I remember telling Jack, back when he still came to see me, that if the cancer didn’t kill me then the treatment surely would. The pain, the nausea, and worst of all the nights when it felt like my bones were on fire. I know she is here now to put out the fire, to deaden the pain and I’ll never stick my face in toilet again. I try in vain to tell her not to give it to me, because I’m not really ready to go. Never trust a fucking nurse named Betty.

[...] just read the new Flash Fiction Challenge over on TerribleMinds (http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/02/24/flash-fiction-challenge-the-10k-contest/)  and I am so excited/intimidated/anxious/in-the-dark-ideas-wise/scared to write it. What a [...]

The house was old, fully detached and probably full of guards. They had my son. I couldn’t pay the ransom, I couldn’t call the police, I couldn’t get him back but I still had to do something. I picked up my shotgun, went to the door and prepared to breach.

They had my son.

There once was a kid named Bob. Bob lives in the woods with his mum and dad. Across from their house is a bridge shortcutting their way into town. Bob’s parents tell him not to take Shortcut Bridge when he skateboards to school.
“Take the long way!” They say.
“Psht!” he thinks, “My parents don’t know nothing!” So, he takes the bridge again and again, day after day.
“Don’t take the bridge,” his parents say. “Take the long way.”
Again Bob takes the bridge.
Poor Bob should have listened. The troll living under Shortcut Bridge doesn’t appreciate loud noises.

Emily sat in her desk, the ticks of the classroom clock echoed between her ears. Her body vibrated– it was the last day of school! The clock struck 3:15 and she shot out of her desk. “Did I dismiss you?” The nun asked. Her punishment: Saturday detention.

Light filters through the shades, casting a soft glow over the room.

Warmth rises from seemingly everywhere, filling the space.

Smells and feelings, coming together in a joyous chorus.

Finally, only sounds of pleasure as release is felt.

You mom makes the best brownies.

Supergayvilletown
by Lydia Netzer

When he got home, he checked in on his phone.

“I am the mayor of here,” he reminded her.

On Foursquare, she had named their apartment Supergayvilletown, and because they lived in a tall building, no one could tell which apartment it was.

She had a girlfriend at the library; he had a boyfriend too.

All the other people could see they were a married couple, but the lone citizen was prone to revolt, benevolence of her mayor notwithstanding.

“You left your keys in the mail box.” The note said with ominous intent in my very own flowered handwriting.
Inside the mail box was human ear jewelry still attached, waxy dry and covered in blood, and the ear obviously wasn’t mine. My phone buzzed and when I looked there was text from my self instructing me to put this ear in the freezer.
I felt good as I started the car, my emotions were free and clear like today was a brand new life. The days I gpt a note were always the best.

“Dead.”
“Dead.”
“Dead.”
“Living.”
“Dibs.”

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days, it was the longest day that Frank had ever experienced, yet he felt compelled to thank Fuck that it was indeed Friday.

How else could he hope to delineate the chaos of the week with the forthcoming – hopefully more sedentary – weekend ahead ?

What had kickstarted on Monday as a quiet couple of beers with a local writer, somehow snowballed into a shocking story of seduction, shotguns, and maple syrup.

Life can certainly be stranger than fiction.

If Frank’s life were a book, he suspected Chuck Wendig wrote it.

They showed me the video of me screaming my head off about the “Impending Triumvirate” and how, “The fourth rectilinear progressions have begun!”

Apparently, I tore of my clothes and yammered on for an hour about how aliens are coming to destroy us all, and then i fell over in some sort of foaming at the mouth frenzy.

Then, they showed me cam footage of me laughing my ass off in five different voices in the parking lot.

I found a card in my shoe which read, “You have been BORROWED, SUCKA!”

Aliens are assholes.

“It was an accident, Ilene.”

“I know that, I get it,” I said, tucking my dead boyfriend’s knife into the back of my waistband.

“He didn’t mean for Billy to die, you know, friendly fire happens in drug deals as well as war.”

I knew that too–I said so–but I told the truth when Todd asked, “Where are you going, then?”

“Another accident’s about to happen…Oops.”

Alicia said she loved me after five dates. I replied in kind after 15.

She left me three years later, amid a flurry of police accusations: drug use, domestic abuse, rape, false imprisonment.

Really, all I wanted to do was keep her by my side forever, by any means necessary. Is that so wrong?

When the aliens came, I was the only one who could see them; I tried to warn everyone, but they just tried to lock me up, and I got really angry right before I blacked out.

Everyone was dead when I woke up. No sign of the aliens though- I must have driven them off after they killed the others.

No wait, spoke too soon– aliens disguised as a SWAT team have surrounded my house!

I reload the shotgun, and wait…

The lone astronaut marched along the frozen surface of Europa. One of the colony’s generator relays had shorted out again. As he arrived at the outpost, he looked up to witness the moons of Io and Ganymede rising. It was an amazing sight that glistened int the light from Sol. While he repaired the relay, he remembered this was why he agreed to go into space.

The crackling of icicles shattered the silent aftermath of the bloody battlefield as Magnus ran his hand roughly over his beard in exhaustion. The Warg-mother had finally breathed its last thanks to his axe, and his soul was guaranteed a spot at the table of Valhalla for another day. The sound of wolves in the distance spurs him as he hefts the body over his shoulder and begins the long trek back to his village. Honor in battle is always sought… but the pelt of this creature will keep his family warm for winters to come.

The swollen moon hangs low in a black, star-stitched sky as I slip through shadows, flicking my tongue to taste the summer-sweet air. Irrefutable hunger draws me forward, and my eyes creep across the flesh of the silly, oblivious creatures who dare to play at night, seeking the perfect victim. I spot her, drenched in the artificial glow of the streetlamp: perfect, beautiful, fluttering, lighter than air. I slither closer, sliding from shadow to shadow, my heart pumping, my mouth dries and I moisten it with sticky spit. Then I strike—moth, my favorite.

Five Minutes to Freedom

Circumstances have a way of redefining words. Twenty-seven years ago I was on a bus headed to true freedom in college. Twenty-five years ago I was at a party and experimenting with true freedom for the first time. Thirteen years ago I was walking out of prison to true freedom. Five minutes ago a car shattered my body; I am surrounded by blood.

On hurricane day, Daddy said, “Let’s put on our overcoats, and ride the dying storm.” I was nervous, but I trusted him and put on my coat and my boots. We ran around the yard a few times, and circled the roof, just to be sure we knew how to fly. Then we lifted our coat tails and jumped on the hurricane, bound for all points on the compass.
Impaled on broken branches, in a tall oak tree, staining its bark with my blood, I can see my house from here.

My parents are in the barn milking the cows, and it’s forty below.

When it gets this cold, there is little wind, but the snow squeaks like a mouse as I traverse the low drifts.

The morning sun turns the hardened snow into a field of tiny diamonds, and hoarfrost hangs like an icy Spanish moss.

My brother is sleeping late, and then he will leave to join a friend, while my parents keep too busy to fight.

I love Saturday mornings.

Slowly rising to his feet, he looked at the scene around him. Hundreds of bodies, most of them dead, littered the sand covered landscape around the fortress wall.

Turning around, he asked Erik: “Where is god’s glory in all this?”

With a smile and a small nod, Erik finished removing a ring from an Arabic enemy’s hand and put it inside his pocket. “YOU insisted on bringing me to this holy crusade!”

With one slow motion, Anthony put his sword back in his scabbard. At least, the siege was finally broken…

“Okay, I know they’re just neutrinos, but I’m still excited. Because if you can move a neutrino and make it go faster than light today, then maybe tomorrow you can move something a bit heavier and make it go a bit faster. That’s how scientific progress works, with small, incremental advances that pile up momentum on top of momentum, until one day, there’s a big breakthrough. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we had warp-drive spaceships sometime in the next hundred years, just because of what we’ve accomplished in this experiment.”

“Hey, looks like this cable is loose.”

I write in Spanish, so I hope my own translation doesn’t suck too much!
+++

The tapestry

I enter the purple door and I see an exuberant garden of large colourful flowers. I go up and suddenly I am inside a pink chimney from where butterflies come out. To the right there is a narrow path that leads to a small blue lake. But now, the door is upside down and I fall abruptly into a fuchsia sea of painful thorns. I follow a never-ending path and over my head there are birds flying through a thousand windows.
Now I rest over a sea of intense colours…watching the tapestry hanging on my wall.

A young farmer once saw a dark cloud coming. So, he took his father’s sword down off the mantle, took his grandfather’s shield out of a wooden chest, pulled on his own chainmail shirt, and went to the top of the mountain to speak with the Hawk King. The Hawk King, with eyes like molten gold and talons like hammered steel, was impressed by this bold young man. “Climb on my back,” he said in a voice that was like rolling thunder. “Climb on my back, and together we will strike out at the darkness.”

Go.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
What?
Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Stop.

Alexander was considered a nice guy, but on Tuesday he opened the door to Seamus’s Pub where Isabella sat under the neon red glow, arms wrapped around another man, this one laughing.

Alexander stopped in the doorway, nearly blinded by all the red.

Isabella turned to see who was letting in the cold, winter air, and then set down the beer, stood from the wooden booth, and walked to Alexander.

As she neared, Alexander slapped Isabella and she fell backwards, headfirst into a metal chair leg, eventually landing on the concrete floor.

Covered in red, the nice guy was annihilated.

Fourteen years, three months, and five days into my marriage, I finally confronted my wife to tell her that I was sick of her running around on me.

“Save me from listening to your pathetic whining,” she said. She gazed at me in a condescending manner through the rising blue smoke of her cigarette. Her current boy-toy lounged in the bed beside her, regarding me with interest, a shit-eating grin on his face.

I knew I loved her from the moment I pulled the trigger.

They say that the love of money is the root of all evil.

She married me for my millions. I slip the brown paper bag across the table to a man I don’t know. He discreetly flips through the wad of cash, then looks up at me with cold, hard eyes.

“Make sure there aren’t any witnesses.”

The eggplant-colored bruise on her eye throbbed with pain. It was a reminder from him about her place in this world. To him she was a cum dumpster, and that’s all she would ever be. The gun in her shaking hand was a reminder for him. She pulled the trigger and laughed as his dying body crumpled to the floor.

Goodnight, Louise

Louise wakes up in the early morning, and for just a moment can’t figure out why her bed seems so big. Her arthritis is acting up, but she ignores it and spends the day cleaning and wondering when her son will visit again. She tries not to think about the hospice nurse and the morphine drip, but can’t help it. In the afternoon she sits in Hal’s rocker, swallows a handful of Hal’s pills, and pulls a bag over her head. She smiles and falls asleep imagining Hal saying, as he had every night for almost forty years, “Goodnight, Louise.”

As You Sow

“Many male processing centers are slated for closure, but legislators are still fighting to keep centers in their areas open, citing widespread disruption to male service if processing becomes regional instead of local.” The announcer went on about public outcry and the declining population.

The Lysistrata Movement, formed in response to government interfering in the reproductive health of citizens, wasn’t supposed to last as long as it did, and no one could have predicted the mass sterility that followed. Ironically, symptoms of the virus would have been obvious in women. Fertile males are the only ones without a choice, now.

A woman with a jet pack-helicopter on her back lifted off the ground just as a man attached straps to her connecting them. Watching them rise into the rainy sky, I fell backwards joggling my bags to keep my daughter from hitting the ground. She slid away from me on a sled down a snow covered hill as waves of foamy water rushed toward us. I picked her up and handed her to a man looking for a fish so I could adjust my rain boots. Moral: never drink a large slushy right before going to bed.

“Gentlemen, at last we are all in agreement,” I said to the assembled room. In turn, each of us – polticians, industrialists, titans of industry, men with the power to shape our young nation’s future – took the ceremonial dagger. In turn, each of us cut his palm and swore his oath to the brotherhood.

We were The Man.

We would bring everybody down.

I followed this guy on Twitter and he wanted to meet me. He was smaller in real life and kind of creepy too. Have you ever noticed how the light in these restrooms makes you look like a lab rat in formaldehyde? Like a corpse? So long random twitter guy.

Julius woke up in a cold sweat, something wasn’t right. The clock on the small table next to his bed informed him that he’d overslept, that never happened.
“Dammit,” he cursed out loud; accessing his cloud memory for the contact information for his boss, his internal server returned an error message –“Hostname could not be found.”
“What the fuck,” the pulse of adrenaline fired as he desperately tried to find any scrap of information relating to his job, for a moment he couldn’t breathe. It was all gone, all of his long term memories were gone, a blank slate.

As we descended into the pool, I knew we’d at last found the secret. I marveled at the phosphorescent water, how it clung to me and made my skin glow.

I don’t remember much after that, just the press of flesh and the smell of sea water.

Danny will be so happy. He’s always wanted to be a father.

It wasn’t that I’d hated Bill. No, he was actually a pretty nice guy. But he was in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and now he was in a trash bag. The contents of the big boss’ safe were in my pocket, and I was on my way to a better life. Wasn’t it Bill who told me that Cancun was really nice this time of year?

The blood was all over him today, and that just wouldn’t do. It was all her fault he’d have to scrub and scrub until the smell disappeared. But it was worth it, the relief he felt as set down the saw and took off the apron and gloves. The guy behind the glass passed him an envelope bulging with money.

He’d finally worked enough overtime to pay off the engagement ring he would give her tonight.

Of course I didn’t take the bed with me, I could never sleep there again, not with that smell (and the memories, yes, we did have some good times). He didn’t argue, just watched as I cleaned all the meat out of the extra freezers. The dogs of course chose to stay behind. “Honey,” I said, “I know it was for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. But you didn’t tell me everything, and tails are a deal-breaker.”

A month after the dog died, Carol forgot, cried out, “Where is my Molly Moo?” and no one came running. She forgot to forget Bill as well, left his side of the bed clear, kept the whiskey he liked in the cupboard, lined up his slippers in the closet, ignoring the gathering dust. Carol forgot to pay the phone bill, but it hadn’t rung in so long that she’d forgotten that the dial tone had died and kept it charged nonetheless. In time, she forgot to eat. And finally, in a single blink, the house forgot she’d ever forgotten there.

Into the Sheets

“What’s wrong?”

This again – her efforts were getting embarrassing and really she’d have had more luck duplicating a Beethoven symphony with an empty matchbox.

“Just give me a minute,” I said.

She slunk back under the sheets, covered the body I was sure would do it for me this time, and after a few fruitless minutes of tight-lipped rubbing and thinking about every girl who’d ever turned me on, I heard her shallow snoring and gave up.

Sweet dreams, I thought, and all the children that would never be went fluttering into oblivion.

A month after the dog died, Carol forgot, cried out, “Where is my Molly Moo?” and no one came running. She forgot to forget Bill as well, left his side of the bed clear, kept the whiskey he liked in the cupboard, lined up his slippers in the closet, ignoring the gathering dust. Carol forgot to pay the phone bill, but it hadn’t rung in so long that she’d forgotten that the dial tone had died and kept it charged nonetheless. In time, she forgot to eat. And in a single blink, the house forgot she’d ever forgotten there.

‘Affirmed’

Helen refreshed the website for the time that evening and saw that the opinion had finally been published: ‘People v. Lindsay, Nicolas’. Her heart racing from anxiety, she quickly scrolled down to the conclusion. She had promised herself she’d be strong, but she still burst into tears when she read the terse final sentence:

“The judgement of the trial court is AFFIRMED.”

For the judges of the state supreme court, it had been just another day at the office, but for Helen Lindsay and her son on the death row, it was the day that hope died.

“Re-use it or lose it,” she said flipping the ridiculously tiny shard of a soap bar into an old Folgers’s coffee can she kept in the corner of the bathroom.

There were quite a few of the nasty bars in there already.

“Why in the hell would you do that?” I asked. “That’s disgusting.”

“When the grocery stores start missing shipments you will thank me.”

“I doubt it.”

Beeping.

You remember her laugh, the dimples on her back just above her ass, being the only white people in that blues club, her flirting with those black guys because she could re-write the rules of any world she entered and had transmuted silent hostility into a celebration where a man the size of a house and the color of coal could buy you a drink and dance with his hands on your wife’s ass and it didn’t matter because he would never see those dimples.

Forty years ago.

You nod, the nurse throws the switch, the beeping stops.

Nocturne
by Cheryl Anne Gardner

In the moonlit mile of lighted birthday candle, she sat in the attic, legs straddling the dusty beams as she turned it over, again and again, each time the soulless stretch of sand shifted its weight against the glass. She could remember dandelions in his hair, his lips coated in clover honey and matte cherry bisque as he ran past the burly subway workers striking on the street that day. “Little French Fag,” they taunted.” “Pansy,” shouted others, but he never cared. Never cared much for words on signs or phantom picket lines, even with the braces on his legs.

With a puff of industrial fume, the double-decker toddled away from the bus stop towards parts unknown, but presumably the next stop on the route. Arriving a moment too late, Mike slumped against the edge of the bus stop, watching it… and her… depart without him. He looked down at the battered piece of paper, graphite starting to smudge as the occasional rain drop found it’s way under his umbrella, and re-read the last line. “Wait… what? But… I don’t even own an accordian.”

I dig at the scab on my lip until I hear the lock turn in the door. Skirting around the bed, I open the window.

He thinks twelve stories will keep me from leaving, but I squeeze through to the ledge. He stands at his car, key in hand, just below my prison.

His startled face turns up as I step off, growing until it crowds my vision, and I am free.

She slaps my face, sending me back to my childhood.
Alcohol, cigars, protection behind my mothers apron.
Embarrassment is quickly overcome by anger.
The fight begins, names and insults are thrown around.
A relationship transposed with bruises on skin.

The police report said “Missing Woman, Mid-Twenties, Brown Hair, Brown Eyes, 5’5″, 132lbs.”

We filed it ten years ago.

Today’s headline read “Mysterious Man Spotted Dumping Body at Coldfield Lake.”

That was reported twelve hours ago.

Ten minutes ago, the pawn broker gave me five hundred dollars for the tarnished wedding band that still breaks my heart after ten lonely years of searching.

“Please, don’t do this,” she said, staring at her brother from atop her horse.
Sitting on his own mount, he turned away, lowering his head. The only noise for several minutes was the sound of the rain.
“I’m sorry,” he replied, nudging the horse in the side. “Goodbye.”

She was quiet, didn’t stand out, the kind of person you never would have noticed. But when the gunman went around the circle of sobbing men and women, asking who wanted to be a hero, she stood up.
“On the ground!”
“You first.”
And then, in the aftermath of frightened cheer and heroic yawps, she found her spot in the circle and sat back down.

We first met online last June. She was prettier in her pictures than in person. Sweet though.
Her family’s finally stopped posting those flyers.
I guess I just don’t respond well to the word “no”.

She slid as her feet hit the high polished floor. Damn stockings! Grabbed the counter edge for support. Fingers touched the cool metal of the doorknob, pulled it open, felt the rush of cool air on her face.
Coffee’s here!” the delivery man said, holding out the box.

After decades of searching, Harold had finally found the Fountain of Youth. His oft-ridiculed theory had proven correct: it was clearly alien in origin. The warm, viscous liquid soothed his ancient limbs as he waded into the shallow pool, and he sighed with relief as his whole body began to tingle. Several moments later, he gasped in horror upon realizing his heart had ceased beating. A pulsing light mocked him from across the basin, and, with the last of his strength, Harold lunged for the button.

WD-40

“Meow. Meow. Meooow…”
THUD.
“Mew!”

Chester finds a roll of duct tape and a red lollypop amidst the detritus in the back of the van, then slides open the side door to watch his quarry. Her small head is lowered as if fascinated by her dirty pink sandals shuffling over the sidewalk.
He waives the candy at the child and says, “You lost, sweetheart?”
She lifts her chin and stumbles to him, moaning as she clambers into his lap. Chester can’t believe his luck, until he feels her teeth rip through his cheek and his mouth fills with blood.

The truth is concealed in the back of his mind, buried under the trauma of his wife’s death.

He doesn’t speak, eat, or interact willingly anymore, but his eyes and mouth move with intent.

It’s as if the event has severed him from this reality, and given way to his own imagination.

I wonder if it is a land of wonders or a sea of nightmares he lives in now.

Nightmares are what that monster deserves…

His entire existence had been created for this moment. Roughened hands caressed the smooth, ancient stones as his heart clattered in his chest. There it was; the goal, the crescendo of his life. Elegant fingers slowly stretches forwards to grasp that cherished moment, then, nothing. His heart stopped as a whisper filled the void “he showed us the flaws…. mortals do have some uses after all..”

Always the last straw, the ultimatum. “I know you’re having an affair with her, and you need to end it this time, or I’m gone for good.”

Then he will call and cry and beg, wanting me to come back, but this time I’ll tell him he’s right, and that I don’t want – no, I don’t need – his ridiculous drama because this time, I’m gone.

“You’re an ass, Frank, and she’s a better fuck anyway. You know how it is,” I’ll say, “once you go chick you never want dick.”

She slowly walked down the chapel’s aisle, scowling at her future husband’s moldy pallor and wondering what had happened at his bachelor party last night. She gritted her teeth and concentrated on smiling at the guests while plotting her revenge on the best man. She felt her father’s fingernails dig into the delicate skin on the inside of her elbow. Screams echoed off the stained glass windows as a formally-attired mob surged toward the exits. At the altar, the groom’s zombie transformation was complete and he was greedily gnawing on the preacher’s arm.

The smell of hot, spicy soup drifted from the upturned food cart, cut through with the acrid metallic tang of a recently discharged energy weapon.

The combination of smells seemed to make Wang even hungrier than the soup alone ever could have, and he wondered when he had last eaten.

The sound of heavy boots taking positions at the entrance to the alley brought him back to the situation at hand.

The guardians had taken his sister for being a political dissident, his cousin for being a sexual deviant and although he wasn’t sure why they were coming for him, he took some comfort in the thought that he’d be taking some of them with him.

He straightened his back, gritted his teeth, pulled the pin and walked forwards.

Dirty gray hairs were severed from his bare feet by shards of glass as he crawled down the alley. He turned left and hung his head after seeing a dumpster in his way. His eyes widened when he looked to the right and saw torchlight coming. He clasped a picture in his hand, refused to look back, and struggled down the alley away from his pursuers. My father’s sacrifice allowed me to escape and I did not see him die.

I didn’t used to believe in ghosts, until my father died and Amy and I moved back into the house where I grew up. I walked the halls of my childhood home and remembered his raised voice, his raised hand, the raised welt on my mother’s face.

Not long after that, the whiskey started flowing more easily and I’d wake up after a missing night, with a sore fist and a silent, black-eyed wife.

Now I have to believe in ghosts. After all—what’s the alternative?

He held his gun, and he held his remote, and he had never been closer to life.

He finally left that miserable, controlling, destructive whore.

He finally disowned those degenerate children and finally quit that stupid, mundane job.

He finally had his own crappy apartment and his own unpaid cable bill.

He finally was ready to die.

A.M. Schultz
http://amschultz.com

Some girls gotta run. She won’t get far out here, in the sand and the dry, parching death. That’s why I brought her out here and let her go. I adjust my canteen, feel for the pistol at my belt, and start after her; the delay gives us both time to reflect on what’s to come. It always ends the same, but I enjoy the sport and, well, some girls just gotta run.

The sound of heavy boots taking positions at the entrance to the alley brought him back to the situation at hand.

The guardians had taken his sister for being a political dissident, his cousin for being a sexual deviant and although he wasn’t sure why they were coming for him, he took some comfort in the thought that he’d be taking some of them with him.

He straightened his back, gritted his teeth, pulled the pin and walked forwards.

The light flickers as it hovers on the tip of my finger. So beautiful, so perfect. I lean closer and inhale the essence of life, the essence of what I created. They have no idea as they scurry along through their days; that with a snap, it can all be gone. But I am benevolent and tuck the spark back in my pocket.

“I can’t stand it anymore,” she said, sounding as broken as her front door lock. “I try, and I try, and nothing that I do is good enough for anybody, in my family, at my job, in my freaking life.” The lone naked bulb in the kitchen reflected its light oddly off of the surface of the red wine in her glass.

“Mommy, who are you talking to?,” a small, still voice said behind her.

“Nobody,” she said, knowing it wasn’t true.

The girl in the apartment above Tommy was a screamer.

Every evening he would lay in his bed, trying to figure out if the water stain on his ceiling looked like Jesus or Jerry Garcia, and wait until the auditory porn began.

Sometimes Tommy would make up stories of why she brought back a different man every night, ranging from being a sex addict to a call girl with student loans.

His favorite fantasy was that she was like Cinderella, trying to find the cock that fit her just right.

He wished she would hurry up and find her prince.

“But w-what’s going to happen to me?” The balding man’s chains trembled, jingling merrily against the stone wall of the crypt that lay far beneath the bar room.

“We saved a life tonight when we rescued the girl you bought from her mother; a life must be given to balance that act.” The twins looked back at him from the doorway, one serious and one with a smile. “Yours.”

The only sound Belle can hear is the thunder of her shoes, the ragged sounds her lungs issue as they beg her to stop. She’s been running, fleeing, for so long now, but the end seems so far away. She questions how far she has yet to go, unsure of what it will take to make her stop. She slows and looks at reflection in the mirrored water of a puddle. All she can see is the chubby, flabby girl from 60 pounds ago, while the puddle begs her to see the beautiful person she has become.

They were coming. And I was ready for them, ready to make right the wrongs., ready to die, with no regrets, no regrets but one.
Her, Sara, one word, one name and chasm of sadness opened up, threaten to swallow me whole. We are the choices that we make, and I chose to die for her, to die for a better world for her to live in. God, I hoped she would know.

Bitter wind cut hard across the grassland plain and the big Appaloosa shuddered, pulled up hard with a shake, a steamy snort, and a whine. Knowing he’d kissed the sad woman in the doorway for the last time, he pulled the coat collar up around his neck and settled into the mount, felt the rifle barrel touch his leg, buried the butt of the .44 deeper into his ribs, like comfort.

She called to him, her voice broken, “You leave none of ‘em, y’ hear?”

He only nodded back once, her face red with cold and despair.

The man rode west into the wind and he glanced down at the small, broken headstone with not enough time passed between the dates.

He’s stolen something. I can tell by his dejected posture. His eyes dart across the room. He tries to leave.

“Hey, kid. Put whatever you’ve taken on the counter.”

He puts an apple from his pocket next to my register.

“You only stole an apple?”

He shrugs, but I see his hidden smirk. I pick him up. I shake him. I give him a pat down. Nothing? But I’m sure he…

His father enters. A cop.

I go to jail. And wouldn’t you know it, on my way out, I saw that sucker steal a Twinkie. Just like that.

“A haiku class? Sure!”

“My boyfriend will meet us there.”

Damn it all to hell.

He licked the blood from his gristle-coated fingers, savoring the flavor. He looked over at her body, posed languid and beautiful in the mess on the bed.

“That’s the most twisted thing I’ve ever done, but I loved every minute of it.”

“You’re a sick man, hun. I’ve done whipped cream, but you eating a raw steal off my stomach was the sickest shit I’ve ever let you talk me into.”

The names she used at home were never hers, nor were the lives she shared with the men on the other side of her computer screen. All the stories were credible, certainly; within them, she aspired to be more an apple than an orange, and chuckled when one (for they all eventually did) insisted he thought her something more exotic than either. The truth was what it was, and her truths weren’t necessary for their conversations.

It pleased her when the latest ones managed to stumble into her diner in the morning, haggard, visibly older but smiling. No one ever noticed her face, but it hadn’t changed in a hundred years, so it hardly mattered.

The Cheshire cat’s grin hung low in the sky, mocking me furiously. I didn’t know why and wasn’t sure I could – or even wanted to find out. I mean, I hadn’t done anything to earn that particular grin, but there it was.

I sat on the porch until I was nearly frozen, staring and wondering. The grin was silent, keeping its answers close. When I finally went back inside, my husband looked at me with curiosity and asked, “What’s so funny?”

She smiled, even though she was in pain, the smile was real. She screamed as the pain overtook her. She knew it was almost over. She looked down at her precious little one, so tiny and perfect. She smiled.

Bauble-

Trinket, knick-knack, curiousity; the little statue looked like a caricature of a grinning horse seated on its haunches, nothing more than that.

“And you think it’s evil?” I asked, turning towards Lukas. From the corner of my eye the statue seemed to rear up and loom over me, all teeth and fangs. The stench of something dark and ancient was so strong that it doubled me over and left me retching.

“Ah, it seems to like you,” said Lukas.

(uh, fuck shit, i submitted a comment i didn’t mean to. WRONG WRONG WRONG ENTRY. here’s my mini story)

“Her mouth is pretty, I wanna get in.”

“I already got in there.”

“Just once? Not worth another go eh?”

“Her saliva is a mean acid.”

I walk across the desolate field with the ransom to get Julie back in a duffle on my shoulder.

They step out from behind a copse of trees, a man in a mask and a woman in a hood. I toss the duffle at their feet and he pulls the hood off a woman I’ve never seen before, then smiles. I walk away, leaving the duffle on the ground.

In my car, gun in hand, one bullet loaded, I’m ready to pay the price for failure when Julie taps on my window, duffle in hand, saying “You passed Daddy’s test!”

They crawl through my innards, lay eggs at the rim of my eyes, scratch at rotting flesh for an exit. Even after they made such a fuss to get in?

I may be dead, but I still feel them moving about, dining on me as if I weren’t even here.
I want to itch, to flick them off, to scream for help.

But all I have left are memories.

I made the mistake of falling in love. She was broken and beautiful. Maybe I could fix or. Or maybe she could fix me. But then I saw the devil in her eyes through the smoke coming off the barrel of her gun.

The problems in the world were too large and great for far too long, he could not do it any more.
‘At least in the old way’, he thought as he watched the cape and spandex smoulder in the fire.
The Hero No More began a new list, carefully writing the names in sharp precise block letters. With sharp steel, he would fix the world. One up close and personal death at a time.

“The Truth is in Here.”

I was hurt–physically, emotionally, spiritually–but I had won, and I had the oracle by the throat.
“You feel like you have no control over your life and you have wasted most of your energy and all of your days.”
“I didn’t go through your bullshit tests to be told what I already know! I came here to learn something new–to be a better man!”
“Did you really think that was possible?”

If you look really hard she still retains a certain glamour, but only on a good day.

In a previous life she had it all; she was an A-lister, she sparkled, turned heads, broke more than a few hearts. Now there are only memories – and needles.

The stench of the public toilet assails her senses as a liquid jewel, an HIV ruby, pops out of her vein, gathering at the exit of the thin steel lifeline.

She’s well past caring about her appearance but she covers her arm carefully, in her line of business it makes the punters nervous.

I smiled at her, my dislocated arm dangling by my side. “Even a straitjacket can’t prevent our love!” I hugged her, but she didn’t hug back.

After James discovered his tumor, he grew bold, jaywalked—vowed to compensate for his regretful life.

He exercised compassion: forgave past injustices; stopped prattling about coworkers; and apologized to his parents for his transgressions.

He practiced generosity: tipped waiters, whether or not they provided satisfactory service; tithed to his church; gave money to beggars, including the one he suspected of feigning blindness.

He embraced love: smiled at strangers; complimented mothers on the beauty of their babies, even if he considered the babies ugly; hugged and praised his wife and children.

After James learned the tumor was benign, he stopped jaywalking.

Holy Crabgrass, Chuckman! Whole lot of entries.

The Snow

Scrabbling on the roof!
The snow avalanches down–I open the cabin door a crack, no way out.
The last of the dogs were taken a week ago.
Now they’re back for me.
That damn falling star.

When I look at you, when you’re walking away, it’s like I’m watching you from the coldness of space. Will you ever turn to look up at me? Me, the worthless, falling debris? I pray that you will, ah, I pray that you won’t. Like the atmosphere, obsession would burn you away.

It’s 4:40 now. Just 20 more minutes. I type some nonsense into my computer in hopes of calming myself down. The guise of work. To have my hands do something while my mind wanders into that impenetrable realm of obsession.

“Serial Killer Spree” the massive headline screamed. The connected article was packed with sensationalistic fear-mongering around what little detail the media had been allowed to disclose.
Stanley shook his head, digusted with what passed for journalism these days, and focused instead out the window of his bedroom. As night fell hours later, he finally stood up and left the house, the comforting weight of the knife in his hand.

Ninety eight words and five sentences:

Jack glanced adoringly at Anne and reached out to hold one of her soft hands.

He had loved her for sixty-four years, and married her sixty-three of those years ago.

She was the only reason he had stoically endured such debilitating pain in recent months as his body rapidly failed him; he had never once considered that she would go before him.

He relinquished her dead hand to pick up his Beretta from the chair-side table, his eyes filling with unshed tears.

It was time to stand again by the side of the woman he loved so completely.

Al’s face felt numb from asking endless questions as he slipped his bulk into a cheap, protesting chair. The ex-husband of someone in a group of national heroes gets stepped on by their fifty-foot robot, and the pilots of the body-parts all point fingers at each other. He could just tell that if he charged anyone, the newspapers would lead with that picture of cops putting a chalk outline around the corpse… and the giant gory left-footprints ‘escaping the scene.’

He let the warm stain of a cigarette lift him up, and flushed the problem to the traffic department.

The word everyone always used for you was “strong.” Hell, he even acknowledged it during that last argument, though he disguised it in code like “bull-headed, spiteful, grudge-holding bitch!”

Back in college he’d claimed he wanted a strong partner to help get through life’s challenges. But you knew strength doesn’t lend itself to partnership, that somebody’s got to be in charge, and there was no way it was gonna be him – not until 16 years later when he serves you with divorce papers and you realize that he’s in charge, after all.

Yeah, you’re so strong, you almost didn’t cry.

-Comedy Night – St. Marks Hotel-

She listened to all his jokes about rich east village girls and republicans, then he sexed her with his jeans down and passed out. The least she could do is write a joke on his stomach while he slept with his mouth open. The joke ran down his leg, over his knee, into his holey sock. He’d told her she was the smartest waitress at the comedy club because she laughed at all his good jokes. She ‘got’ him.

Apologies if this is a duplicate post – I’d posted it an hour or two ago but it’s no longer visible in the list between the two stories it was originally nestled between. I must have screwed up somehow. Anyhoo… Here’s my ninety-eight words and five sentences:

Jack glanced adoringly at Anne and reached out to hold one of her soft hands.

He had loved her for sixty-four years, and married her sixty-three of those years ago.

She was the only reason he had stoically endured such debilitating pain in recent months as his body rapidly failed him; he had never once considered that she would go before him.

He relinquished her dead hand to pick up his Beretta from the chair-side table, his eyes filling with unshed tears.

It was time to stand again by the side of the woman he loved so completely.

Riordan glared over his Guiness bottle at the asshole who had just shoved a dollar bill in the jukebox. “Happy Saint Patty’s Day!” Mr. Drunk Asshole crowed. Riordan knocked back the last of the precious beer and wrapped his hand around the neck. Amidst the reckless partying of the fake-Irish, nobody saw him break the bottle against his barstool. He tucked it in his jacket and followed Mr. Drunk Asshole into the restroom.
“Do you even understand ‘The Rising of the Moon’?” Riordan quickly avenged the memory of the United Irishmen.

For weeks after her father died, Charlotte would park her car outside his house for as long as she could stand, before throwing the car in drive and hurtling away.

When she finally unlocked the door, on a hazy summer morning, a copy of the paper languished on the breakfast table, held in place by a rabbit shaped paperweight. She turned over the rabbit to find her name etched, stiff and sharp, into the clay.

For a long time, then, she sat on the floor with the rabbit cupped in her palm, tracing his bubblegum pink smile with her finger.

I was in the Caribbean, consulting the eminent expert on 18th-century sailing ships; he was poring over my plans of the ship I’d invented for my novel.

He shook his head disdainfully at the over-sized diagram of the Raking Talon’s gun deck, “this schooner’s ordnance is the ammo equivalent of furniture tacks. Come back Friday and I’ll show you a REAL ship: we found Stormbringer and she’s in perfect condition.”

“Wait–you couldn’t have ‘found’ Stormbringer; I made her up too…it’s just a story!!”

Then the alarm went off, and I woke up wondering where I’d left his business card.

It rained both days; the day the ultrasound technician turned pale and scrunched his eyes at us in inadvertent sympathy, and the day we drove our daughter home. She cried all the way from Stanford to Fresno with some other baby’s lungs.

Again.

It happened again.

Why didn’t I stop it; did I want it to happen?

Am I some kind of sick monster that WANTS them all dead, to watch as their screams turn to squelching hot gushing geysers of glorious carnage?

The long and the short of it is…yes.

She was walking away, and it was the best thing that had happened all day.

The best thing.

He was sure of it as he haphazardly crinkled the eleventh emptied beer can of the past hour or so.

The best, most amazing thing.

He was positively ecstatic as he tumbled halfway onto his bed, his knees on the ground, his hands clutching the bedsheets like ivy clamped onto a wall, too weak to stand on its own; and his eyes watered them silently.

The boxes fell from the sky in the middle of rush hour traffic on a Thursday, floating to the earth on the end of filthy brown parachutes that blocked out the morning sun.

There were now two types of people in the world – those with boxes, and those without – and the world was changing.

Emma didn’t have a box, but her friend Eve did, and as the chaos and flames engulfed her world the truth was clear to Emma – first came the boxes, then the changes, then the end.

Like so many others she fought for as long as she could, but they each fought alone, without the means now to organise or plan.

She fought with all she had left, until all she could do was run.

He led her to a place she didn’t know and abandoned her in the street without her dog or her cane. For a joke. A stranger helped her to get home. In her own place, her clever hands found the hammer. Waiting for him in the dark was no problem.

KTFO (5 sentences; WC 93)

The blood and bruises on my face made it clear that I’d been getting my ass thoroughly kicked, but this fight only had 30 more seconds. I jabbed left; he dodged right. I jabbed left then swung a hard right; he blocked. I leaned back, waited for him to pursue, then popped a hard, straight kick and caught him right under the chin, snapping his head back like a Pez dispenser. No candy came out, but as he landed flat on his back, I let rip my victory cry: “KNOCKED THE FUCK OUT!!”

Her sobs are so loud and full of snot I want to offer a tissue, but I don’t, I sit on my haunches, waiting on her to make the decision. Thirty minutes pass before her eyes finally meet mine and I know her choice is selected. Her mouth opens, a scream bubbling through her ragged throat. I feel the warm red of her life pour from her arteries, my knife is shiny with the stuff and I am disgusted. We could have been happy together, all she had to do was shut the hell up.

Eveline’s Ashes

He placed the urn containing Eveline’s ashes on the coffee table they used to sit at to watch TV together. Looking at this makeshift memorial to their relationship, he still felt uneasy about not fulfilling his side of the bargain. But it was her illness, not his, and she was always the dominant one – she’d made him promise that he would. Now for the very first time, he was in charge, and he felt intrepid, glorious. “Goodbye, Mother,” he said.

“One does not simply LOLCat into Mordor,” the anon-bot said again.
“Gah! Take your damn Heart Of The Net and be done with me,” the virii king said, throwing down the 8-bit pixilated diamond.
We scooped it up before someone else could pirate it from us; knowing full well that the sex-bots were about in this dark corner of the web. It warmed us with its ever radiate presence of memes, porn, videos of people doing stupid things, porn, wrong opinions, right opinions, porn, and Betty White commercials. We would never be bored again.

[...] 2012 Posted by Steve Short stories, Writing Here’s another very short short story for a Flash Fiction Challenge. Chuck’s brief: I want you to tell me a story in five sentences. (Yes, a complete story.) No [...]

I picked that road on a whim because it was a new path to where I was going. I stopped by the scuffed brick wall to ask the old man why he prayed and burned incense here. He explained in slow, broken English how this day was the seventy-sixth anniversary of when young men tried to change the government at the point of a gun. Seventeen of them were executed against these bricks for their hubris. I took several pictures and decided to follow my whims more often.

I was walking alone on the beach when the rhythmic sound of low tide was replaced by the wallop of crashing building materials. My grandmother’s house, a 1960’s bungalow, rolled up on a wave as high as Mavericks and overtook me, clapboards and pipes and all. It burned my throat with warm memories of musty rugs and easter-purple galoshes. The perfect chaser for a terrible wedding night.

My hand held hers just a moment ago but now she’s off alone again.
Did she expect me to risk following her out into the garden after the mayor disappeared?
I had to make sure she was the one behind it.
She told me she trusts me, but that’s a lie.
I can’t let her feed again tonight.

Days after the blast, we were still pinned under beams and hot debris, me and some little kid.

His eyes were open and I didn’t know if he was dead so I said it’s okay, you can let go.

At his funeral, his weeping mother hugged me like I’d spent three days living with her dead baby.

Over and over, it’s me saying let go, this kid closing his eyes, new air and light hitting our senses, mine hardly aware and his narrowly missed.

I let her hug me, my whole body red, and I never stop saying, “I’m sorry.”

Miller knew he could be loved again. He had known it since he started to feel better about himself a year ago. He would stand in front of the mirror in the old newsroom bathroom and smile at himself. He would practice making small talk and being charming and engaging without the whiskey lubricant. He flossed.

“I dunno Tania, its a bit short” I can hear the frown in my voice.
Calling that skirt slutty would be unfair to sluts.
“If your Dad were here he wouldn’t be happy to see you going out like that”
” Well he’s hardly going to say anything from the cemetry is he?” she slammed the words at me.
Then she turned and walked out the door taking what was left of my heart with her.

As Ms. Atwood stood facing the noose, she was recalled to her first carnival trip; it was loud, bright, and crowded, the air heavy with the smell of the menagerie and sweet with roasting meets and candy. Suddenly the warm, reassuring pressure of her mother’s hand was gone, and she was lost in the bustle of skirts and violent laughter.
“Any last words?” a gruff voice asked.
She shook her head and was back, facing a crowd of hushed onlookers, “You are all as guilty as I am.”
The gallows shook, and was still.

I resisted blinking for as long as my parched eyeball would allow. The blank wall I was staring at stared back at me, waiting for when I would fail.

I stared it down. It was close to losing.

Then my eyes shut for the brief moment it took for me to remember everything, and I collapsed under the torrential flood of memory when they wouldn’t open again.

The colors warped around me in a weird rainbow of distortion, and I realized I wasn’t in the same place I’d fallen asleep in. The windows were open, and a bottle of clear liquid stood on the table. It didn’t need a DRINK ME label for me to glug it down, and then I was spiraling back into the dank palace of subconscious desires. Then he was slapping me awake, telling me that all of it was over and this sort of escape wasn’t really necessary anymore. How do you tell someone you’re too far gone to change?

Confused. Forgetful. “Getting old”.

When I was a kid, he was the undefeated driveway basketball champion for six summers straight, the fixer, the maker, the judge and jury.

Now I am tuck him into his bed, trying my best not to hear his unspoken question of “Who are you?”

True Story:

I met you through a dating site and you took me to a bowling alley for our first date in your pretty blue mustang that you said you would never let me drive and I fell for you because of the heavy gauged ring through your nose and the way your left eye squints a little when you laugh.

I love you even though we haven’t known each other very long because sometimes you meet someone — and I’m not saying it’s destiny or fate or anything like that because you know I don’t believe in it — but sometimes you meet someone who is exactly who you long to love, and I guess I got lucky because I’m exactly the kind of person you long to love.

When two people profess that they will love one another for the rest of their lives, more often than not, whether they mean to or not, time tells them sooner or later that they were lying.

So there I was, sitting on the toilet, looking at the test window on that silly little eighty-eight cent HCG test and wondering if I could manage to love you for the rest of my life as that pink little test line formed parallel to the control line.

It’s amazing how one moment of weakness in the throes of passion can alter the course of two people’s lives.

Upon re-reading the prompt, I realize that it’s not just five sentences, but one hundred words I’m limited to. I guess I got jumpy. Here’s a tribute to my not so amazing editing skills:

~~

I fell for you because of the heavy gauged ring through your nose and the way your left eye squints a little when you laugh.

I love you even though we haven’t known each other very long because sometimes you meet someone — and I’m not saying it’s destiny or fate or anything like that — but sometimes you meet someone who is exactly who you long to love.

So I’m sitting here, looking at the test window on this 88 cent HCG test. Positive.

I find myself hoping I can manage to love you for the rest of my life.

After the procedure, the boy waited with his father and wondered why people read magazines about beautiful houses and cars.

They were both sad, but the boy couldn’t help but be a little bit happy thinking that things would stay the same now.

His mother came out, escorted by an orderly, ready to go home.

He looked around the room in all the trash cans. “Where is it?” he said. “I’ve never seen a fetus before!”

NINETEEN
~*~*~*~*~

It was so long ago. His draft notice arrived a week after he turned eighteen and he headed off to Vietnam. He watched friends kill and he watched friends be killed. The war didn’t end soon enough. He came home at nineteen but he never knew it, he was in box.

The Human Experiment.

26 days previous, I wouldn’t have given thought to a stranger telling me that I’d end up with a body full of metal pieces on an entirely new planet. That’s all changed now that they’ve invaded our minds and our residences. The invasions are happening because their policies have changed, as they no longer see us fit to control our own existences. As a tall man covered in rags for clothes and bags on his feet approaches me, I understand that it is happening again. It’s time to be moved and re structured, like cattle awaiting their slaughter.

***

At the end, death teases with slow motion, prolonging the inevitable.

It feels like I’ve been falling forever and with each passing window the anger swells inside of me.

That self-righteous bastard thought he could chose how and when I die but the decision wasn’t his to make.

Most people try to fight their way out of hell but I’m going to find my way in, because in trying to save my soul he damned his own.

When his day comes, I’ll be waiting to usher him into an eternity of vengeance.

A Hike Turned To A Run

I could smell it before he appeared on the path, a rank rotting garbage smell assaulted my senses, so badly I wanted to hurl breakfast. My brain actually registered the term before the smell and sight combined as one in front of me. Bigfoot. It stood there, huge, unreal, but very tangible moving pile of red matted hair. It bellowed at me with flashing huge teeth; I ran.

“Wait.” She walked out of the basement, into the backyard, late afternoon sunlight and green grass on her bare feet. He spoke softly, slowly bleeding back in the shadows down in the concrete, draining into the sewer, up from the darkness, “Maria, please don’t leave me like this.”

She threw the knife down, danced around in her summer dress, Good Vibrations playing in her head. She turned, closing the cellar door, smiling, “Clive, it won’t be long now, see you later sweety.”

She was too beautiful to take seriously. No matter how substantial her job, how shockingly, stunningly adept her vocabulary, no matter how severely she thrashed Noah at Scrabble that first late night or how off-handed her manner while pawing a five dollar bill out of her sky-blue satchel to give to the guy playing the recorder at Burrard and Davie; women didn’t just look like that and have the….the depth of character to be interested in a guy like Noah, he was sure of it. Still, grim Virgo determination and his immigrant upbringing forced him to steel his nerves and ask her again to the wine bar, his whole being warring with the idea of whether the best existed and if so, could he have it? Crammed into a booth the size of two phone books, Ahi tuna towering in a still life with two glasses of pinot noir in front of them finally gave him the nerve to ask. She fell uncommonly silent for a long moment before raspberry-painted lips stretched across perfect Shiksa teeth and the back of an impossibly soft hand dragged across his cheek as she said, ‘Silly, Noah, don’t you know you can’t fuck a tall guy in the shower?’

What?
No.
Look, I told that idiot the same thing yesterday, which was BEFORE I bought a fresh box of hollow-points and this fifth of Lagavulin, so I’m going to tell you again, now, and you best not forget.
FUCK.
YOU.

Behind me, everyone is in a panic shouting “Jump! Jump!”, but paralysis strikes as quickly as I reach the ledge.

After stumbling over body parts, tangled legs, heat and mental exhaustion, the deafening sound of screaming children and the thought of demise racing, it’s come to this moment of bravery. With a sacrificial push or a courageous leap, I’m in the air for hours.

The abrupt landing twinged from foot to shoulder, and my knees buckled painfully under the pressure.

Relief set in and a smirk began, I made it to the ground safely…the bus drill was over.

Uncle Taffy, the family moonshiner, took a long pull from his tobacco pipe, saying, “Least them brain-eatin’ folks waited ‘til end of the cer’mony.”

I looked down at the gore splattered everywhere, including the French lace hem of my wedding dress, debating.

But when I shifted my shotgun against my shoulder, I saw my ring and had to nod in agreement.

“Cabelas?” Hubby asked, looking manly with the machete Pappy’d handed off to him as he slid an arm around my waist, lips feathering the fine hairs at my temple.

Auntie Mae-Lou smiled, “You’ll train up just fine, city boy.”

Jacob’s mind ran through the details of his plan, the plan that would show the human race what he was capable of. At the press of a button the nuclear arsenal at his command would devastate the earth and then everyone would suffer, everyone would know what true pain was. When the world’s racked by nuclear destruction the human survivors would bow to him, they would respect him. Although he couldn’t do anything while he was a prisoner, he had to escape this high tech fortress.

A young nurse with a warm and friendly smile leaned over his chair ‘Jacob, it’s time for your medicine.’ She said kindly.

She’s alone in the diner now, everyone else gone, eaten by God knows what awful things, like the vending machine, trash-can and dishwasher. Her only hope: the pickup outside. She makes a break for it, fumbles the door with trembling hands, heart a crazy gallop. She makes it! Key goes into the ignition, her scream stolen from her as the cars interior transforms into a suffocating cave of many teeth.

Ashes:
She is nothing and no one, strapped into a fate of someone else’s chosing, hurtling through obscurity toward the shores of oblivion.
Her heart burns in silence, a soft and flickering dream shining in the fetid darkness. The flame gutters, falters…revives. And then the chill wind quenches it completely.
But no one weeps for the loss of her flame; for what use is light to the blind?

The neighbor’s terrier yipped as I buckled up. It’s an annoying thing, best ignored, but while pulling away I glanced back and noticed an accusation in its moist eyes.

It knew that nature’s templet was invalid here, that a creature designed to run and leap in packs had been reduced to short walks hindered by a short leash, knew that, though its ancestors were bred to root vermin from the dirt, our manicured lawns were off limits for any of its natural urges.

Hell, pulled so far from my natural state, I’d bark too.

My necktie seemed unusually tight today.

You avoid the other car safely, or the knife clatters harmlessly to the floor. Your mind splits; you’ve gone back to cutting the vegetables or driving along uneventfully. But in the same moment, you’re also rolling into the river, kicking hopelessly at the glass, or weeping and trying to clean up the cat’s blood before your wife gets home. That second road, the one less traveled, gets longer every time you get dragged down it.

Then, one day, you don’t come back.

“The spell lasts one night, so indulge your fantasies and, er, have fun with it… er, him,” the gypsy had said. “Cash only and no refunds.”

At sunset I swigged red wine, then concentrated on my list: 6′ 4″, swimmer’s physique, dark curls, bronze skin, grey eyes, 30 years old, sane, intelligent, warm, strong, gentle, big… hands, an amazing touch, passion and heat, a panty-melting baritone, a dedication to my pleasure. I blew out the magicked candle, completing the ritual.

“Hi, hon,” whispered the spitting image of my Jonathan, as he took me in his arms, alive again, at least until sunrise.

[...] is my entry in a five-sentence-story contest being run on the Terrible Minds website. Entries are to tell a complete story in five sentence, with 100-word maximum. My entry above has [...]

The two of us have searched the charred Earth for decades and have finally accepted the truth: we are the last two, and the continuation of humanity depends on us to copulate. But I have always had a sensitivity to smells, even after living in the wasteland for so long.

He disrobed in front of me once, and I’m sorry, but that’s just…uh-uh.

I’m not going to the abattoir,
just to cream insatiables with my fear and trembling.

Cut the sound!

I won’t be stricken stone,
mesmerized by drones,
tides of thunder and family.

Wanna divert the Blood Line of Mars?

Strip the paint of glory from those who prop up judges,
grapevine the procession and crown with thorns:
they release all their amens when they smack into the eye of God.

Come Again?

“Arehuhreshun,” Jesus mumbled around a mouthful of bread.

“If I’m performing a resurrection, I need to know my cut as re-animator,” Joshua said.

“I love how your needs are more important than God’s,” Jesus said, snorting rudely and sucking bread down his windpipe.

Watching Jesus choke, Joshua thought how a virgin birth and years of lordin’ it over the disciples was a lot of setup to waste on bread – even really good bread.
When Jesus lay blue-faced on the rug, Joshua called the magic and waited for his profits to double through a little bread-induced, pre-resurrection resurrection.

I’m not normally like this, you see. I was once a respectable gentleman, a banker, actually. That seems like so long ago. Now, since the gypsy, I can’t seem to get over the taste of barley. Anyway, can you get the next round?

I can’t remember anymore how or why I’d gotten to that point, but one car dive off a cliff later, I was here. I look down at my two now immovable legs and almost want to laugh at the absurdity of it all. A part of you never can accept something like this–you keep willing your useless limbs to move and for what? A lifetime of reliance on white-coated yes men who smile to your face and rob you blind behind your back. Still, I think to myself with a wry smile, at least I didn’t end up like the other guy.

They never stop coming……

The sound invades my dreams, the nagging irritating bleating causes me pain on primal level. The neanderthals on the other end of the phone, with the same cries again and again, “My computer doesn’t work, but my brother, son, nephew, neighbors brat is a computer genius!”. Get them to fix it you pompous twit I want to say, “How can I be of assistance”, I merrily reply. My soul ripped from my body and trod upon by the unknowing unappreciative wastes of human flesh that burden my day. The phone never stops ringing……

Sally looked at the photograph again. The way the sun played on his blonde curls and brightened his eyelashes almost let her believe he was blessed. But then those black eyes sucked at her soul, and his smirk reminded her. Sally put the picture in the grill and threw in a match. He burned.

“Bend me to your will,” I offered.

“That’s not even funny,” she replied.

“Hey, you’re the one that needs marketing copy for a catheter company, not me.”

The ink had long run dry but still he wrote, digging the pen nib into the pages of the book that no-one would read.

He placed the book below his pillow, then pulled his grey blanket around his shoulders and turned to kneel on his bunk. He leant his forehead on the window and studied the view.

The vast solar sails spread their fingers into the darkness, gratefully accepting the scraps of light that the pitying stars threw their way. The battered capsule gave a tired hum as it slipped into the depths of space, on a journey to nowhere.

Bobbins – a bespectacled, nerdy sort of guy – arose from his writing desk and was content with his days work. He walked over to the fluttering curtains and looked out over the village bathed in the light of the golden sunset. Then he knew she was there, her perfume was unmistakeable. She moved her soft, teasing hand over his shoulder, down his chest, and finally to his crotch to unbuckle his belt.

And then Bobbins woke up, stiff as a board, and willing himself to get back to sleep.

In Egypt, the day before the camping trip, I ate a warm egg sandwich of questionable age. The night, and this is the night before the camping trip, I learned the cruel arithmetic of choosing the correct combination of ends and basins in the bathroom. In the early morning–this would be the morning of the camping trip– I lay on my bed and suffered, too weak to load more than 2 episodes of Parks and Recreation at a time, the effort of moving my hand and wrists in such precise motions too taxing for my diseased body. It was 2 am and I thought of not going on the trip, of staying in Cairo for those three days instead of escaping to the desert where the white rock formations look like scenes from fantasy films, of breathing in the grey pollution and endless noise, and I knew I would be a fool to inflict Cairo upon my body at its weakest. Hours later, the day of the camping trip, anti-diarrheal medication coursing through my body, I slept and slept as we four travelers in our tiny Jeep made our way out of the Cairo mess like a black speck of sand in a sea of khaki, and I didn’t have to poop for the entire weekend.

The contest lasted for hours, and everything I cared about in this world hinged on the outcome.

It was a life and death struggle of incredible proportions, a battle of blood and sweat and tears and oaths sworn bitterly against apathetic gods.

Until finally, bloody and helpless, he fell limp into my arms.

For an eternal moment—stillness— and then he looked into my eyes, coughed, and began to cry the primeval cry of Life: pure, unadulterated, and glorious.

I swear his indignant old-man face was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

I tried to fight the hot blood lust in my veins, but the roots of my ancestry ran too deep. The Others had tried to breed this out of my kind, to bend us to their ways, but failed.

I stalked, smelled the scent of fear, saw the wild glittering eyes, heard the panicked footsteps. I felt my muscles tense, my claws extend, I leapt, caught, thrilled at the metallic taste of blood in my mouth.

Then I was lifted high by the scruff of my neck, and heard those dreaded words, “No kitty, bad kitty, drop the mouse!”

As he began leading his mother to safety he glanced back, finally looked at me. It had been three long years but that one look told me it had never been over, not for him…and not for me.
“Man the gates,” I yelled, unsheathing my sword with a triumphant smile.
If life truly was a game, as he had always said, I had just won.

The officer motioned, I sat down.

Prisoner 2445961 sat across from me.

“Michael Smitty, serving twenty for aggravated assault and rape?”

He shrugged: old, greying.

You won’t know me, but you knew my mother… well, for a few seconds.

As he began leading his mother away, he finally looked at me. It had been three long years but that one look told me it had never been over, not for him…and not for me.
“Man the gates,” I yelled, unsheathing my sword with a triumphant smile as the sounds of battle outside drew closer.
If life were truly a game, as he had so often quipped, I had just won.

“Why am I alone?” Oh yeah, the internet. I can’t turn my back on it. She said, “you might be sick, but you feel alright to me.” The fan was still humming as the screen went black.

When I hear Sadie yelp, I search frantically until I find her stuck in an otter trap. She looks at me with her soft spaniel eyes, whines softly, and wags her tail. I curse whoever placed the damn thing so close to the river, while I struggle to push the springs apart and pull it away. Freed, she doesn’t move, but her breath stays strong as I slip my jacket under her and carry her in its sling to the car. We race to the vet only to find that her neck is broken and they cannot save her.

I rolled over, and propped myself up on my elbow to revel in the glory of her. Looking down at her beautiful face, I knew that a thousand years could never be enough. A strangely familiar scent played hide and seek with my nostrils. It was difficult to give it a name, and almost impossible to recognize the danger of the hissing sound it accompanied. When the realization struck me, it was much too late to give her a second look.

They say you can tell a lot about folk from the state of their floor, and I’ll tell ya this for nowt, we’re no exception. No matter how I clean that ruddy carpet, there’s still a green scrape by the door from our Dean’s first footie boots. That rough bit’s where our Trisha spilt them paints as a bairn, trying a still life of the dog.

That red patch, there? That’s where I spilt Danny’s beer, when Newcastle lost to Sunderland in the derby. You can’t tell me it isn’t, I know this floor like the back of his hand.

They say you can tell a lot about folk from the state of their floor, and I’ll tell ya this for nowt, we’re no exception. No matter how I clean that ruddy carpet, there’s still a green scrape by the door from our Dean’s first footie boots. That rough bit’s where our Trisha spilt them paints as a bairn, trying a still life of the dog.

That red patch, that’s where I spilt Danny’s beer, when Newcastle lost to Sunderland in the derby. You can’t tell me it isn’t, I know this floor like the back of his hand.

I haven’t read any of the other entries yet but here’s mine:

Janice’s eyes are staring back at me, judging my confession of true love. Her eyes, usually bright blue windows to rooms full of smiles and laughter, are empty and hard. She’s a beautiful young teacher with infinite patience, deep empathy, and warm compassion, and I want to marry her. I’m holding an engagement ring in front her, a little over two month’s salary in pristine diamond and white gold, and all I feel now is dread. There is a little bit of blood on the ring from my fingers but we will be together forever soon, the pills I’ve swallowed are starting to make me sleepy.

Tale as old as crime, you’re happily partnered with her but still fixated on my dark anatomy. We never did get to play, to touch, to fuck, but we played secret games until you called it off and I was fine with finality. Friends, we said, we can do that. But ten days in and you’re still lingering, laying out your repressed Catholic baggage, angling for this deviant little atheist to open her arms Madonna-like, because it’s not cheating if you’re on the phone and the hand in my pants is mine. Fiends, I say, both of us.

Reading through all the wonderful entries and just noticed the homophone error in mine. If you can find it in your heart to forgive using “waived” instead of “waved” I would be grateful.

hope I’m not too late!

—

The saloon shimmered on the horizon; dogged footsteps stirred up arid dust, never drawing closer.

The mirage gained substance at sunset. Wooden boards creaked beneath ragged boots and skeletal remains stirred to life, retrieved faded cards, and shifted broken chairs to pick up their eternal game. One teetered on the stool edge, pounded a discordant tune on the piano and the bartender, with his eternal grin, slid a fresh bottle and glass to him, he joined the game.

The inevitable disagreement turned violent; iron drawn and a gunshot rang out leaving another set of bones to bleach in the sun.

A Fairytale

He draws his sword and starts hacking away at the thorny branches, which surrounds the castle and the princess inside.
The skulls of those who came before, watch him as he imagines a grandmother telling her grandchildren: ‘He drew his sword ….’
The roses come alive and grab at him, but this is simply the kind of hardship all heroes must overcome.
Not until a branch slips around his neck and starts to tighten does it occur to him, that maybe he is not the hero in this tale; maybe he is simply another one of those who came before.

Fuck. Totally missed this one.

I’m late and I don’t care:

Perhaps they always knew; she and he, what they’d become and where they would end when humbly beginning from such frailty.
Their time was borrowed, and not secretly so, from the cypher who would ultimately see it repaid.
Small joys and sparse victories accompanied most of the coils they shared – save the one living dream beyond their fondest wishes, who breathed into them the hope of achievements beyond their capacity.
Their worth, to others and their own eyes, was unremarkable as a flaxen tablecloth. Final compensation could only be known upon removal of the cloth covering the sculpted alabaster beneath.

Manual Approach

He approached the narrow alleyway where the explosion had killed three of his colleagues not two hours ago. The relentless hum of the helmet fan accompanied his laboured, breathing as he toiled under the weight of bomb suit and weapon. Stopping, he surveyed the carnage ahead, his knowing eyes scanning the ground for further hidden danger. To his left, a patch of disturbed soil and stone demanded his attention and as he knelt on tired, shaky legs his hand reached out to break his fall. Blinding light, followed by darkness, he no longer heard the hum of his helmet fan.

Ack! Missed the deadline! That’ll teach me to read more closely… I’d been assuming it was going to be Friday, like most of the others. Oh well. Since I’ve already written my story, I might as well post it even if it’s not in the running:

Yes, I’m aware of the significance the hill has in local folklore – they say it’s a sidhe-mound, a dwelling of the fairy folk.

And I’ve seen all the protests and petitions demanding my company spare the site, but they mean nothing to me, because there’s only one thing I care about right now – and contrary to public opinion, it’s not profit.

Only one thing will hold back the bulldozers and excavators, stop the hill from being levelled. Only one group has that power.

But they haven’t responded, no matter how many times I’ve begged them: give back my baby.

And one more:

“Why did you do it, Julie?” The doctor’s voice is gentle, like Mommy’s used to be before the fire, before they took me away.

I whisper my answer, again, the only answer I ever give, but I know she doesn’t believe me.

“Julie, there are no such things as monsters – you know that, don’t you?”

But there are – it’s just that sometimes they look like Daddy.

I’m used to having a Friday deadline for these, so this is what I get for NOT READING ALL THE DIRECTIONS! But what the fuck, I’m a writer, and don’t we usually break the rules?

—

I was seventeen the first time I swung back on my old man; he was so surprised that it stopped him cold, but I just kept hitting. The week he spent in a hospital bed didn’t even come close to making up for all the hurt he’d laid on me.

That was years ago but I still feel his fists most nights when I dream.

Now here he is in the hospital again but it’s cancer, not me, kicking his ass; and beyond all logic I’m terrified to lose him.

We’re strange things, we humans.

[...] with an expired contest, but I felt a need to write a piece (albeit a week late) for Chuck’s The 10K Contest  where people were supposed to write a full story of less than 100 words in five sentences. Her [...]

All right. Time to call a winner and then, for giggles, a back-up winner.

First, let me say — some very good stuff here. Also, some very not-good stuff here. And some puzzlingly improper stuff — stuff that didn’t abide by the rules, stuff that fell prey to very easy-to-fix mistakes.

(Also: a curious thread popping up of dudes killing wives or girlfriends. Entries like that are unlikely to ever win anything, by the by.)

So.

Two winners. First winner wins everything I listed. Second winner wins only e-books of my writing-related books (five books in total).

First (grand) winner: Damien Kelly:

“On hurricane day, Daddy said, “Let’s put on our overcoats, and ride the dying storm.” I was nervous, but I trusted him and put on my coat and my boots. We ran around the yard a few times, and circled the roof, just to be sure we knew how to fly. Then we lifted our coat tails and jumped on the hurricane, bound for all points on the compass.
Impaled on broken branches, in a tall oak tree, staining its bark with my blood, I can see my house from here.”

Second runner-up:

Exi!

“A haiku class? Sure!”

“My boyfriend will meet us there.”

Damn it all to hell.

You guys need to email me at terribleminds [at] gmail.com.

Congrats!

– c.

Congrats, winners! I thought I had read them all, but I must have skipped Damien Kelly’s, the well-deserved win!

I loved that one, too! Way to go, winners!