Starving

broken fan

© Yarnspinnerr

“Raven, where am I?

“Jonathan, there’s a terrible famine here. You must save these people.”

“With what? All I have is an old-fashioned camera.”

“The person who was supposed to photograph this tragedy is ill. By the time he recovers, the opportunity to show the world the horrors here in Bengal will be gone. You must take his place.”

Jonathan Cypher, a man out of time, turned away from the bent fan and stepped off the hotel porch. Seeing the three starving and dying children, he raised the camera to his face, focused, and pressed the shutter release.

bengal famine 1943

Victims of the Bengal famine of 1943. Copyright is or was held by The Statesman newspaper of Kolkata, India. According to that country’s Copyright Act of 1957, the image is now in the public domain (photographs are protected for 60 years from the date of publication), but it may still be under copyright in the United States.

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields flash fiction writing challenge. The idea is to take the image above and use it as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 98.

To the best of my knowledge, the person who provided the photo is from India, so I wanted to start from there. The yellowish cast of the photo made me think of pollution or chemical warfare, so I decided to see about India’s history during World War Two, and if I could devise a fictional Nazi plot in 100 words. What I discovered was much worse.

You can read all about the Bengal Famine of 1943 by clicking the link, but the black and white pimage just above was part of a photo spread published in the Indian English-language newspaper “The Statesman” on 22 August 1943, and those photos, which made world headlines, spurred government action, saving many lives.

I decided to bring back Jonathan Cypher and Raven to illustrate that sometimes you just have to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills or tools in order to be a hero.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Dark Mirror

shack and mirror

© Yinglan Z.

When Chance Bailey returned to his deceased father’s estate, he found nothing but refuse and rubble. The woman he had a “chance” encounter with in that dive bar on the wharf had been his long-lost sister, and she had taken the bulk of the old man’s wealth, which should have been their shared inheritance. Now all he had was a single 18th century gold coin and his father’s ruined land.

There was an old shed and a strange black mirror, which he had never seen before. Yet when he presented his coin to father’s solicitor, he was told vast riches could be found here.

It didn’t look like glass. More like iron filings swirled by magnetism. Chance reached out with recently washed fingers and touched.

Then he was in a cave on an island hundreds of years and thousands of miles away. There were chests full of gold doubloons, all the wealth he would ever need. This was the secret of the old man’s fortune. The mirror was the greatest treasure of them all.

I wrote this for the FFfAW Challenge for the Week of April 10, 2018 hosted by Priceless Joy. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction between 100 and 175 words long. My word count is 175.

Yesterday, in response to a different challenge, I wrote The Pit Fiend Promise in which a man who had lived a wasted life after being rejected by his wealthy father, finds out via a mysterious messenger (his long lost sister, though he didn’t recognize her), that “the old man” had died, and his inheritance was there for the taking (half actually, since sister had gotten there first).

In today’s story, though it seems at first that Chance has inherited nothing but ashes, he discovers the secret to how his father built wealth in the first place. Now how will he use it?

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

The Pit Fiend Promise

lady in black

Lady in Black

The lady in the black satin dress walked into the bar because of the Pit Fiend Promise she had made. Except for the cocktail waitresses, she was the only woman in the place, and the men all turned to watch her walk in. Some obviously thought she had incredible assets both below the hemline and the neckline, but the vision of others was probably too blurry to make out the details.

“What’s your order, lady?” The barman was past middle-aged, weighed over 300 pounds, and looked like whatever dreams he may have once cherished had since sailed away from him over the horizon.

“Scotch, neat.”

He turned to get a clean glass and reached for a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

“Say, Baby. Can I buy you a drink?”

Continue reading →

An Unlikely Seagull

seagull

© Alastair Forbes

Sixteen year old Jeff would do anything, even go to the zoo with his parents and brothers, rather than deal with Suzanna’s jealousy. He had to turn off the ringtone and vibrate features on his iPhone and block the SMS service so she couldn’t call or text him.

At first, he thought he was going to be bored, but all of the different animal exhibits were interesting and even fun.

He still couldn’t get his mind off of Suzanna, though. When they started dating, she seemed nice, if a bit strange, but now she was totally possessive. Lucky he had Jan to talk to, but if Suzanna ever found out…

There was a big crowd in front of him at the Seal exhibit, but he wanted a photo, so he held his phone over his head to get a picture.

“Hey!” Jeff felt a sudden jerk and looked up to see a large seagull flying away with his iPhone. Mom and Dad were going to kill him.

Suzanne landed behind the public restrooms at Ocean Beach near Sloat and then transformed back into a teenage girl. “Now we’ll see what you’ve been texting to that little slut Jan.”

I wrote this for the Sunday Photo Fiction Challenge of April 8th, 2018. The idea is to use the image above to inspire the creation of a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 198.

I must confess that I read Joy Pixley’s story Secret Salvos before crafting my tale, so I was probably influenced by it.

The object in the gull’s mouth looks kind of like a cell phone, though I doubt the bird could hold something so (relatively) heavy in its beak for very long. That means it couldn’t be an ordinary seagull, could it?

Way, way back in the day, like the late 1970s, I remember visiting the San Francisco Zoo (where my story is set) and I was about to feed a seal a piece of fish, holding it (the fish, not the seal) above my head, when I felt a sudden jerk and the fish was gone. A seagull had flown down and plucked it out of my hand. I let Suzanna do the same thing with Jeff’s phone.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Oh, I understand the host of this challenge has to let it go at the end of the month due to health problems. My schedule prevents me from having sufficient discretionary time to pick it up, but I hope someone else will.

The Too Close Encounter

alien ship

Found at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie blog – No photo credit given

Captain Isaiah Morrison, for such had he once been called, late of the Confederate States Army, having found himself without a home or family, thanks to that damned Yankee Major General William Sherman and his “Scorched Earth policy,” had spent these past ten years in the Territories of the untamed West prospecting for gold (among other activities). His living was meager but sufficient, and now approaching middle-age, a time when men add distinction to the beginnings of waning vigor, he was riding his paint toward town in the hour before dawn to resupply and spend some few short hours in the bed of a hired woman.

The stars were brilliant above him and he stopped momentarily to appreciate the grandeur of God’s great masterpiece, spread before him in all its splendor, ancient, spinning fires contrast against the utter blackness of the infinite void.

Sentient indigenous experiment number 47 commencing. Approaching two mammalian life forms, sentient biped atop non-sentient, non-intelligent quadriped [query: could this be a mating practice].

Morrison was captivated by one star which did not match the pattern of the others. For one thing, it was moving against the flow of the constellations, for the second, it was growing larger, and finally, it was approaching his position.

Continue reading →

Return to Cowra

billinudgel hotel bar

Billinudgel Hotel, Billinudgel, NSW, Australia, © Cube Online Services Google Maps

Hands trembling slightly, the middle-aged Japanese man walked into the bar at the Billinudgel Hotel.

“What’ll it be, Sir?”

“A beer. Whatever you have on tap.”

She selected a glass and filled it with liquid amber topped with a healthy froth. “There you go. Name’s Marge. You’re not the usual guest we get around here.”

He shook her hand, suppressing the urge to bow, this being Australia. “Haruto Nakajima. Pleased to meet you.” He took a sip of his beverage.

“What brings you here?”

“I’m trying to put some demons to rest.”

“How’s that?”

“Ever heard of the breakout at the Cowra prisoner of war camp?”

“Toward the end of the war wasn’t it?”

“Twenty years ago tomorrow. I’m a survivor. Chose not to commit suicide. I need to go back to learn how to live with myself.”

Nearly 950 km to Cowra.”

“Well, I’m still working up my nerve.”

I wrote this for the What Pegman Saw challenge. The idea is to use a Google maps image and location as the inspiration for creating a piece of flash fiction no more than 150 words long. My word count is 149.

Today, the Pegman takes us to The Billinudgel Hotel, New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Naturally, I looked the place up. Not much about Billnudgel on Wikipedia, but the hotel has a Facebook page as well as a detailed history at posted at BrunswickValley.com.au.

However, none of that seemed terribly dramatic, so I looked up the history of New South Wales itself, and discovered the Cowra Breakout. During World War Two, the town of Cowra was the site of a prisoner of war camp interning over 1,100 Japanese prisoners. On 4 August 1944, the prisoners led a mass escape which ultimately cost the lives of four Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese POWs. Some were killed during the escape attempt, but many committed suicide rather than be recaptured. All living prisoners were recaptured within ten days of the escape.

I was dismayed to find that Cowra is approximately 947 km (almost 590 miles) from Billinudgel, but made the best of it. My story is set in the summer of 1964, twenty years after the escape.

In 1929, Margaret Alice Ring (Ma Ring) of New Zealand took over running the Billinudgel Hotel, and in 1946, her niece Marge came to Australia to work the bar. Marge remained at the hotel until her retirement in 1984, so I had her present to greet Haruto.

I wondered how the survivors of the escape, the last of whom were repatriated in 1947, dealt with the aftermath, so I decided to use this story to explore it a bit.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

The Uneasy Pact

shelter

© Sue Vincent

Dani was with the Davidson children, all of them dressed regally if somewhat uncomfortably, sitting under a grand silken tent, served drink and treats by elven servants, while the Queen of Direhaven, Janellize, sat in front of them next to the golden dragon Shay, the two of them marvelously displayed against the backdrop of a magnificent waterfall.

It was mid-afternoon, and Janellize had just begun her tale of the shared history of her people and the dragons, one fraught with conflict and distrust. But who was at fault and why now was the enmity set aside?

“For time out of mind, we whom you call Elves and the race of dragons have visited your world, but neither are what you imagine us to be from your legends.

“Only in certain lands on your world were we called Elves. In other languages, we have been referred to as fairies, gnomes, and dwarves. In centuries past, an ancient Christian prayer book used the term elf as synonymous with Satan, though other nations of that time, considered some of our people light while others dark in nature. We have also been considered rbhus, hobgoblins, nymphs, demons, and angels.

“Our people have been all of these and none of them, for in truth, we were never truly realized by humans. In fact, just as your world contains differing cultures and individuals with varying characters, so too do we, and thereby hangs our tale.

Continue reading →

When Science is Wrong

snake oil

Found at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie

“Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. My name is Dr. Eric Sandersen, Director of Climate Studies at the American Foundation of Science Awareness. My studies of climatic changes due to atmospheric pollutants based on a half-century of data compiled by my department have shown conclusively that the Earth is headed toward an imminent and catastrophic ice age.”

Both the audience of scientists at the 1965 Conference of Climate Scientists and the much wider body of people watching on their television sets around the country started murmuring.

“I know this is a difficult piece of knowledge to take in, but the survival of our civilization is at stake.”

The crowd seated in the auditorium became louder and there were small outbreaks of arguing among some of the delegates.

Continue reading →

The Next Treasure Dive

kites

Photo credit: MorgueFile 2a4054c7afcb25f354a6cf9709d9b8a5

She was waiting for them when the two men pulled into the sports center’s parking lot in Pitt’s 1948 Model 135 Delahaye. It was a cool, cloudy Sunday in early April and Arvada’s annual kite festival was on the verge of being rained out.

“You sure know how to travel in style, Mr. Pitt.”

The rough-looking man with the salt-and-pepper hair stepped out of the antique car, his companion remaining inside. “You’ve got what we paid for?” He held out his right hand impatiently.

“Of course.” She proffered the aged, yellowed envelope.

The man took it, gently opened the flap, and briefly read the contents. “Yes, this is it. Just a few miles from here.” The adventurer looked up, but the lady in black was already walking away. They had both honored the agreement and now it was time to move on.

“Where to, Dirk?”

Pitt started the engine and backed out of his parking spot.

“You won’t believe it, Al. The Byzantium is hidden at the bottom of Standley Lake.”

“You’re kidding. Westminster is just a few miles from here. The lake’s less than 100 feet deep.”

“Easy retrieval job and America’s missile defense technology advances fifty years. Let’s go.”

I wrote this for the Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the inspiration for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 199.

Given the image, I looked up “kite festivals” on Google and came up with the Arvada Kite Festival to be held in Arvada, a suburb of Denver, this coming Sunday, April 8th from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Unfortunately, the weather for Arvada this Sunday is predicted to have a 70% chance of rain, so not good flying weather.

I looked up Arvada and found out that among other things, it’s the home of the Cussler Museum of Antique Cars, created by author Clive Cussler.

I read a lot of Cussler’s books back in the day, including Raise the Titanic featuring his primary hero Dirk Pitt, who I assume is Cussler’s alter ego (they share a love of antique car collecting among other things).

Along with his partner Al Giordino, the NUMA Marine Engineer has had many adventures, usually involving sunken ships, lost treasure, high-tech and high adventure.

I thought the kite festival might be a good place for a clandestine meeting between Pitt and a courier, so I set it there. The “Lady in Black” is totally made up for convenience.

The nearest body of water of any size is Standley Lake which is in nearby Westminster and has a maximum depth of 96 feet. There is some Gold Rush history associated with Arvada, and loosely merged with the history behind the lake, I decided that sometime over a century ago, one of the men associated with creating the original reservoir buried what he thought was a fortune of illegally gotten gold there, but died before he could retrieve it (fortunately recording its location in his diary).

Turns out, it was really the element Byzantium (I pulled that from the plot of “Raise the Titanic”) which can be used to develop a defense system that shoots enemy missiles down using sound waves.

Yeah, that’s a lot of research for 200 words, but I had fun.

To read other stories (or to submit your own) based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com (this writing challenge needs some love, so please consider writing a wee tale of your own and submitting it).

The Ghost of the Montreal Symphony House

symphony

© Dale Rogerson

The Montreal Symphony House had been built less than a decade before, but something much older was there. It caused the ornate lighting to sway and cell coverage was always spotty.

His name used to be Erik, and his spirit was first manifest in Paris over a century ago. After departing from there, he has appeared wherever opera or symphonic music was played.

Once he died for love, and now beyond death’s power, he lives for the music of the night. He has been called the Angel of Music, the Opera Ghost, but more commonly, he is the Phantom.

I wrote this for the Rochelle Wisoff-Fields photo writing challenge. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for creating a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long. My word count is 99.

I saw that the photo is credited to Dale Rogerson and doing a bit of online sleuthing, I discovered she may (not sure about this) live near Montreal.

Since the photo’s file name is “dales-symphony-2,” it seemed reasonable to conclude that this was a photograph of the interior of the Montreal Symphony House at Place des Arts. The scene now being set, I just had to think of a hook.

Although this is a symphony house, I thought that the spirit of The Phantom of the Opera (Wikipedia page for the novel) might be attracted to it, a wandering soul seeking to sojourn anywhere that plays the “music of the night,” to borrow from Andrew Lloyd Webber.

To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.