Flash fiction nonsense

All was well in my world; the kettle was gurgling, a pristine packet of choccy biccies nestled in my hand and the opening theme of 'Loose Women' wafted in from the sitting room where a comfortable chair awaited my ample bottom.

I left my bottom on the chair and went to rescue the kettle, it had fallen in the sink and was being held down by a gang of teaspoons.

‘the trouble with you lot’ I said as I upended the kettle ‘is you’re always stirring up trouble’ The biccies purred their agreement from my free hand.

‘And some use you lot are’ I told them ‘as soon as they start stirring, you go to pieces’. The purring stopped and the biccies took wing and settled on top of a magnolia scented cupboard. Peering over the top in disapproval.

‘You might well hide up there, I’ve seen the mess you’ve left in my bed. Jings, I’ll be finding bits of you for weeks in there.’ They turned their back on me and started preening.

As I left the kitchen having settled the kettle back down with a cosy to keep it company and a dishbrush for protection I noticed the barometer was falling.

Bad weather was on the way.

I went back to the lounge and stooped to pick a buttercup, sorry…to pick a buttock up first one then the other went into my running shorts which I’d caught earlier that day trying to head off with my jogging bottoms. The buttock weight would keep them there for a while. My training shoes however were trying to organise all the other footwear to attend a seminar. Suddenly an underground mineshaft collapsed, I looked round and just saw the kitchen sink, those damned teaspoons always causing trouble.

A vampire story

There’s no pain any more. Strange that.  I can feel the gaping hole in my neck, hear the wind whistling through ruined pipes, but it doesn’t hurt. That’s a blessing I suppose. Oh God, the blood, so much, how can so much blood come from one person. My arms, gore gauntleted, lie by my sides. I’m propped up against the sofa in our tiny lounge, its floral gold and green now scarlet and mauve. Eastenders is on the telly. I don’t watch soaps normally but I can’t feel my fingers to change the channel.

 Jen’ll be home soon. I feel a tear roll down my cheek. She shouldn’t see me like this. We loved each other so much and now she’s going to lose me. My tears are for her loss not my own death. I can feel it numbing me and almost welcome it. I should have fought harder, you always think you won’t go without a fight but I did. But they were so strong and so fast and now I’m bleeding to death with Dot bloody Cotton. I’d laugh but I get the feeling that my breath is precious.

 This is Manchester for Christ’s sake not the fucking twilight zone, this shouldn’t be happening. I’ve got to hold on. Jen’ll be able to help me when she gets back. Just have to hold on. Stay awake. Keep breathing. In and out and in and…..

Shit. I passed out, how long? Can’t really focus on the screen but I can still hear Dot’s cigarette rasp.  

So fast, how can they be so fast and strong? I recognised one of them from the pub. He’d stood out from the usual crowd, he dressed well, proper designer stuff no gaudy labels we’d chatted about things. He was funny, and at some point I’d said he should come over for a game of FIFA one night, I guess he took that as an invitation because suddenly there he was in my front room, switching my telly on. Flicking through my cd’s.

 I open my mouth to say something but before I even inhale I feel myself lifted and thrown to the floor from my repose on the couch, my book flies from my hand, a ‘rough guide to anatomy’ spinning in slow motion. Through the shock of sudden motion and impact with the floor I look up and see the girl, she’s tiny, flame red hair, vintage leather jacket and dead eyes. I’m flying again and feel my shoulder loosen from its socket at the wrench, until now I’ve made no sound except for the percussion of back on floor. With the dislocation comes the first intimation of pain and I scream but my mouth is already covered by her alabaster hand and I’m slammed back down. Something snaps, a bone or a floorboard, either way pain flashes up my spine. Then she’s astride me and for a crazy moment I think she’s going to kiss me but as she bends in I see her teeth and my only thought is ‘Vampire’ and I know I’m dead.

It’s only her that feeds on me; I guess that’s what vampires do, feed. All the while he just sat there head to foot in Armani, watching, and crazily, with her teeth in me and hand on my mouth, I’m getting turned on. Even as I can feel my life pumping into her, I want her.

In a blur of movement he’s over us, ripping her from me, a half grin from him, a low moan from her and they’re gone. So fast. Less than five minutes to shatter my life and leave me to try and stem the flow.

No strength left to hang on. Just want to sleep, I’m barely breathing, vision fading. I hear her come through the open door. My name catches in her throat when she sees me. She cries out and runs to me, her uniform staining red with the last of my blood and from the way she cradles me I know there’s nothing that she can do. Her nurses training tells her what mine told me minutes before. I try to tell her I love her and it’s ok but don’t have the breath.

I stop breathing, my vision flashes bright with my last heartbeat and everything is beautiful, the colour of blood and tears, my fiancé’s skin and the smell of her, a glimpse of Armani and a half smile behind her and I realise something.

I’m hungry.

The Editor

With shining sword

With Hack and slash

Through adjective jungle

He cuts a path

Even the beauteous florid prose

Is cut from lines on which it grows

His vorpal blade

Snickers and snacks

Through cliché

Valued like old brass tacks

Until the moribund tale is found

Wet, scratched and blinking on the ground

The fledgling plot

Eats twisted roots

‘til he decides

Which genre suits

Each growth line is carefully tied

So the tale, it grows both deep and wide

And then the day

Comes all too soon

When full grown saga

Seeks a boon

A gift to tell him from another

And so he gets a hardback cover

Early Winter

The petals, once glorious in scent and hue, were now blackened and shrivelled, now powder blowing in the white hot wind.

 I saw my roses returned to dust with eyes that couldn't bear the sight, thankfully they were taken from me before I had to witness the greater horror.

It was a Saturday in October. We’d cleared the time reddened leaves from the lawn trimmed the last of the summer’s growth from nature itself and prepared for the snuggle of winter. Padded coats were donned against the morning’s frost, breath hung in the air like ghosts of words that were never to be said.

My man and I had finished the grunt work and now were busy with the joy of play. Our offspring ran and shouted and flung mown grass. We made leaf angels for the want of snow. We brushed the paths clearing the last of the warm wind borne dust.

In this morning we’d forgotten the news reports, the turmoil in which the world had found itself. The Arab spring had given way to a summer of extremists, believers strapped death to their bodies and destroyed the unfaithful in an extasy of light and sound. There had been whispers of weapons grade plutonium going missing. We in the west had closed our eyes and ears and waited for Halloween.

The horror came early.

I was inside, at the kitchen window, watching my man play with our young. The radio was on. My ears not really believing what they heard. ‘a series of attacks throughout the country…..homemade nuclear devices…..whole cities wiped out.’ A numbing heat spread through me and in that moment I knew true fear.

A flash in the distance.

I put my hands to the glass and whisper goodbye.

Anticipation

Anticipation

‘Don’t get up too early.’

Is it late enough?  Ben peered again towards the window, heart beating, brown hair still sleep tousled. Had he been? He could discern the orange pattern on the curtains by the glow spilling through the part open doorway, the handles on his wardrobe glinted gold in the shadows and on top of his desk on the far wall the faint outlines of Ed-ted and Don-din stood fluffy guard, not giving away the time. He listened, holding his breath, for any sign that his parents were awake but the only sound was water in the pipes and the occasional muffled crack of a settling house. Then there was just the sound of his own ears straining.

 ‘Don’t wake your sisters.’

He knew that if his youngest sister Beth could be woken then she wouldn’t be able to help waking his parents in her excitement but there was no sound from across the landing.

 His nose gave lie to the deep warmth beneath his bedclothes. The air outside was cold enough that he could feel the shape of his nostrils as he breathed. Hints of cinnamon and nutmeg laced the chill, mingling with something else he didn’t recognise. And still the all-important question burned. Is it late enough? Ben couldn’t tell how long he’d been asleep and though he was desperate to throw off the covers and run down the stairs he knew he shouldn’t until mummy and daddy were up.

‘Don’t go downstairs on your own.’

 Last year, Ben had woken up and crept downstairs, only wanting to see if he’d been, but when he saw all the sparkling red and green laid out beneath the tree and  lit by the dying embers of last night’s fire, he couldn’t resist and surely just one wouldn’t matter.

 He’d been found three presents in, clutching a pot-pouri gift set with a tearful combination of guilt and disappointment on his face.

 Leaning forwards he pulled back a corner of curtain and peered outside but the sky was still dark and last night’s snow, had transformed his world so that nothing seemed familiar, especially this morning, where the darkness, thick with magic, was slow to loosen its grip. He closed his eyes again willing himself to sleep but all that came was a question, had he been yet? What was waiting downstairs? The house felt different this morning, as if it had a huge secret to tell.

‘The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner it’ll be morning’

Ben put his head back on the pillow.

There. A sound. Surely.

And again, that was a definite bed-creak, but from where? He pushed the covers back, too excited to feel the cold and crept as lightly as he could to the door. Not even breathing now he listened, and heard a whisper and there, one in reply. His sisters were awake.

Lemmi vs The Swan

These are versions of the same story told from very different viewpoints. There's an interesting story and huge coincidence to do with their creation too. which I'll have to tell at some point.

THE SHOT

Lemmi put his eye back to the scope and dialled it in tightly on the swan’s sleek white head. There was a shot there but not the one he was here to take. With one mittened hand he reached down and unscrewed the lid from the brushed steel thermos at his side. Steam rose as he poured the coffee, the dark nutty aroma filling the canvas hide. Adjusting position carefully, he steadied the tripod, held the cup in both hands and raised it to his lips. The steam condensed in his blonde moustache. He wiped it off before it could freeze.

He huddled, jacket bound in a winter camouflaged hide. This in turn was secreted under the pines at the edge of the freezing lake just outside Rovaniemi. In the blue tinged twilight a light snow was just starting to fall.

He’d been watching this pair for a few days now, knew their territory, their routines, their relationship. Around the same time every night, the female, he’d dubbed her Tuonela, took flight for an hour or so. Her partner, kala, remained on the lake his lonely cry echoing over the water and ice, through the low mist which was forming, guiding her home.

In his hide Lemmi scanned the sky. There. Low across the tree tops. He got her in the crosshair of his viewfinder, wings extended, slender neck stretched forwards. As she crossed the horizon where the sun lay she was silhouetted, black, against the watercolour sky. He took the shot.

SWAN

As we round the shale outcropping, taking care to clear the shallows, she moves to the air, two beats of her magnificent wings and she soars, her graceful neck pointing her upward, we cry out for the joy of the wind.

 The lake is ours. It tells us in ripples and breezes. It shows us our sky. In summer it warms and feeds us. In winter it turns our calls to clouds and gives us shelter. Yet we understand the lake has more than we can take and so we allow others to stay for a short time.

Through her eyes and mine we can see that the Fettered one still hides here. He is devious, but we have seen many come and go, and this one means no harm. I sound to her to tell her that the lake is taking the form of a shroud to disguise our movements. She tells me the clouds are crumbling to cover our tracks later when we take to the land for sleep. I call again to hear the echoes form the trees and rocks. The sound clear in the sharp air.

There are movements from the Fettered’s hiding place. I feel that she is returning. I cease my movement and turn my head to see her and in that moment as she spreads her wings to embrace the Lake, framed against the waning light and crumbling sky I lose myself again for though we are two halves, she is the greater.



Chest Pains

CHEST PAINS

He put his knees up on her chest getting ready to pull, tilting the pliers, angling them so he could get purchase before twisting.
‘Please be careful.’ She managed to say, turning her head so as not to see. He regarded her with baleful eyes, how did she think she could hide this from him? As he looked at her his disgust grew as the tears welled in her eyes.
‘You stupid bitch.’ He hissed, wrenching the pliers as he spoke, ‘did you really think I wouldn’t find it? Do I look Fucking stupid’ Spittle flecked his lips as his rage grew. Laura had seen this anger before, too many times.  She seemed to be a magnet for it.
 This one, Daniel, wasn’t the first, somehow they seemed drawn to her. Sometimes she thought that it was something in her that brought it out of them. People said it was low self-esteem talking but she was a confident woman. They always seemed nice at first, but then the jealousy set in. Cheating wasn’t in her nature but they thought it anyway. When it ended up like this, who needed more than one at a time?
So first was jealousy. Next they’d think she was hiding something. They’d search her house secretly at first. Then become more and obvious. Somehow they always found it.
 It was in the loft this time.
She’d been to the shops. When she came home the ladders were down and there was a light on. she’d climbed the ladder into the loft space. Before she’d even got her shoulders through he’d grabbed her by the hair and pulled her bodily through the gap. She’d let her body drop to the floor and watched as he dragged the leather hinged chest into the light, all the time berating her for trying to hide something of value. Then he’d grabbed the pliers.

‘Don’t. You’ll hurt it.’ She cried
‘It?  Hurt it?  It’s a fucking wooden box.’ He yelled. ‘I’ll show you hurt in a minute’ With a massive wrench and a grunt he pulled the hasp away from its surround.. Grinning he got his fingers under the edge of the lid and went to pull it open.
‘Please don’t. Stop. Stop.’ She breathed. A half smile played across her lips.
The lid opened.
Daniel’s smile froze in place. A low buzz filled the room, growing steadily in volume. The sound had a physical presence, it vibrated everything at a basic level. As Laura watched, she saw Daniel’s eyes widen and his smile melt away. She knew what he was seeing and she envied him. It was the ancient sea. Eternal. Infinite. Half glimpsed things moving beneath the impossible blackness. Her sisters and brothers. Daniel’s head turned, incomprehension edged with madness in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry’ he mouthed. She felt a tinge of remorse. Perhaps this one was different? She almost went to close the lid. Before she could, something quick wrapped itself around his waist, there was the smell of burning flesh mixed with something older, rotten and before he could scream Daniel was pulled in. Now she moved and looked in thinking to catch a last glimpse but he was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.