Category Archives: Fiction

UnZombie Tale

#unZombieTales Flash Fiction Contest by zombiemechanics My entry into J. Whitworth Hazzard’s contest sponsored by bigfishgames.com. Check out the other entries!

It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut. Jake stood at the window armed with his air rifle. I crouched beneath the sill holding Scott close in one arm whilst struggling to cling on to Beth with the other. Scott released a piercing wail and I clamped my hand hard across his mouth. He began to cry and my own tears slipped down my cheeks wetting his head.
“Well, that’s done it, they know we’re in here now…” Jake’s rifle hit the floor as he dropped beside me.
“He’s only a baby…what did you expect!” I hissed. Beth squirmed out of my grip and crawled wildly across the floor. “Get back here sweetheart!”
The moaning behind the window had reached an insistent whine and Jake didn’t dare move. We both stared at Beth standing alone pointing at the window.
“Bethy…” began Jake, his voice an octave higher, “Chrissie, where did she get that cut on her arm…”
My tears streamed faster.  I couldn’t have left her there…outside, I couldn’t have done it. He’d let go when I’d pulled her hard enough.
Beth growled and Jake let out a moan. Her pale skin was now insipid and blue veins stood out on her white gangrenous arms.  Her sunken eyes gazed at us and spittle dribbled out of her loose mouth.
“Chrissie…” Jake murmured, “Out the back door…save our family.”
I ran with Scott and heard the shot that told me Bethy was no longer part of our family.

(250 Words)

Blogflash 2012: Day One: Thinking

Photo: Lisa Shambrook

Day One: Thinking

Thinking was dangerous, and outlawed.
Thinking was out of the question.
Thinking, beyond the mundane, dull practicalities, meant losing your mind.
You thought about your task, your function, nothing else mattered to the Caretakers. You certainly didn’t.
Anna had lived seventeen years without thinking…but today, she noticed something. It was just a sliver of light, shining in through the skylight, dust dancing in its ray.
No one heard the chip in her brain implode and the light behind her eyes faded to nothing, but those last moments, those thoughts had been a lifetime to Anna and she faded in serenity.

(100 words)

I will be taking part in Blogflash 2012: 30 Prompts 30 Posts hosted by Terri Long. The challenge is this: Write a 50 – 100 word post for each daily prompt during August (yes, I know August has 31 days, but we get a day off!). The post can be factual or fictional, prose or poetry, anecdotal or otherwise… and if you link back to Terri’s Blogflash page on the badge above you can check out other participants too.

Five Sentence Fiction: Perseverance and Visual Dare: Above

I had trouble with both words this week, so decided to combine them: Lillie Mcferrin’s Five Sentence Fiction: Perseverance and Anonymous Legacy’s Visual Dare #15 Above The picture comes from The Visual Dare prompt:
Five Sentence Fiction: Perseverance:

When he got down on one knee – in the balloon – I grinned, this was it, this beat anything he’d tried before, the mountains rose around us and I grasped my hands together in excitement.
“Will you…will you do me the honour…” he paused and I watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall in a huge gulp and this time I felt his pain, all the times I’d said no came streaming back and I felt genuine sorrow for the many times I’d hurt him in rejection.
I joined him on my knees and took his hands in mine, and the basket embraced us hiding all the grandeur.
I no longer needed the mountains, or the vista, or even the damned balloon, all I needed was him.
“Yes,” I didn’t need to hear the question this time, “Yes, yes, yes, I’ll marry you!” and this time his smile meant more to me than the highest mountain, more to me than anything.

Visual Dare #15: Above:

When I went down on one knee, I managed to squeeze out the words, “Will you…will you do me the honour…” I swallowed hard not sure whether another rejection was even bearable at this height. I stared into her eyes trying to will the proposal to leave my dry throat, but she sank to her knees and grabbed my hands, and suddenly I saw what I’d been searching for this whole time. The love in her eyes shone as she accepted and my reflection in her eyes was more beautiful than all the mountains reflecting in the lake below. “Yes.”

(100 Words)

Visual Dare: Gutted

Anonymous Legacy’s Visual Dare #14

Gutted
Bare battens pressed into her back and powdered plaster fell like a flurry of snow onto her head as she sank to the floor amid the rubble. 
She swallowed hard, her mouth as parched as the rotted wood. Her hands shook in the same way as the torn wallpaper did in the breeze, and dust particles dancing in the rays of sunlight over by the door made her giggle. 
More dry plaster floated and landed, mingling with the lines on the cracked mirror in her hand, but her mind was already stripped of reason and she sniffed, inhaling deeply…
(98 Words)

Five Sentence Fiction: Scarlet

He watched as she leaned nonchalantly against his blue, wooden box, a smile playing on her crimson lips as she listened, and he unwittingly ran his fingers through his dishevelled hair, “It’s just that I had it in my head that our meeting would be patriotic…the Ood prophecy was always in my mind when I thought of what, sorry, who you would be, and that white, military coat of yours,” he reached forward and tapped one of her smart, silver buttons, “will suffice, and you’re leaning against the bluest thing here…”
Her smile grew wider as she felt the Tardis, warm against her back.
“But red, we have nothing red, nothing to achieve the patriotic trio, red, white and blue!” he paused and sighed, “nothing red.”
Her grin broadened, “Ask me, Doctor…ask me my name.”
His shoulders rose questioningly as did his eyebrows and she placed a finger delicately on his lips, “I’m Scarlett.”

55 Words #17: Reaching for the Moon

She sat, head to one side and purred. Last time she’d asked for the moon it had been a full moon and after he’d stretched for the luminous reflection he’d emerged both saturated and humiliated, not a good combination for a cat. So this time she was just happy he still reached for the impossible.

(55 Words)
@LastKrystallos

This is for the 55 Word Challenge. Choose a picture and write a story using no more than 55 words…

Five Sentence Fiction: Composure

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

My heart pounds and the pit that was once my stomach is now a void filled with roiling dread and churning fear. My throat is as dry as gunpowder. Tremors find their way into my cold, clenched hands and fingernails carve crescents into the base of my palms. Irregular breaths and heart-beats compound my panic, and my legs threaten to give ignoring my desperate need to flee, and a seething black ball of tension swallows my mind, and the voices urge me to bolt, to run, to abscond before my entire being implodes…
My eyes dart, searching for escape, but every route is blocked and she approaches, that gaze of concern etched upon her features…and before she has a chance to ask, I reply with a smile worthy of the stage, “I’m fine.”

Visual Dare: Distorted

Distorted
It’s cold; my shoes are wet, stained dark with rain and I can feel the dampness oozing between my toes. I glance up, but the rush of passing people makes my heart hammer and its pounding reverberates in my throat.  Then I see him, walking purposefully towards me and I look away, both fear and anticipation rising. I squeeze my hands wondering why he’d approach an old, lost soul like me. I lower my head watching his advance in the puddle. He stops and places his gentle hand on my shoulder, and smiles.  “C’mon Grandma, time to go home…”
(99 Words)

Five Sentence Fiction: Pirates

The word for Five Sentence Fiction this week is: Pirates and if anyone remembers my Faerypin entry: Waiting, (Please read for full story) they’ll know there’s a pirate story still to be told: This is the conclusion…

He promised to return; he left his gun and blade and she said she’d wait, and as his ship sailed, he watched her standing alone on the shore, wishing he was holding her cheek to his, her salty hair shining with a halo of gold against the rising sun and her skirts, heavy with broad leaf weed, hiding her new, long legs, still shimmering with reminiscent scales…
Unhurried, his ship traversed the waves, the ocean slapping her wooden hull, and he watched as she disappeared behind the cliffs; one last quest and he’d be hers.
As he stepped away from the bulwark his feet froze as her voice, clear and pure rose over the boom of the sea…her song, keen and true…and tears slipped down his weathered face as his band of buccaneers paused, unable to bear his siren’s song.
He could never resist the plaintive call of his lover and moments later the depths had claimed the hearts of all and his boat lay abandoned in the neighbouring cove.
For years she would wait…and sing…until the day the waiting deep would welcome her return. 

Five Sentence Fiction: Harvest

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

His ring gently clinked, an almost unnoticeable sound against the rich, heavy beat of music, as he rotated the glass and studied the incoming crop of sniggering girls, all short skirts and boozy noise and his lip rose in a lazy sneer as he shook his head about to turn away from the brash invasion, but the last girl squeezing apologetically through the door caught his eye.
She quickly followed the gaggle of limbs and peroxide almost as if she was an afterthought, and she carefully pulled up a chair, sitting slightly to one side unconsciously stretching her skirt down over her knees and staring intently at her cultivated nails.
He watched the drinks arrive and the girls gather to leer at the waiter, pinching his seasoned rump and disregarding his tired protest, but from his vantage point at the bar he noted her discomfort and allowed a smile.
He ignored the flirtations and plumped-up pouts, thrusting cleavage bursting out of bra-tops and bare thighs advertising their wares, these offerings were not for his harvest.
Her lips were full and unpainted, hair the natural shade of corn, her eyes bright and sober, and her breast firm and ripe beneath her shirt where only a tiny tease of pink lace revealed itself, blooming like a lost flower against her flesh and he knew…he knew she was the one.