared life. It wasn't a literal lifeline, you knew, you were pretty sure, but you'd still worried that the severing would leave you lifeless. It hadn't, and the thread hadn't broken either.

No, instead the trailing light still spooled out in the distance, leading back to wherever Ellie had gone to be a her again instead of half an us. For a while you tried to convince yourself that Ellie was right, and you were becoming unhinged, but you'd followed it again, the day after the jewelry store incident. And there, at the end of the line, she'd been, morosely sipping coffee in Starbucks. How could you have known she'd be there, if the link between you wasn't real? She wasn't such a creature of habit that finding her was more inevitable than chance.

If she hadn't immediately freaked out when you told her about the connection between you, it would have been nice to talk to her about what it all meant. Calmly, rationally, maybe the two of you could have gotten to the bottom of why you'd noticed, just a few weeks before, that a cord of light bound you both. You had your theories: maybe you were seeing beyond the weave of the world, and were noticing something that others couldn't; maybe it was like those people who promised to read your fortune and tell you the color of your aura...that could be an interesting new line of work, better than hearing customers whine, but so far you only saw it between you and Ellie; maybe it was a brain tumor, and if it was, it was pretty low of her to dump you when you were defenseless.

Another time, the next night? it was getting hard to recall the passage of time, but the Valentine's decorations everywhere still, not yet desperately proclaiming "50% off!" said it hadn't been as long as it felt, you followed the thread again, and found yourself standing outside a motel room, looking in through the windows like a peeping Tom. Ellie had been in there, dressed in a white robe you didn't remember, and she managed not to see you. It shouldn't have surprised you, not considering that she'd packed up all her things and left your apartment looking like the scene of a half completed robbery, but in a way it had. You'd assumed that she'd turn to her sister, but she'd ended up there instead. You walked away, hoping she wouldn't look out the window as you retreated.

She hadn't been sobbing. Instead, she'd been reading, and she looked...content. Maybe if Ellie had looked wounded too, you might have relented, but for her to seem fine...Revenge slipped an arm through the crook of your elbow and walked you home.

In the end it was an idiot you'd found on Craigslist that helped you forward your plans. It was hard to imagine that the police wouldn't have beat you to him after reading his ad, since it was unlikely that trading "anything" (and listing what that meant, which was the part you felt would interest the police) for a "good" ring was even legal, but he'd opened the door and welcomed you in, asking to see the ring before the draft from the winter crouching outside had even dissipated.

He'd jabbered about how much his girl was going to love the ring, but you weren't really listening to that beyond wondering if she would. Instead you interrogated him about the list of "anything" he'd mentioned in the ad. No, you weren't interested in the all-star hockey tickets, not the X-Box 360 setup, none of that. You wanted to know about the gun.

Oh, that, it was a beauty he claimed. Guns didn't strike you as beautiful so much as utilitarian, but you let him talk about it anyway. He'd bought it at a gun show after one/two/many TV shows about FBI agents convinced him that owning a glock would be so cool...but he'd never gotten around to learning how to shoot at a firing range.

A smarter man might have asked why you wanted a gun, perhaps recalling that there were waiting periods to buy them, but he wasn't that sort of guy. Instead he'd wrapped the gun up in a soft cloth bag, and handed it to you the moment the ring box dropped into his out stretched hand.

It was heavier in the pocket of your winter coat that you imagined it would be. LL Bean reinforced the pockets of their outerwear, so the weight wasn't a problem, but it made the gun feel very real as you walked back past the tarted up stores. Eventually you passed a newspaper machine and read the date: those desperate signs would be going up bright and early the next morning. That bothered you: if someone passing by had asked the date, you would have thought it was the 13th still. That meant you'd found the craigslist idiot just in time.

Why it had to be Valentine's wasn't something you'd completely worked out in your mind, but it just seemed fitting. Asking Ellie to marry you that day was going to bring you together forever, but she'd wrecked that. She didn't seem to know it, but you were still bound to her, and it was growing unbearable. The light between you hadn't dimmed, not even a little, and it was beginning to frighten you. What if it meant Ellie was your soulmate? A soulmate who didn't want you seemed like a special sort of hell, so you had to do the snipping yourself, and the gun seemed like the tool to get the job done.

You didn't want her to suffer, so it was good that you were a decent shot. Your dad had taught you to shoot when you were small, first with air rifle almost as long as you were tall, and then with live ammo around the time he taught you to drive. Once, straight through the heart, and she'd barely feel it. You didn't owe her much, but you did owe her that.


Waiting was the hard part. Joyful couples streamed the sidewalks, and you couldn't find Ellie then. Well, you could find her at any moment, but it didn't seem wise just then. So you waited, endured watching people kiss, walking by with roses tucked into the crooks of elbows, sharing a love you worried you'd never find again, not while you and Ellie retained an unwanted connection. By then you'd decided you didn't want it either, not if she didn't love you any more.

Eventually the crowds thinned as people went home to fuck. That's when you got in your car and followed Ellie's trail. A worry that following it by car would be hard crossed your mind, but it was no more distracting than GPS so you managed fine. To your surprise, you found yourself in the museum district. Dimly, you recalled hearing something about an Egyptian art exhibit, but you hadn't realized Ellie was interested in that.

You weren't so you barely noticed the art in the windows, samples meant to whet the art appetite, as you made your way to the windows outside the gift shop. Ellie was there, as you knew she would be. Her hand was about to touch a scarab beetle paperweight when something made her turn her head and look out.

Your fingers closed on the gun, ready to pull it out and end what lingered between you. You'd never fired on a living thing before, but this had to be considered self-defense the way she was making you suffer.

The light between you flared up as she continued to turn her head, as the gun came halfway out of your pocket. Her eyes met yours, and you said a little prayer, asking for forgiveness for what you were about to do.

And the cord snapped. There was a bright sparkle as the center was cut, and it quickly faded from both ends, racing back to you, to your centers. In seconds it was gone.

You jammed the gun into your pocket, turned, and walked away, leaving her to stare after you.

The End


"You don't just blurt love is a curse..." - The Tragically Hip, Love Is A First

flash fiction Xmas

As usual the flash fiction contests are 2000 or less words written in 60 hours, with three words and a photo for inspiration -->
(don't blame me, I didn't pick the picture) This time the words were:
Coolness
Winterize
Unpardonable
...and the story was also supposed to have a winter theme this round.

Christmas Eve With Timmy

I sat and stewed while Hermey the elf sang in the background. New Years was still over a week away, but I already had my resolution firmly in mind: I was never going to babysit on Christmas Eve again, no matter how cute or how desperate the person asking me was. All that got you was a bruised shin and a stupid hat.

Rubbing my shin, I thought back ruefully to how I'd gotten here. It all started just after lunch on a day that was otherwise shaping up to be peaceful. Little did I know then that the peace was about to be shattered.

I'd answered a knock at the door, hoping that it was someone dropping off a package for me since I wasn't going to be going home for Christmas this year. Instead, it was my neighbor, Ryan. He'd moved down the hall from me four months ago, I'll admit that I was instantly attracted to him. My heart fluttered a little bit when I saw him standing there because I had been trying for weeks to find a way to start a conversation with him that didn't seem completely contrived. So far I had failed.

It was only after I stared at him, wondering what I should say, that I noticed that he looked really upset. Without even having to think about it, words fell out of my mouth. "What's wrong?"

He bit his lip, which was adorable, and gave me a shy look. "I'm sorry to bother you, but I'm in a real bind. My brother and my nephew just got here yesterday, and my brother hurt himself."

"He did?" I asked, wondering why he decided to tell me. "How?"

Ryan sighed. "They're from Dallas, and the thought of winterizing a car is completely beyond him. Instead of covering the car last night when it snowed, he just left it. And he didn't have an ice scraper either when he wanted to go shopping, then decided not to come back up to ask for one... Long story short, his method of cleaning ice off the windshield involved a screwdriver, and now he needs stitches."

I winced. My mind shied away from all the possible ways one could have injured themselves with a screwdriver, since it probably wasn't very pretty. "Oh, that's terrible."

"Yeah... I'm going to be bringing him to the emergency room. The problem is my nephew." He looked away, his cheeks suddenly appealingly pink. "Look, I know that you don't know me, and I won't be upset if you say no, but do you think you could keep an eye on my nephew today so the kid doesn't have to spend the afternoon at the hospital too?"

"Uh..." I stammered, stalling for time. I was trying not to let on, but I was disappointed that our first real in-depth conversation just involved him asking me for a favor. "How old is he?"

"Timmy is six."

Timmy. That sounded like a name for a nice little boy. How bad could babysitting the little boy named Timmy be? Without much further thought, besides the fleeting one that maybe this would spark a friendship at least between Ryan and me, I found myself saying, "Sure. Bring him over."

Ryan's face lit up, and for a moment I was convinced that I had just made a very good move. He touched my arm, and I tried not to shiver. "Thank you, you don't know how much I appreciate this."

If I had been another sort of girl, I probably would've purred that I was sure he could think of a way to thank me, but that's not me. "No problem. I hope they get him fixed up quickly."

"I'm sure it's nothing a few stitches won't fix," he said over her shoulder. "I'll go get Timmy right now. Thanks again for doing this, Hannah."

**

A couple minutes later Ryan returned, this time accompanied by a little boy, and his brother. He looked a lot like Ryan and probably was nearly as attractive when he wasn't white with pain. Ryan looked down at the boy, and said, "Timmy, this is Hannah. She's going to watch you so you don't have to go to the hospital with us."

"Come on in," I said to Timmy, who immediately brushed past me. Looking up at Ryan, I asked, "Two questions. Is it okay if we leave the apartment? And do you have a number in case I need to reach you?" I handed him my own cell phone number.

He deferred to his brother, who mumbled something about not caring what Timmy and I did, before shrugging. "I guess you can go wherever. I'll give you a call when we're on our way back." He glanced down at the boy again. "Be good."

"Whatever," the boy muttered, steadily refusing to look at any of us.

**

Timmy sulked for ten minutes after they left, then gave me a calculating look. "I want coco."

"Sorry, I don't have any."

His look suggested that I'd just committed an unpardonable sin. "But Uncle Ryan promised me some!"

Deep breaths, I told myself, the kid doesn't know you, and his dad's hurt, so he's having a bad day. "Let's go buy some then."

"Where?"

"Starbucks?"

"We have those at home," he said in a way that suggested familiarity wasn't a plus.

"Oh. Well, there's a café near the mall, too," I suggested. "Famous for their coco, even." In a moderate, small town sort of way.

Timmy perked up. "Is Santa going to be at the mall?"

"I don't know, maybe."

"I wanna see him! Dad said we would, but he hurt himself like an idiot."

It felt like I should protest, but his father did strike me as sort of dumb. I mean a screwdriver, really? So I just ignored that. "If he's there, we can see Santa." It didn't seem like my idea of fun, but what else was I going to do with the kid?

**

Things seemed to go well enough...at least until we'd been served. "Do you like the coco?" I asked as we sat in the café.

"No, it's gross. Can we see Santa now?" Timmy asked, sliding off his chair.

Mortified that a waitress had overheard, I left a big tip before bolting out the door.

**

Two hours later I knew that bringing a kid to the mall on Christmas Eve was to pass an occasion in hell. Children were running all over the place, only to stop abruptly and make you trip over them as they chattered about the coolness of whatever had caught their shifting attention. I almost trampled six kids before we even got to fake North Pole at the far end of the mall.

Timmy's excitement had waned once he saw how long the line was, but we stoically joined it. Or, at least he was stoic about it - after an hour, I was beginning to whine like a toddler myself. "Timmy, are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yeah, I gotta!"

"You must have already sent a letter to Santa," I said, feeling both desperate and clever at the same time. "So he knows what you want."

"No, not this," Timmy insisted. For a moment I began to feel bad, and assumed that he was going to ask Santa to make his Dad feel better. That seemed rather sweet. "I only saw it here in the mall."

Oh. So much for sweet. I stared ahead a the seventy kids in front of us, and thought about throwing myself on the ground and kicking my feet like the little girl having a tantrum in front of the toy store was. "Oh, okay..."

Timmy was quiet for a while, but eventually he looked up at me. "How come you don't have kids?"

"Um...I'm not married."

"Do you at least have a boyfriend?" Timmy asked, and I could almost swear he gave me a pitying look.

"No."

I was trying to think of a subtle way of asking if his uncle was single when Timmy looked me up and down. "Because you're fat?"

"Jesus, Timmy."

"You shouldn't say that."

"We're giving out prizes!" a booming voice announced next to me, making me jump a foot. A man stood there holding the ugliest hat I'd ever seen. He gave it to Timmy. "Here you go!"

"Thanks," Timmy muttered.

"Wow, you won an ugly hat," I couldn't help but remark.

"You wear it," Timmy insisted.

"No."

Then the brat hauled off and kicked me in the shin. Hard.

"Ow!"

"Wear it!"

"For God's sake!" I jammed the hat on my head and grabbed him by the arm. "We're leaving."

"But Santa!"

"Forget Santa. I hope he brings you coal."

"You're mean," Timmy whined, looking over his shoulder as I pulled him through the mall. Santa faded into the distance, and I was happy to get the hell out of there. We'd wasted hours in the mall, and neither of us had anything much to show for it.

**

Later

I hadn't been naive enough to expect better behavior from Timmy when I got him back to my apartment, but I hadn't anticipated worse, either. While I set about making us soup and sandwiches, he trashed my living room.

I almost dropped the tray when I saw that he'd flung my laundry about, using it to redecorate. Seeing me, he pointed at my bike. "Guess you don't use this much."

"Why?" I asked, waving a hand at the mess.

He shrugged. "Bored."

"Put everything back!"

"Yeah, right." Timmy grabbed one of the sandwiches. "Are you getting paid? 'cause you suck at this."

"I'm never having children," I muttered, bending for my strewn clothes.

Timmy laughed. "Of course you're not. Who'd marry you?"

I took a deep breath and counted to three thousand. I started over when he toppled a bookcase.

**

Things did not improve. Defeated, I curled up in a chair and decided to ignore Timmy until they came back. I'd hidden the matches and knives by that point.

"Uncle Ryan!" Timmy shouted eventually, making me look up. Ryan was standing in the doorway, taking in the disaster zone my apartment had become.

"Timmy, go back to my place," he said, yanking Timmy out into the hall. Looking at me he said, "Sorry?"

"Oh, you better be," I snapped.

My pant leg rode up as I brushed past the bike and Ryan noticed the huge bruise already spreading on my shin. "Bookcase falling over do that?"

"No, your nephew kicked me," I said, only to remember I was still wearing the stupid hat. I yanked it off.

"Timmy can be a handful," Ryan said apologetically before beginning to pick up the things that used to live in my bookcase.

I looked up at him, incredulous. "A handful? You're a master of understatement."

"I know. I'm sorry." He did look contrite.

"His behavior is your brother's fault, not yours," I said grudgingly.

"It's just...the divorce has been rough on the kid."

I nodded like I knew what that was like. "Sure."

"They're going home on Tuesday," Ryan said, apparently trying to reassure me that Timmy wasn't going to be a permanent fixture.

"Oh." I wasn't supposed to say "good" but it was hard not to.

"So, um...do you have plans for Friday?"

"No."

"Want some?" he asked, giving me a hopeful look.

I took a moment to think it over. "Alright."

"Great, so it's a date." I half expected him to say something about how it didn't have to be, but he stood firm. I liked that.

"How often does your brother visit you?"

Ryan blinked, apparently not expecting that question.

"Once a year. I mostly visit him."

I nodded. I guess if things worked out, I could put up with Timmy once a year. Then a horrible thought hit me. "You're not Timmy's godparent, are you?"

"No, why?"

"Just wondering."

The End

 

"Too much to pay, no one to blame" - Junk Circuit, The Devil Wears A Crown 

Flash fiction May

I finally found the picture from May's contest...

The picture to the left and the words "Pandemic",
"Sanctuary," and "Spy" needed to be used to write a 2000 word or less story in sixty hours the weekend of May 14 - 16.

Silver Blues

I ran. My pursuer growled as he chased me, and this fueled my panic as I crashed through the undergrowth. There wasn't enough air to keep me from wheezing, and a stitch in my side burn hotter every step - at least until a tree root tripped me. I landed with a bone jarring impact, but it was soon forgotten when gray fur and sharp teeth boiled over me -


My scream still echoed in my ears as I sat upright amidst tangled sweat-soaked blankets. No neighbors shouted for me to keep it down, and only a full moon stared at me in disapproval. Moonlight or not, the hand that reached for a flashlight trembled in time with my still galloping pulse.

It was silly, I knew I was alone, but I still arched the light into every corner of the room, especially the ones were the sterile glow of the moon didn't reach. Spit dried in my mouth as the beam hit the bulletin board. It was the photo that did me in: a boy on a bike forever captured as he hung in mid-air. An image from before, one happy memory worn at curled, coffee-stained edges, half hidden among leaflets about disease prevention and flyers promising safe harbors.

Slipping out of bed I loosened a mirthless bark of laughter as I thought about that dull tease - sanctuary. Those flyers were old, all from the early days of the disaster. Sanctuary had been one of the first casualties of the blight.

As I stood there and contemplated hard liquor, it had been 270 days since the lupine flu had been discovered, and 241 days since it had been declared a pandemic by newscasters whose doll-like masks of nonchalance had begun to slip with a wildness about the eyes. One had to wonder how many of them were out there now, no longer constrained by studios or uniformly hideous hairstyles.

People, if they'd still dare to emerge from their hidey holes to converse, would have argued about precisely when humanity had teetered at the blink before going over in an Alice-like freefall into utter chaos. Part of this stemmed just from no longer having the primetime lineup to fix internal calendars to, but the rest was because we'd each descended into a private hell on our own schedule.

For me, it had been 63 days.

- Mom and Dad no longer kept up any pretense of being able to stand each other's company by the time the contest rolled around, so I'd been sent as family representative 275 days ago, accompanying Max as he competed in Paris. The appeal of BMX biking was beyond me, but that didn't stop me from cheering myself hoarse. Max won his class and the trip took on the air of a wholesome family film about trying one's hardest and being rewarded for it.

We didn't even realize anything was wrong until we got off the plane at Logan airport six days after we'd set out. Which isn't to say that the French media had covered things up, I simply didn't speak French. Instead Latin had fulfilled my college language requirement. Max used to tease me for not picking a more useful language, like his own barely passed high school Spanish, but the dead language had resonated with me. At the rate we're going, all of them will be dead soon...

Anyway, the airport. There hadn't been anyone there waiting. If you've ever been to Logan, you know it's usually teeming with frayed tempers and poor drivers, but no one greeted the new arrivals. I'd shivered taking in the tile and metal ghost town, at least until Max grabbed my arm and pointed at a TV that babbled on, unaware that it'd lacked an audience.

Men on screen howled as they were dragged to their execution by a foreign government. Given it was all going down in another language I didn't speak, I was grateful for a bulleted list that patiently explained that these were the men responsible for the theft, spies who'd broken into a lab and taken the first thing they could find that was valuable, dooming us all though no one had known it just yet -

A sound. I'd been pacing as my thoughts ran through the same worn grooves, but froze when I thought I heard something outside my apartment door...a canine snuffling, a doggy chuffing, a death threat. Neighbors might not have minded my scream, but had something else been listening? When it didn't repeat, I chanced moving to the chair, drawing up my knees as I sat, and wrapping my arms around them. It almost felt like a hug. Or I was forgetting what human contact was really like. Don't do, just think, I told myself, slipping back into the fractured past.

- Outside the airport there were signs of normalcy, taxis waiting. The driver of ours didn't speak as the tires ate the miles, and gave off the air of someone impatient to return to something more important. Through the windows of passing houses I saw entire families glued to TV sets, and worried about what had happened. What had the executed men done?

I think Max and I both expected our parents to stop fighting long enough to explain everything to us, but the house was empty when we finally got home. We checked every room. At last we discovered a note set on the table. All it said was, "Jessie, Max, take care of each other. Mom & Dad".

My brother's eyes had gone wide just then, and he looked to me for answers. I might have been an adult, twenty-five to his sixteen, but I felt no less Hansel and Gretel abandoned than he did. We never did see them again, and by day 94 we no longer expected to.

I have my theory, as grim as it is: they killed themselves before things got bad. It was a more logical explanation than thinking that a couple that couldn't go without bickering over breakfast had somehow decided to run away together. They'd both been government screws, and I'm sure they'd known which way the wind blew. Maybe I was wrong, and they were together somewhere, a cozy cabin, a white sand beach, laughing up their sleeves. But I doubted it.

Before newsmen no longer wore cheap suits, we all knew something about what happened. The lab those now headless spies had broken into in Babel had been birthed in the US before being outsourced like everything else. Bioweapon, a mistake, a plague waiting for just such an opportunity, no one knew that detail, but what followed? Yeah. Hard to escape that knowledge.

In the wake of the supposed swine flu the year before, preservationists prophylactically objected to the term lupine flu before the name even caught on, even with the clear presence of wolf in the deadly viral cocktail. Someone on talk radio jokingly dubbed it the "K-9 flu" and that's what stuck despite the minor inaccuracy. Back then it was almost funny, but that was when it seemed like the illness that the spies had unleashed was going to be combated with hand sanitizer, face masks (for the most paranoid of germaphobes), and that we'd tough it out as we waited to see how long companies took to produce a vaccine for this flu strain.

Of course, this was before anyone's neighbors grew excessively hairy and developed the disquieting propensity towards chasing prey by moonlight.

The first time Max and I saw the guy next door lope home with a bloodstained mouth (muzzle?) and glazed eyes was the last time either of us went anywhere on our own. Not that it helped in the end -

Snuffing again. Then scratching that reminded me of how joyfully our long dead husky has dug a labyrinth of holes in the backyard. If only it had been Blaze's ghost visiting me. My eyes flew to the door as I considered my options. A bat under my bed, pilfered from Max's little league days, and the gun, of course. I eyed the gun with a bitter resentment. It had been my grandfather's, but the silver bullets had not come with it. So, I'd covertly ordered some, but not covertly enough.

Would the door hold, I wondered as the scratching set up a tuneless percussion, long enough to grab the gun? It did, even though I nearly fumbled it. But then what? Shooting through the door would be foolish, weakening it. But how quickly could it burst though? They had a fluid grace, these wolves at my door. There was nothing to do but check that the gun was loaded. It was. I'd known that, but I'd still had to check. You understand.

- It had been Max's idea to keep moving, but I hadn't done that since ordering the bullets. Being nomadic had been a good strategy, as far as end of days planning went, but the only way to get the bullets was to freeze in place long enough for them to be delivered. And we did need them, that was becoming a surer necessity every day as wolves, wolves who used to be stockbrokers, housewives, and paper boys ripped through the populations of every town, both literally and blood-soaked, and in a figurative sense as the virus passed from person to person, or make that wolf to person...It was hard to know how many people shed their humanity every twenty-eight days because they still looked like us at times, but I think everyone got the sense that the world was drowning in fur, and we'd all soon be like them. Or dead.

People said, when people said anything, that silver bullets worked. But you couldn't pick them up at Wal-Mart or even a gun shop, as many as there still were scattered throughout the northeast. To get the bullets we'd had to order them through a mail-order company, and I more than half feared that a lupine mafia would get wind of our sin, and come for us.

In the end I lost Max to people, not to the wolves.

Turned out that the silver bullet seller's records had been compromised, supposedly without his knowledge or consent. It had been easy enough for the government to hack into things like that, especially with the Patriot Act, a declaration of martial law, the suspension of habeas corpus...we ordered bullets. They came for Max.

Conscription.

I guess they figured that anyone with the balls to hunt werewolves nee neighbors had balls enough to join the US military, even against their will, even if they were sixteen. I begged them to take me too, but lacking the necessary external gonads, they patted me on my pretty little head and promised me that he'd come home safe.

It's been 63 days, seven hours, and 26 minutes since then. And I'm here still, family to come home to. Please God, let him come home.

Behind the door the scratching became more frantic, and I knew that it was coming to a head. If I failed to act, Max would have nothing left, if he survived this unearthly draft. A sliver of wood gave way with a scream of protest, and through the jagged cut one xanthic eye gave me a baleful look, full of the promise of my red, wet death.

I fired.

The End

"We think the same things at the same time. We just can’t do anything about it." - Thom Yorke, Harrowdown Hill