Category Archives: Fiction

Five Sentence Fiction: Silence

Nothing happened…

He kissed her again and waited…and waited some more, but her hand remained limp and her face still deathly pale. Silken locks spilled across her satin pillow entwined with paper-thin, fragile and brittle dried roses, nothing like the wicked tangle of vicious thorns and miles of malevolent briers that he’d fought to defeat.

His armour dripped with sweat and he was late.

His princess had slumbered within her royal bedchamber for one hundred years, one hundred years and…just one day.

Picture by Henry Meynell Rheam

Five Sentence Fiction: Foggy

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I plummeted, yes, that’s the only word for it, I plummeted through the thick and chill early morning air unravelling coils of mist that attempted to snare me as I fell. Buffeted and pummelled, I felt goose-pimples erupt across my exposed skin, and there was time enough to feel my damp hair whip back and forth in the funnel of turbulence left in my wake.
I closed my eyes.
My body shrieked and my mind fogged as I smacked into the water, and panic rose like a phoenix from ashes, and as I swirled down, embraced, welcomed by the depths of the lake, I wondered…for the first time, I wondered.
Had it really been a good idea to pack so many pebbles into so many pockets?

Photograph by Lisa Shambrook

Kreativ Blogger Award…

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Oooh, just been tagged in the ‘Kreativ Blogger Award…by Donna B. McNicol (check out her blog…) so here goes…

The Rules:
1. Thank & link back to the person who nominated you.
2. Answer the ten questions.
3. Share ten random facts/thoughts about yourself.
4. Nominate seven worthy blogs for the Kreative Blogger Award.

The Questions:
1. What’s your favorite song?
Can’t decide between two:
I love ‘Iris’ by the Goo Goo Dolls and ‘Run’ by Snow Patrol.

2. What’s your favorite dessert?
Right now that has to be trifle, though I am partial to profiteroles…who isn’t?

3. What ticks you off?
Hypocrites make me angry…those who don’t do as they preach. If you have beliefs, stand up for them!

4. What do you do when you’re upset?
I disappear into myself…I write, and write and write…it’s cathartic…

5. Which is your favorite pet?
I always thought of myself as a cat person, until I got a dog! My German Shepherd, Roxy is my heart and soul, those huge golden brown eyes just make me melt, even when she’s naughty!

6. Which do you prefer: black or white?
If it’s dark or light you’re after, it’s dark, I’m a night-time girl (not a party girl, but a staring at stars night-time girl!). Colourwise, I prefer neutrals, greens and browns…

7. What is your biggest fear?
To lose myself…My memories are so hugely a part of me that to lose that part of my mind would be my biggest fear. (I’m watching someone close to me do just that and it’s painful…)

8. What is your attitude mostly?
I worry…but I try to be positive. I suffer clinical depression so have learned over the years that my attitude is paramount to combating my condition!

9. What is perfection?
Perfection is losing myself (wasn’t that my biggest fear just now?), to lose myself in something I love, whether it be writing, reading, chocolate…or some other pleasure!

10. What is your guilty pleasure?
My guilty pleasure…chocolate, every day.

The Random Facts:

1. If I could be an animal, realistically I’d be a cat, sleep, eat and play, but imaginatively I’d be a unicorn: wild and free…

2. When I met Vince, another girl asked him to dance and I put my hand on his knee, I would have growled at her if I wasn’t such a nice girl! Lucky for him he refused her…

3. I’m impatient…no really!

4. I’d love to go to Iceland, the country that is, the shop does nothing for me!

5. I was painfully shy as a child, I’m still not comfortable with people I don’t know, but now have a confidence I never used to have.

6. I don’t fit in…and sometimes I want to…

7. I had a nervous breakdown at eighteen, and another at thirty-one…but came back from them…I still struggle not to hurt myself….

8. I wrote off my first car two days after I bought it, a week after passing my test, I drive better now! I love driving and love riding our motorbike even more! I passed my bike test in my mid-thirties.

9. I hate hurting people, I once, needlessly, gave up a dream in order not to hurt someone else. Don’t give up your dreams for anyone.

10. I would rather die than go back to the insecurities of being a teenager, but often I’d love to go back and relive the intensities of those emotions!

The Nominations:
No idea if these bloggers already have this award or not…but I’ll leave participation up to them!

http://www.angwrites.com/ @ang_writes
http://theothersideofsorrow.blogspot.co.uk/ @Love_Kenzie_
http://www.bullishink.com/ @bullishink
http://lilliemcferrin.blogspot.co.uk/ @LillieMcFerrin
http://cameron-writes.blogspot.co.uk/ @cameronlawton
http://www.raveninthewritingdesk.co.uk/ @falcon_feathers
http://bekahcat.blogspot.co.uk/ @bekahcat

National Flash Fiction Day: Wicked

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Today is National Flash Fiction Day 2012 and I missed getting involved with their FlashFlood (must do better!) but wanted to offer my own nod to the day. I went back to my Five Sentence Fiction and completed the story…

‘Wicked’

So for those of you who wanted to know if the little girl beneath the camellia was safe…read on:

Photograph from: http://images.mooseyscountrygarden.com/gardening-journals/garden-journal-04/60/

Flash Fiction:

Wicked

Anna stared out of the window, with hands tightly clasped, and watched her little sister hurriedly push herself beneath the camellia. She knew the terror that filled Lottie’s trembling heart because the same bile rose in her own throat, and nausea washed over her as the back door slammed, and Lottie’s soft-pink shoes still remained peeping out from beneath the shrub’s protective canopy. Anna raised a useless warning hand as his heavy brogues made their way up the path. She could barely breathe, but Lottie’s Mary Janes disappeared beneath the waxy leaves.

Her hands uncurled as he strode past the budding camellia, and she held her breath as he paused by the small, stone wall. He rested his hand and wiped his forehead. Anna smiled; a tiny, knowing curve of her lips. He didn’t look good.

He moved a step further and Anna noted his lethargy, the annoyance in his eyes as he glanced across the garden, and the way he clutched his abdomen after he wiped the sweat from his brow. Heavy drops of rain began to fall and her smile grew. He called and her little sister’s name rang out in the still evening air, a mixture of cajoling and pleading and Anna’s smile slid from her face.

But the camellia hid its treasure well.

Anna watched him move and begin searching behind the potting shed, and up towards the rhododendrons. Above him the laburnum, its golden racemes now faded and ugly, rippled in the slight breeze. He moaned, and the menacing sound carried through her closed window. She clenched her fists, it was fitting that he now gripped his stomach and collapsed beneath the tree.

She couldn’t help the surge of triumph and recalled the moment a few weeks ago when he’d asked what she was putting in his hot chocolate. “Vanilla,” she’d answered quickly and easily, “you’ll like it.” And she continued pounding away at the seed pods with the mortar and pestle. Vanilla essence flavoured his drink…and he liked it.

He was now retching and shaking like a dog, spittle hanging from his pale lips, and Anna watched as he buckled, and sank into the long grass behind the huge rhododendrons and beneath the laburnum’s veil of blackened pods.

Both she and Lottie would sleep safe in their beds tonight.

Five Sentence Fiction: Candy

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They say no good ever comes from eavesdropping, “Major Ingleby is quite fond of her…and Lord Farrell has made his partiality known…” but from behind the door Amelia Lockwood could bear the talk no more and charged, in a most unladylike way, into the drawing room.
“I will not be spoken of as if I am sweetmeats to be offered on a silver tray, like sugared mice at Christmas-time…” she paused trying to keep her fury neatly restrained beneath her tightly bound corset and skirts, her bosom heaved and fell within the confines of her bodice and she stepped towards the window overlooking the vast estate’s immaculate gardens.
“Both would be acceptable matches…” her mother began calmly patting her perfectly coiffured, icing sugar hair and raising one eyebrow at her wayward daughter.
Amelia placed her unsteady hand against the cold glass pane and stared across the manicured lawns; in an unusually wild stretch of bedding stood the gardener leaning on his spade and returning her gaze, she took in his unruly mop of hair and unbuttoned shirt and smiled. “The Major…and the Lord for that matter, have nothing on the raw, unrefined sweetness of nature…”

Photo by Lisa Shambrook

Five Sentence Fiction: Explosive

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Her t-shirt soaked through in the downpour, stuck to her back, “Got…to get him…away from here…” she puffed, her words whipped out of her mouth as she spoke.

“Where to?” groaned her friend spitting her hair out of her mouth as the wind swept a sheet of rain across the lane.

“Is he dead? Really dead?” the third girl could barely feel her hands as she clutched the man’s sodden jacket as they dragged him through the muddy track.

The first raised her head and nodded, ignoring the rain dripping off her nose, and the three of them heaved succeeding in hauling the dead weight a few more feet towards the ditch.

As they paused for breath and to regain grip, the street light above them exploded and sparks flew through the torrents of rain…and the heavy bulk within their grasp opened his eye…

Photograph by Bekah Shambrook

Once Upon a Time…

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Photograph by Lisa Shambrook

Once Upon a Time – Flash Fiction

The Wind, the Rain and the Ocean…

Clouds billowed across the heavens teasing the little sail boat rocking in the ocean’s arms below. The sailor glanced skyward and Rain offered a light-hearted shower, her watery robes glistening in the sunlight.

Wind whipped her skirts about her and hurled her sister a glare interrupting the sprinkle. “You won’t win like that!” she hissed sending her own provocative sigh into the little boat’s sails.

“Well you’re not doing any better!” said Rain resuming her shower, crystal raindrops shrouding the wooden mast.

Wind swept out her hands and blew her sister’s fluffy clouds away, scattering her sparkling drizzle across the sea. Wind smirked and pitched a gale. Her long hair fluttered in the remnants of the storm and Wind sent a swirling gust to envelope the sailor amid the violent squall.

Rain clapped her hands, darkened her clouds and her torrents engulfed the boat.

Wind whipped up a fury, “He’ll be mine, not yours!” she shrieked her temper flaring as rain poured.

The drenched, shivering man on the deck below cursed them both as the tempest arose.

Wind, determined to beat her sister, stirred up a whirlwind and coiled her tendrils around the sailor, but Rain wasn’t to be outdone and let her roiling clouds release their cascade in a waterfall of tears. The valiant sailor fought as howling wind swept his boat awry, and torrential rain flooded the deck leaving him clinging to the rail of his boat.

The storm flourished as Wind and Rain battled conjuring up blazing lightning and ear-splitting thunder…and as they did waves swirled and churned beneath the tiny boat, booming against the bow and hurtling across its deck. Beneath the keel Ocean smothered a chuckle and allowed her sisters’ fight to escalate. Their ensuing wrath would assault her in vain but their prize was hers.

Ocean tossed her white hair as it danced on the waves and drew the little vessel beneath the spray. The sailor slipped into her grasp and quietly acquiesced within her embrace and kiss…after all, she knew what her sisters didn’t – a sailor always gives his life to the Ocean.

(350 words)

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Five Sentence Fiction: Armour

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She woke with a start, her heart rapidly pounding as adrenalin surged. Her body froze unable to decide whether it should be asleep or awake unable to use any sense except hearing which keenly heard…nothing. Inky darkness prevented her sudden wide eyes from distinguishing anything in the gloomy obscurity of her bedroom, whatever had woken her could be lurking in the shadows, waiting, and her shallow breath became even slighter lest it betray her. Fear fogged her confused, sleep-filled mind, until she could bear the tension no more and closed her eyes tightly whilst yanking the duvet over her head.

Safe once more from whatever it was that skulked within her boudoir, safe…beneath her 10.5 tog defence.

Photograph by Bekah Shambrook

Five Sentence Fiction: Tears

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“Please don’t,” I could barely look at her, couldn’t take the pleading and couldn’t bear the tears that gathered in her eyes or the gentle, but compulsive, wringing of her hands, “You don’t need to do this.”

My mouth set, lips pursed and locked, my hands clenched and controlled by both fury and a despair that threatened to drown me. My wretched heart thudded against my chest echoing the blood pounding through my veins and her voice cut through the tension, “Please don’t do it…” this time her hands shook as she roughly wiped mascara across her cheek.

My eyes stung but my grip tightened, my fingers, hot and slippery, but secure as they clutched my weapon of choice.

She turned away, grief consuming her, and I was glad I could no longer see her flood of tears as I stared resolutely in the mirror, seeing nothing but my own blurry image staring back, and the scissors cut…and the first of many fistfuls of my long, gloriously long, auburn hair fell to the ground…

Photograph by Bekah Shambrook

Five Sentence Fiction: Scorching

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Caught off guard they crouched as the fierce tempest raged above and a ruby wing swept down sending a cloud of red dust spiralling up into the air.

Sand swirled and a crimson dragon hurled a yellow flame, its thunderous roar echoed and the hogs in the field screeched and squealed as they stumbled. The dragon lowered its leg and plucked its prey, skewered in a single movement.

The beast dipped its wings and as it launched back into the sky its vermilion scales blazed in the sun.

Matt broke the sudden silence “Flame grilled…” he said, “Now that’s what I call fast food!”