Tag: Flash fiction

The Key

https://pixabay.com/photos/key-secret-forest-woods-discover-5216637/

“Do you see that?” Shana’s forehead creased, and she side-eyed Jesse as he stepped beside her.

“See what?” He glanced around, eyebrows raised. His gaze slid easily over the stump in question, and she knew he couldn’t possibly see what she was seeing, but she persisted anyway.

“That stump over there,” she pressed, pointing with a finger that trembled slightly. “Don’t you see anything?

He peered with a slight frown into the underbrush. “You mean, that moss-covered rotting thing that’s half buried?” He turned to look at her, head cooking to one side in that usually endearing little habit of his. Now it just irritated her; if he couldn’t see it, she was definitely hallucinating, and she could not be hallucinating. Not again.

“Yes, that one!” Shana half-screeched and clenched her fists at her sides. She stomped over to the stump and glared at him. “How do you possibly miss something this weird?” She bent down and snatched the key from where it lay on the smoothly cut surface of the wood and thrust it toward him so hard she almost threw it.

But he wasn’t there. Instead, an old man smiled at her and reached out to catch the key as it fell from her nerveless fingers. “Ah, there you are! What luck! I’m never sure I have it right, you know. And you’ve missed it so many times already.”

“Missed it?” Her voice quavered, barely audible even in the quiet under the trees.

“Nevermind all that now, you’re here now and that’s all that matters.” The old man tossed the key and caught it casually before slipping it into a voluminous pocket in his robe. “Come, we must get you settled in and ready to assume your duties.”

He turned and strode off into the woods, leaving Shana staring after him with her mouth hanging open. “Come… where?” She demanded, her voice trailing off as he ignored her completely. She slowly followed him with a wild glance back at the empty, rotting stump.

Under the Oaks

Photo taken and edited by Becky Strike, Oak Alley Plantation, LA

He stared down the well groomed brick walk, his worn pack slipping from his shoulder to land with a metallic rattle. His torn, mud-stained uniform was a sore thumb against the impossibly manicured lawn and the milling people nearer the big house.

A woman in skintight pants, of all outlandish costumes, skirted around him with a sidelong glance. A little girl in garishly combined colors jumped up and down and pulled a man’s sleeve; he heard her ask as they passed why he was dressed in such weird clothes. He raised an eyebrow, locking eyes with the open-mouthed child until she lost interest and skipped on toothed road.

The road was all wrong, as well, and shining contraptions sat in neat rows near it on what should have been the cane fields. At least savory smells wafted from the big house. Maybe he could fill his empty stomach while he figured out what was going on.

If only his head didn’t feel so muzzy. He must have had fever; he really didn’t remember how he got back to the plantation. What had he been doing? He flushed with shame at the flash of memory. Cannonfire and screaming men, rivulets of blood polluting the rainwater churning under patched boots. A welcoming hollow in an ancient oak, just waiting at the edge of the field. Curling into a fetal ball with head wedged between his knees and hands locked white knuckles behind his head as battle faded into nothing. Then he was standing under the great oaks of home, only it wasn’t home. It was a nightmare.

Window

https://pixabay.com/photos/ufo-space-stars-science-spaceship-2144977/

It was unique among the dwarf cities, his window. None of the nether people could understand why he had insisted upon its installation when he inherited the throne of Dor. It had cost him more deepsilver than the coffers could well support, and if Olor ever let leak his methods of obtaining the required amount he would be deposed by a unanimous council vote.

He didn’t regret it. If there was no other benefit, the advantage of throwing every dwarf ambassador off guard the moment they entered the throne room would have been worth it. Dwarves hated the open spaces of Above without the comfort of stone protecting their heads. Even the illusion of exposure made them nervous, and they could barely present their petitions and platitudes between glances at the moon rising behind them in the great glass arch.

He had come to Dor as an orphan and fought his way from nameless tunneler to respected aristocrat with his wits and ore fragments hidden in his beard during his shifts in the mines. He’d always been good at secrets, even bigger ones than the black market, and no one had ever caught him sneaking up the airshafts for a glimpse of the sky. And although many commented on his unusual height, no one ever guessed his deepest secret.

Born on the surface to a human mother, he had lived a strange life halfway Nether and Above. Torn between the comfort of the caves and the glory of the sky, he had never truly belonged with human children who swiftly outstripped him in height but remained children long after he gained full strength. When his mother died, he embraced his dwarf heritage and joined his father’s people. Only then did he realize that he would never belong. Power alone would allow him excuse to be different, and so power he took.

The Tomb

Taken and edited by Becky Strike

“What a depressing place! Why on earth did you bring me here, Jack?”

“Oh, I dunno, I think it’s pretty cheerful with the sun shining through the trees and all.”

“Whatever, weirdo! Seriously, what’s with the creepy mausoleums?”

“Come here, I wanted to show you something. Look at the door on that one.”

“What about it? It’s an old slab of stone, like everything else around here.”

“Don’t you see the color?”

“Ooh, I see what you mean. That’s weird! Why would somebody just clean the one door?”

“There’s no writing on it either, like there is on all the rest. I wanna know who’s in there, don’t you?”

“Now that you mention it, but how are we gonna do that?”

“I left a crowbar in the weeds there yesterday. Nobody ever cleans up here, it’ll still be there. Yup, right where I left it.”

“Oh, hurry if you’re gonna break in. What if somebody catches us? Wonder what you get for graverobbing?”

“I told you, nobody ever comes here. Besides, we aren’t robbing, just looking. Come here, help me, this rock is heavy.”

“Whoa, what in the world is that? It’s awfully dark, did you bring a flashlight?”

“Yes, let me… Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? Ooh, no, something is moving in there. Let’s get out of … Jaaaaaaaaaaack!”

The Relic

No one would ever have known it was there, in that tiny retreat from the bustle and concrete tucked in a cluster of apartments. No one remembered that before the garden, before the apartments, before the city, it was there. The city rose around it from apocalyptic waste, slowly but determinedly reclaiming the destruction.

Once walls had surrounded the artifact, high impenetrable walls guarded by marines armed and armored with the pinnacle of military technology. Then budgets and memories failed. First guards then walls disappeared, redirected to new pursuits and construction as civilization marched onward to cover the past. Still it remained, an unimposing but immoveable relic of forgotten death.

Eventually the city overtook it, and a developer born into Upper End luxury fancied it to be an old broken fountain. It became the centerpiece of nostalgia, a hodge-podge tribute to the geometric tranquility of the ancient English garden incongruous between siding and palmettos of The Southern Age as discovered by archaeologists. Birds and lovers alike twittered about its intricately molded layers and cooling sprays, pretending to know of times far before memory.

Until the day the topmost fountain ground to life and the birds flew away. Iron screamed against iron and gears long unused turned layer after layer, settling each within the other until all rested in the base with a click. And they came to repeat history, the hordes of destruction, pouring from the lock to scour the Earth clean for another beginning.

The Corner

It wasn’t beautiful, the corner of Cedar and Walnut. In fact, whatever planner decided to name the streets after trees must of have had some twisted sense of humor. No forest could have less to do with the dirty, dingy gray of metal and concrete.

Despite uninviting appearances, the bench at the corner was always full. Pedestrians couldn’t seem to resist its invitation. Sometimes they paused there with coffee and sandwiches from the warmly lit shop on the other side of the concrete wall. Mostly they just sat and read, chatted with strangers who joined them, or smiled with thoughtful eyes that saw anything but the noisy bustle of city streets.

They called it Le’s Corner in the neighborhood. Most didn’t know why, but the old man who ran the shop spoke the name with moist eyes. He ran trembling fingers over a faded black and white photograph of a tiny girl. Even in the aging exposure her eyes lit up the room, and her smile seemed just for me.

He had made the bench for her when he was just thirteen. She had loved people and spent more time talking with passersby than playing with the toys neatly arranged upstairs. Baba had even said that she kept the shop open because no one could resist stopping to visit with the sunny child and often passed the time sharing a cold snack or the warmth of a hot drink.

Everyone knew her name, and she knew theirs. Visitors would be brought to her corner as if to a temple or a great attraction. No one noticed surroundings when she sat on her bench; light and color seemed to emanate from her and soak into everything.

When she was gone, people came for the memory. They brought their children for quiet chats, who came out of habit and comfort as they became adults. Le’s brother fed them all, and her picture hovered like a shining star over the corner.

Stories With Kids

https://pixabay.com/photos/portland-head-light-lighthouse-5539153/

(I’d like to thank my kids for their contributions to this week’s prompted flash fiction. Sometimes the real life conversations are far funnier than any story I can come up with.”

“Hey, kids, y’all wanna give me story ideas? They have to connect to this lighthouse picture.”

“Me, me, me! Let me see the picture! How about the Lighthouse Girl? A girl was travelling, trying to find a magical world that doesn’t exist. Instead she found the lighthouse, and lived in the lighthouse and made friends in the little town.”

“But what does the lighthouse have to do with a magical world? You can’t just throw things together that don’t connect and call them a story.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, I have an idea! It has a lot of rooms, and people are fighting inside!”

“Why were they fighting inside?”

“Because it was raining. When the rain stopped they ran down all the stairs to the bottom, but the door was locked and the key was lost! It was a dark house! And there was a little girl running like Sonic to find the lighthouse, but she found the dark house instead, and there was a Shadowman!”

“My turn! There was a town with a lighthouse. The lighthouse had always made people feel safe. One day a woman became the principle of the local school, Lighthouse Public School, but she was really mean. She gradually took over the town and named herself queen, making everyone in the town her miserable slaves. She decided she needed an army to conquer the world, so gathered all the townspeople…”

“What does the lighthouse have to do with all this?”

“She had shut down the lighthouse. When she was about to march and conquer all of Mississippi, the lighthouse suddenly came to light, brighter than ever before. The woman was revealed to be a demon and faded away.”

“Ummm… Once upon a time there was a little girl and a lighthouse. She and her father owned the lighthouse and kept it running until one day it broke down. They tried to fix it but they couldn’t, so her father threw the keys in the trash. The little girl was very sad and did everything in her ppwer to get the lighthouse running again.”

“Did she succeed?”

“Um, it took her a few months but she did succeed. Everyone in the town was very happy. The end.”

“Hmm, something about Christmas.”

“In a lighthouse? On a summer day?!”

“Once upon a time it was Christmas Eve. This little girl and boy and their dad went to cut down a Christmas tree. They found the perfect one and cut it down, and brought it into their house.”

“Hold on, what does this have to do with a lighthouse?”

“The lighthouse is their home. They decorated their tree, but the star was missing. They bought one and it arrived that day.”

“Is that the end?”

“No. Hmm. They opened the box, got a ladder, and put the star on top. Also they built a fire, and beds, blankets, and pillows. And they were comfortable happy ever after. The end.”

The Farm

https://pixabay.com/photos/old-elisabeth-houses-historical-3284212/

It had been there for 200 hundred years, looking exactly the same. Just another farm, with a neat farmhouse and barn. Everyone joked about cows in the house and family in the barn, because of the chimneys, but no one had ever thought much more about it.

Which I guess was strange in itself, now that I think of it. Especially since no one was ever invited there. I didn’t know anyone, even village elders, who had ever seen the inside of that house. Once a month someone would show up in town for supplies, but they were so stand-offish few had even been close enough to talk to them.

Then Molly Fern moved into the county with a sun allergy. While the rest of us slept, Molly roamed the countryside, and did she come around with some wild tales. Rumblings underground, strange lights in the house and barn, and pulses of what looked like smoke from the chimney folly. She caused quite the excitement for a while, but when she reported seeing people with missing skin exposing clockwork joints, most people decided she had a loose gear or two herself and tuned her out.

Not me. Which is why the two of us were hiding near the farm when the sky opened like a cellar door. No one will ever believe us, so I don’t know why I’m writing this down, but Molly thought it was important and I’d do anything for her. I can’t even explain what I saw through that door, but I’ll tell you this. I understand why the mice scatter when we open the cellar.

Christmas Train

https://pixabay.com/photos/train-transportation-winter-season-3758523/

The whistle blew, a cheery sound in the crisp air. Even the steam from the pipe crystallized into gray mist that blended with the distant mountain peaks. The world around lay white and silent, the train with its crimson cars and bright window frames a brilliant spot of color.

Inside the warm cars passengers laughed and talked, excited to be sharing the experience of travelling to see family and friends for Christmas. Many carried gifts wrapped in bright fabrics or butcher paper and tied together with brilliant ribbons or twine. Children escaped their distracted mothers and ran up and down the aisles, shrieking with laughter.

Suddenly the train slowed, then stopped. Worried passengers lifted windows to peer out, oblivious to the frigid air that poured into the compartments. Some complained with offended vehemence when the conductor passed through with a hurried explanation that a tree had fallen across the track. Would everyone please be patient while the engineers cleared the track? It would be a bit of a wait, but they would be underway again as soon as possible, never fear.

A couple of strapping young fellows rushed boisterously out into the snow to volunteer their services with an ax and make themselves generally underfoot. Some of the women took advantage of the halt to relieve muscles cramped from long hours on wooden benches that vibrated with the motion of the wheels. They trudged up and down the snowy tracks, wrapped tightly in voluminous cloaks while their irrepressible children dashed about soaking their clothes in snowdrifts and forgetting hats and scarves in the general excitement.

The whistle blew sharply, calling for a mad scramble back into the cars before a puff and a rattle set them moving again. “William!” A voice drifted through the steam as it rose above the icy trees. The small boy leaped to his feet and clattered from the room, tossing a glance over his shoulder at the train waiting on its track under the tree before shutting the door on the Christmas wonders to come.

The Gates

https://pixabay.com/photos/lost-places-attic-architecture-4211518/

Sasha loved the Gates. They were older than memory or record, if the old ones could be believed, though they showed no sign of age. Unlike the longhouse built around them, the burnished wood of which had grayed and rotted several times even in her short lifespan.

She ran a hand over the stone, soaking the warmth of it into her cold skin. That warmth was the reason her people had built the longhouse around the Gates; in a frigid landscape, warmth meant survival. The whole village lived in the shelter of the Gates, worshipping the impossible life they maintained.

The stone hummed beneath her fingers and she jerked away, eyes widening. The thrumm became visible vibration and Sasha stumbled backward, breath coming in ragged gasps as the arch of the Gate began to glow. Farther down the longhouse a second Gate followed suit, then a third.

Then the portion of the longhouse in front of her vanished, replaced by a view of shifting sand and barren red mountains. The sky above them terrified her most with hints of purple and orange streaking a dark blue horizon.

A strange figure stepped into view within the arch. Inhuman, insectile, it clicked with what seemed angry urgency and beckoned to something behind him. Sasha fled screaming as an unimaginable army streamed into the longhouse. She never saw the hosts streaming from the other Gates as one by one they activated.