Category Archives: Fiction

BCF: Festival

Business Card Fiction is a new Flash Fiction Contest run by @JDWenzel, @bullishink and @LillieMcFerrin.
The contest asks us to create a piece of flash fiction from a prompt to fit a business card…and there will be prizes…

This is for their Beta Trial Event and I chose the prompt: FESTIVAL

I chose a font size 13 in Times New Roman, but I’m still thinking that’s quite small…lucky this is a beta event, next time: write less, bigger font!

Follow @BCFiction on Twitter

Five Sentence Fiction: Character

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Photograph by Bekah Shambrook (Please do not use without permission)

Meg’s throat burned, tears streamed and the wind howled. Her long hair spilled out behind and February’s cold gusts whipped around her legs. Her heart hammered and short, rasping breaths stung as she sucked icy cold air through dry lips. She almost tripped over the tree root, stretched across her path, and her legs felt like they’d give way if she stopped. She didn’t want to stop, but she didn’t want to keep running either.

This is my opening paragraph introducing you to my protagonist Meg, in my current NaNoWriMo novel. Written for Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction, Lillie asked for five sentences about one of our main characters in our NaNoWriMo or WIP… so that was mine!

NaNoWriMo Teaser: Blood

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One week into NaNoWriMo and Meg McNulty from Darcy to Dionysus has challenged us to give you a peek into our novels…please remember these are unedited words…we’re all pretty desperate to get in there and tidy up and tweak etc, but November is for writing, anything else comes later! I’ve locked my inner editor away…

For the uninitiated NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month (November) where us rather mad writerly types attempt to write 50,000 words in one month. I’m on track…

So here’s mine, it’s double the 100 words requested, but hey, that’s how writing works!

Photograph: Blood in the Sink by Lisa Shambrook and Instagram

(Please do not use without permission)

Meg’s heart pumped and tears spilled, but she refused to make a sound. In fury she caught up a drinking glass and dropped it into the water. It sank to the bottom of the sink and Meg heard the pop of shattering glass beneath the water. She wiped her tears on her arm and stared at the broken glass. Another deep breath followed and she slowly reached into the water to retrieve the tumbler. She ignored the gnawing heat and wrapped fingers around the bottom of the glass. The subsequent plume of scarlet that rose through the water like a spiral of red ink fascinated her and she released her fingers. She moved her hand through the water, watching the flow of blood follow then came to her senses and pulled her hand out of the sink. Droplets of blood rolled off her hand and splashed into the red liquid. Meg clasped her hand to her, holding the cut tightly closed and sank to the floor. This time she allowed her tears to fall uncontrolled and she wept.
Crystal water coloured by her scarlet blood and Meg continued to sob, her chest heaving with effort, but no sound left her lips and no one came.

Triple Visual Dare #1: Five Sentence Fiction: Candidate

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Anonymous Legacy’s Triple Visual Dare #1
Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction – Candidate

Photo Source: leclownlyrique.wordpress.com

Photo Source: /www.searanchphotography.com

Photo Source: www.flickriver.com

When Alice tumbled through the rabbit hole and chased the white rabbit through the forest, she knew she was onto a winner. Time was no constraint, but as the path narrowed the bunny skidded left and Alice almost lost him. She veered after him and reeled at the top of the spiral staircase, teetering on the top step.
Alice paused, smoothed her long, blond hair and adjusted her black ribbon; it was a long way to the bottom…
The rabbit’s cottontail bounced from step to step and she couldn’t resist, she was a prime candidate set for a new wonderland…

(100 Words)
(3 Visual Dare Photographs)
(5 Sentences)

Written for Anonymous Legacy’s Triple Visual Dare #1 including all three images, but not managing to link with my current NaNoWriMo project! However, maybe there are bonus points for keeping it to five sentences for Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction?

55 Words #33: The Graveyard Train

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Source: 55 Word Challenge

The train’s cold, hard, easy-to-clean stainless steel fittings were a godsend. My stop approached and I clutched my bulging bag on clenched knees. The bag jerked, I held it close; beating hearts were such a pain, but I needed at least one for the wife…who waited patiently beneath the swirling fog of headstone seventy three.

(55 Words)

Written for the 55 Word Challenge. Choose a picture (or two if you want to overachieve!) and write a story using no more than 55 words.

Blogflash Halloween: Spooky

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Photograph by Lisa Shambrook Texture ‘Frankenstein’ by SkeletalMess

(Please do not use without permission)

Spooky Tale: Haunted Smile

His photograph slipped through her cold, shaking fingers and she slipped silently off the icy windowsill to reach for it, but her fingers refused to grasp. She crouched in the dark, his face still etched into her mind.

It was three days since the accident.

She swallowed her sobs, his face still smiled up at her from the floor, and she touched a silver chain at her neck, all she had left. She traced his smile and moved her finger to draw a heart across the image. “I love you,” she whispered, the sound barely leaving her lips.

She remembered the collision.

Screeching tyres, thunder, blue lights, sirens, shouting, banging, a limp body in the driver’s seat, pain, scarlet vision, panic, numbness and fear, but she’d escaped, no idea how, but she was out of the car and screaming amid crumpled metal.

Yellow-jacketed policemen, twisted lamppost protruding from the bonnet reminiscent of Salvador Dali, a paramedic leaning through the splintered windscreen, bloodied fingers working on the body, his body, more shouting and noise. The medic shook his head and crimson hands dropped at his side.

Glass, memories evoked glass, shattered – like the shards that remained of her heart.

Now, the photo fluttered across the floor in the moonlight and landed upside-down and he was gone. She fell beside it, staring at the white square.

The door opened. A man, tear-stained and greying, trod wearily into the darkened room and she hardly dared breathe. He straightened messed-up bedclothes, closed an open book on the table, his face cracked as he leafed through a notebook and fresh tears appeared. He stood and slipped his hands into his pockets. She opened her mouth to speak as he looked right at her, but no words formed.

He was silent for an age then opened his mouth and spoke in a whisper, “My son.”

She nodded, his grief engulfing and matching her own, and she spoke, “I love him.”

He mutely sank beside her. She placed her hand on the overturned photograph, and his father laid his over hers. His fingers turned the picture so his son’s image smiled out once more and inconsolable tears streamed down his face.

Colour drained as she stared at her hand still flat on the floor, and the old man rocked in his grief. She placed her hand on his shoulder, felt nothing, and flinched as her fingers laced through the fibres of his cotton shirt.

Startled, she fell back, her heart pounding, and she recalled the crash scene once more. There hadn’t been one paramedic, there’d been two and the anguish felt by one was shared as the other left the passenger side, bloody-handed but empty.

A waft of air caught her and outside she saw the smile from the photograph, and this time she moved as he called, glass not barring her way as she moved out into the night to join her love. Her silver pendant chinked as it dropped from her neck to the floor.

(500 Words)

Written for #Blogflash Halloween hosted by Terri G Long and The Indie Exchange.

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Five Sentence Fiction: Potions

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Photograph by Lisa Shambrook (Please do not use without permission)

The bottle lay, unharmed, beside her on the pavement, its thick glass mocking her, and emerald viscous liquid seeping from its mouth mixing its heady perfume with the sickly sweet fragrance of her own blood.
Its promises spun crystalline webs in her mind even now as she lay, unmoving, on the concrete.
Nothing but snowy white noise filtered through the smog in her brain and she smiled as people began hurrying towards her.
She was still queen of the world, dark faery of the night, raven of midnight black…and her wings still flew in diaphanous shapes as she ignored her ebony hair stuck to her face in sanguine strands.
She couldn’t see her companions’ horrified eyes, or hear their distressed voices as they stared from the scaffolding in disbelief; she couldn’t see her shattered and broken body on the pavement and she was yet to realise that no potion in the world would fix this mess.

Written for Lillie McFerrin’s Five Sentence Fiction – Potions. Read more stories here!

Zombie Run: Something Strange

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Photograph and Prosthetic by Bekah Shamrbook (Please do not use without permission)

Getting really fed up with local kids now…running past the house and yelling, up the path, knocking on windows, throwing stones, eggs, knocking on the door…you name it, fed up now.

It’s all the more annoying with Mum so poorly, literally on her last legs and had been for a while and it frightened her when these louts tried to be cool, daring each other to run up our path.

Well, not tonight, I’d had enough!

This time, when the lad knocked on the window, I was ready. Mum whimpered as the boy peered into the room, and I leapt to my feet, grabbed the door handle, flung the front door open, and gave chase. The lad saw me and his face drained. Scare him, just a bit, and he wouldn’t come roaming our neighbourhood anymore, not him or his mates.

He turned and ran, but seized by adrenalin I was on my feet and after him.

He stumbled, fell, I caught up and snatched him. His mates were hidden in the shadows and the boy mumbled, so I told him to shut up and put up as I grabbed his wrist. I wasn’t gonna hurt him, just scare him…

Running up the road came a woman, old enough to be his mother, her reaction proved that’s just who she actually was.

She asked what was wrong with a face as pale as the lad’s, so I explained, whilst still gripping his wrist.

Mum’s ill and I just want her last few months to be carefree, worry free, just want to sit indoors on a Saturday night and watch rubbish on telly. We’re half way through X-Factor’s new series, Mum’s favourite show, just let us indulge her!

She stared at me, looking like she was trying to gather courage; I wasn’t trying to scare her, just the delinquent son, so I released the boy who ran, whimpering, to his mother.

I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head, the youth these days…

She took a deep breath and spoke, warily but calmly. “X-Factor finished years ago…and after Simon Cowell’s law suit, repeats are forbidden, all recordings were destroyed, so it’s not on TV anymore, not ever. So could you please leave my boy, and the others, alone…”

I shrugged again…if they leave me alone, fine.

I returned home to comfort mother.

Simon Cowell was sharing his opinion, and I frowned. The screen flickered, we were losing the picture again, electricity was iffy, digital signal was iffy, everything was iffy. I turned to mum again, she smiled, a blank smile, with a mouth missing many teeth. I stroked her cheek, ignoring the blood that coursed down her face…something wasn’t right, but I — her eye slipped out of its socket, and I reached across to put it back in — couldn’t quite put my finger on it…

(475 Words)

Written for Lisa McCourt Hollar’s Zombie Run over at Jezri’s Nightmares. Take a peek, if you’re brave enough, at the other entries!

The Cautionary Tale of the Accursed Looking Glass

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Photograph by Lisa Shambrook (Please do not use without permission)

The Cautionary Tale of the Accursed Looking Glass

It was the mirror that told her. “You’re gorgeous,” it said, “You’re beautiful, stunning, breath-taking…” and who was she to deny it?

At first she accepted its compliments with grace and a shy glance from beneath her luscious lashes and a remark about needing to wash her hair then, as the flattery continued, she smiled and flushed with pleasure and coyly brushed her hair from her face.
And the mirror was determined to boost her self-esteem and soon she was pouting and preening and mwah, mwah-ing at the mirror’s complimentary words.
Her fashion sense improved no end. Gone were the tomboy togs; rough-kneed jeans discarded for skirts too tight to be called pencil-thin, casual shirts lost amid myriad sparkly, sequinned tops, comfy cardies destined for charity replaced by slinky, tight knits and street-fighting, puddle-jumping trainers traded in for heels that would give sky-scrapers vertigo.
And all the while the looking glass reported gorgeousness and unrivalled beauty.
“You’re amazing,” it told her, “much prettier than a picture…” and yes, she knew it.
The party did not begin until she arrived, and her sisters…well, ugly just wasn’t the word.
Dark as night hair was now platinum and bouffant, ribbons vanquished, shy fringe now swept away to show off blushed, sharpened cheekbones, and her lips plump and juicy and red; red as a crisp, ripe apple.
And the mirror loved her. Everyone loved her. Except, maybe, her sisters…they weren’t quite so keen, and her mother, it had been her mirror after all… But to everyone else, she was their darling.

Praises rained down, even on the sunniest of days, and the sunniest day came to town.
“Absolutely delightful, striking and so alluring…” said the mirror and she purred appreciation. She couldn’t find her flirty skirt, and missing amongst another mountain of rejects was the top she wanted, the lace one with strategically placed rhinestones.
“No matter,” said the mirror, “no matter at all…you look good enough to eat, just a dusting of powder and a dash of scent, and truly, you’re scrumptious…” and well, there was nothing more to be said, except. “Don’t forget your shoes…”
That day she was the talk of the town, but there was nothing new in that, the town barely talked of anyone else. Today, even her ugly sisters raised their badly-in-need-of-plucking eyebrows, and mother stepped out of her way.
All day long people echoed her mirror, salutations and accolades followed until the dwarf’s voice, grumpy it was not, rose above the tributes with a comment on her nakedness. And though people sniggered it was truly a compliment, after all her nakedness was pretty stunning…

Later that night, before the looking glass, she reflected. “Gorgeous,” said her mirrored image and smiled then the smile faded and her façade cracked, and the tear in the mirror slipped off the tip of her nose and landed on her shoe. The glass slipper which, in ten seconds precisely, would shatter the mirror forever…

(492 Words)

This is my entry for Costumed Curses Contest hosted by Emmie Mears and Kristin McFarland. Go read the other amazing entries!

Five Sentence Fiction: Flawed

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Photograph by Lisa Shambrook (Please do not use without permission)

We have an interesting relationship, my mum and I, it’s always been us against the world and Dad drifts by like a sailboat out there on the rough seas of the wide, wide ocean.

So it’s always been Mum and me, she so immaculately turned out and me a scruff-bag tomboy slouching at her side.

She’s perfect, my mum, in high-heeled boots as well-heeled as she, and long, flowing skirts wrapping around her bohemian ways, and long-sleeved tops that are always rustic like a warm autumn day.

She’s the best ever, the bee’s knees they say, and even though I know she cries, it’s fine because I’m there and she doesn’t need anyone else…I’ll see her through.

I watch her smile with my eyes and kiss the crooked lines beside hers; I run my hands through her silken hair and trace those thin spider’s webs decorating her arms with my fingers, we’re perfect you see, my mum and me.