Tag Archives: Flash Fiction

Fairytaleish: The Coat

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This is my story for a fairytaleish contest hosted by Anna over at Yearning for Wonderland so here’s my picture and story in 299 words:

Source: authenticfauxhemian.tumblr.com via Pinterest then tracked back to original photographer Loreta loretablog.blogspot.co.uk
The Coat

“Please…don’t hurt me!” she begged, her soft -grey eyes widening in fear.
Clutching her basket tightly in her red-gloved hands she pressed her spine into the tree, but the towering man still advanced.
“That’s my brother’s coat you’re wearing.” Bitterness coated his words.  “Where did you get it?”
She tensed, swallowing hard but not moving her eyes from his.
“I said, where’d you get it?” He repeated, venom spitting from his thin lips.
She shook her head.
“Answer me girl!” His voice rose booming through the silence of the wintry forest. “My brother’s gone…and you’ve got his coat! How did you get it?”
She licked her lips and spoke, almost inaudibly. “He…he gave it to me.”
“He what? He gave it to you! Foolish answer girl, he loved that coat!” He leered. “Spent many a night out with him and that coat…”
“It’s mine,” she began with defiance tinging her small voice.
“Yours? I don’t think so!” he barked at her.
She bent placing her basket on the floor and crossed her arms over the heavy, woollen coat, pulling its softness protectively around her tiny frame. A languid smile spread across his scarred face and he leaned in close. His breath, stinking of chewed tobacco, made her glare and he took a golden curl in his coarse fingers. “I think…I want that coat back.”
As he twirled her hair she met his lascivious gaze and smiled. “And I think I want yours.” Her voice was barely a whisper yet it chilled him and he tried to step back.
The altercation was skilled and quick, and not a moment later he lay dead and bloody, his brother’s grey, woollen coat his shroud. She pulled his leather jacket about her shoulders and replaced her scarlet gloves, deftly concealing her razor-sharp talons. 

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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…

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: Sombrero

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Winter’s sun, forever on the horizon, cast tired rays across the virgin snow as they ran, giggling and flushed and happy; their pace slowed and bemused confusion fell across their faces as they came to an abrupt halt.
Baffled, he kicked it and it jerked up into the air with a flurry of snow settling before them like a gigantic upturned saucer.
He moved to kick again but she raised her hand and bent to retrieve the object, shook away its frosty coating and stared at it in puzzlement before placing it with a flourish, the right way up, on her head atop her chunky, fur-fringed Eskimo hood.
She giggled, girlishly, and posed, one hand holding the now droopy monstrosity and the other pointing to her pursed lips in a coy fashion; his bewildered laugh made her frown as he shook his head and grabbed the floppy base whipping it off her head.
A moment later his hunting-knife had cut two holes big enough for his thick-gloved hands and his oily catch of the day was placed within its cone, and the sides gathered up in one hand to form a sturdy, straw basket then he leaned forward to brush his cold lips across the cheek of his other catch of the day.

Source: wikipedia File:Siberian Eskimo Nabogatova

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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