Category Archives: Fiction

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.

Visual Dare: Mystique

Anonymous Legacy’s Visual Dare #11:

Mystique

It was the last time she would stare into his eyes…and the finality hit her with a permanence she had refused to allow just moments before. Eyes locked and souls lost in a single moment that would mirror eternity in the weeks, months… years to follow.
Every fragment of their love, every last glimmer had to be shared before the moment was gone, and though not a sound left their lips, every word that was left was said.
Then he stepped back and vanished and the reeling, shimmering portal sealed with a radiant burst of light.
He was gone.

(99 Words)

Five Sentence Fiction: Faeries

The sky is the same colour as velvet, dark delphiniums, Mum keeps telling me it’s bedtime, but I’m spinning, round and round and round…and I’m never going to bed!
I’m dizzy, really dizzy, dizzy and fizzy, my limbs are tripping over each other and my head is rolling so much my eyes can’t keep up!
I stop and my hands fly out to balance, and I giggle and she’s there…I stare.
I’ve never seen one before; she stares back her eyes as wide as the rising moon behind us and surprise shining like glitter.
She can’t move, I can’t move, our eyes are locked and there’s nothing we can do until Mum calls again and the spell is undone, and I snap my wings together and flit off into the night, leaving the little human girl wondering who I was…

Five Sentence Fiction: Medicine

“It’s bad…” the Sage grimaced, his brow creasing and his head slowly shaking, “I’m losing her.”
He glanced down at her pale features; her forehead was dusted with perspiration glittering in the moonlight and her hands lay limp on the cotton coverlet, and he pre-empted the question with a prolonged sigh, “There is something, it’s a long shot, might not even work…but,” he gestured vaguely beyond the window, “up there, high on the peak, is the montis bellis perennis…the mountain daisy…” his voice trailed and disappeared along with the lad’s hopes. 
But, within moments, the lad had vanished out into the shadowy night, trekking far across muddy fields, weaving through distant forest, cutting a path through murky swamps and climbing through ominous veils of meandering mists up, up and up…fingers blistering as he grasped splintering rock and eyes smarting from the violent, howling winds. 
Nights passed, days passed, and her fading breath passed weakly through her dry and chapped lips; then the lad crashed through the door, disturbing the Sage and the peace, clutching a daisy, a single daisy, petals lost, petals crumpled and petals sticking to his exhausted fingers…he dropped the crushed and broken daisy into the mystic’s open hands. “Use the flower and heal her!” he demanded through his haze of delirium, “Heal her!”
“I can’t,” said the Sage, “there’s nothing left of the flower, nothing…” he watched the weary lad fall to the floor and stroked the remains of the daisy across her ashen face; she stirred, just a tiny movement, but enough, “I can’t heal her, nor can the daisy, but you have…it’s not the daisy, but the journey you were willing to make, your faith and love have healed her…see her eyes flutter open…for you, for love…”

Photograph by Lisa Shambrook

Visual Dare: Risk

I’m trying Angela’s Visual Dare #9 prompt for the first time. The photograph can be used to either weave into your WIP or as a 100 word flash…

Photograph Source: Les Petites Choses

Risk
There are moments in childhood where danger simply does not exist.
It matters not whether you’re a renegade pirate walking the plank with no fear of sharks or the roiling ocean below, or a circus performer walking the wire with the gaping mouths of lions snapping at your feet. You could be an explorer balancing, a million feet up, on a precipice, rescuing a hoard of refugees from incarceration and leading them to certain freedom…
You could be anything, anything in the world, in the universe, anything anywhere!
The important thing is though…is never to forget those precious moments…
(97 words)

Forbidden Love – Call of the Dark

This is my entry into the Forbidden Love Blog Hop hosted by LillieRuth and Janelle
These are my star-crossed lovers…

Call of the Dark

She waited as he closed the door, his passion glinting in his eyes. She leaned against the wall, her heart pounding wildly and her soul yearning like she’d never before known.  Her ivory veil rippled in the breeze seeking entry through the open window and he was at her side tenderly cupping her face. Her eyelids fluttered and his breath caught as she bit her lip, not long and everything would be as it should…
Orange blossom and lonely birdsong wafted from below the balcony, sweet fragrance and refrain intoxicating the tower room, and she could barely wait. Leaves rustled from vines clothing the stone walls, and slender tendrils curled over the balustrade as she led him out into the balmy night.
Her tresses, pale as the midnight moon, cascaded and his fingers entwined as his lips finally touched hers.
Trembling she held him close but he pulled away. “You’re so beautiful…” he whispered. His breath rasped as he moved towards her and she caught him within her arms. This time his kiss was full and urgent, and she returned it with mad fervour and she drew him close.
As he buried himself within her embrace she threw back her head and let out a cry. He sprang away in astonishment as she vanished in a flurry of feathers.
“I needed your kiss,” birdsong echoed, “but only in marriage…”
And before his eyes she was gone. She fluttered her ivory wings and sang out, and the answering call came from the forest below. He stared in disbelief as his bride launched away from the balcony and out into the indigo sky…and she danced through the deepening night as her beau, the blackest of all ravens, met her and her enchantment was gone, vanquished beneath the glistening moonlight.
(297 Words)