Tag Archives: fantasy

I’d Give Everything I Have for You

pier

© Jules Paige

It had finally stopped raining when Jack Bishop reached the little used pier. He wanted to sit down, but he couldn’t. He had to get to the end, to where Billy and he used to fish when his son was little.

Jack stopped and looked down. His right hand was pressing against the bleeding wound at his gut as hard as he dared, shot thanks to a mugging gone wrong. He was a goner, but he had to reach the end of the pier.

Lance Corporeal William Bishop was killed when his vehicle ran over an IED near Baghdad on August 13, 2011. The magician said that if Jack could reach the end of the pier before dying, he’d trade his life for Billy’s.

“Made it. I love you, son.” Jack sat on one of the benches, his life coming to an end. “I’m here for you, Billy. You’ve got the rest of your life to live. Make it a good life.”

******

twilight zone

From the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “In Praise of Pip

Billy sat on the bench and helped his five-year-old son Todd bait the hook on his fishing line. “God, I wish your Grandpa were here to see this. I miss him so much.”

I wrote this in response to the Sunday Photo Fiction – March 26th 2017 challenge. The idea is to write a piece of flash fiction of no more than 200 words based on the image above. I made it at 195 words.

This story isn’t exactly original. It’s loosely based on a 1963 episode of The Twilight Zone called In Praise of Pip. Actor Jack Klugman plays a small time bookie named Max Phillips who’s in deep with the mob. The only light in his life is his son Pip, who is serving as a soldier in Vietnam. Fate gives Max a second chance, but it involves trading his life for Pip’s, who otherwise would be killed in combat.

The ending scene with actor Robert Diamond playing the adult Pip, alive and well, having survived serving in ‘Nam, talking about how much he misses his Dad still breaks me up.

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

I Want to Kill You

saber

Found at Dinoanimals.com

Little Danny Claiborne had raised him from a cub. Taka, the Saber Tooth, was an adolescent tiger. He went from sleeping with Danny under the covers of his bed to living in a shed next to the house.

Taka’s brother Kai, and his sister Aka, were raised by two other children, Sha Clanton and Dran McLaury. Danny, Sha, and Dran loved their sabers but as the tigers grew toward maturity, the villagers became more wary. There had been a few occasions when an unannounced visitor to one of their homes had nearly been mauled.

But to the children who were still children, the sabers were beloved pets, and the sabers had the children no reason to believe otherwise, at least until recently.

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The Monster Under Carrie’s Bed

monster

Poster from the film “Under the Bed” (2012)

Carrie heard the strange scratching sounds in the walls of her bedroom again.

“Mommy! Daddy!” She screamed out to her parents for the third time that night.

Daddy trudged into her bedroom. It had been an exhausting week. For the past five nights, Carrie kept swearing something was making scary noises in her walls. For the past five nights, her parents Bill and Sandy came in, but they could never hear anything.

Sandy thought there might be a mouse in the walls. Bill thought that moving to the new house a month ago was harder on their seven-year-old daughter than they thought it would be.

“Daddy, I’m so scared.” Carrie leapt out of her bed and jumped into his arms. He held and comforted his little girl.

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Tahji’s Freedom

bug

© Shaktiki Sharma

Tahji was curious. He’d never seen so many people before. He half hid behind the post to get a better look through the doorway. They were talking their people talk. Tahji could understand a little of it when one talked, but they were all speaking at once. It was so confusing. Perhaps if he got closer.

“There you are, little one.” It was Tahji’s child-friend Rohan.

“You shouldn’t wander off like this. You might have gotten lost.”

Tahji saw Rohan was carrying his ornate little home. The door was open.

“So soon?” The mantis had been enjoying his freedom.

I wrote this in response to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers photo challenge. The idea is for authors to use the photo prompt above to create a piece of flash fiction no longer than 100 words long. Mine is 100 words.

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

My Published Stories at “Theme of Absence”

I’ve been devoting the vast majority of my fiction writing lately to my own blog, but I do have two of my stories published elsewhere. They don’t appear on my blog because one of the conditions of publication was that they be totally unique works.

Both of them are at Theme of Absence.

The first story, The Anything Box was published last September, and tells the tale of a lonely teenage girl’s encounter with a strange object and how it connects her to her deceased Father.

The second story is called The Stalker, and it portrays another teenage girl’s meeting with something incredibly horrible while hiking in the woods. I had originally written it for a Halloween contest (I lost), but it ended up being published in general stories.

I haven’t mentioned them in a while, so I thought I’d dust them off and present them again. Each story is just under 1,000 words so they’re pretty fast reads.

If you have a moment or two, click the links, read my stories, and let me know what you think.

Thanks.

The Summoning

dragon

© A Mixed Bag

Raul’s aged uncle found the dragon toy in an obscure curio shop in Venice. His nephew Raul loved dragons, so he sent it to him as a present.

Sasha, Raul’s sister, brought in the mail after school. Raul saw the return address and took it to his room. If Step-Father saw it, he’d throw it away.

Sasha grabbed a snack and then took off to her friend Carla’s house, where she spent most of her time. She was fourteen and he was only ten.

Raul hid the dragon in the back of his closet with his other treasures.

Step-Father came home late and drunk. Raul had his homework done but burned the frozen pizza they were having for dinner, which earned him another beating.

Later, in bed, Raul was sobbing. In the closet, the dragon’s eyes glowed green.

Next morning, Raul woke up in a soft nest in an enormous tree house, being caressed by a golden dragon.

“Rest easy, my child, she cooed. I felt your need. You will never be hurt or neglected again.”

In the people world, Sasha came home near midnight to find her house on fire. Only Step-Dad’s remains were found in the ashes.

I wrote this in response to the Sunday Photo Fiction -February 19th 2017 challenge. Based on the photo prompt above, authors are to write a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. Mine is 199.

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

The Chair On The River

mystery chair

© Ted Strutz

Bill and Betty enjoyed walks along the river. Usually, it was beautiful and unremarkable, that is, until the chair. It was standing on the water as if waiting for someone.

“That’s impossible, Bill.”

“Probably not. Bet there’s a sandbar and someone in a boat put it there as a prank.”

Just then, they heard a rustling in the brushes behind them. A mediterranean looking gentleman appeared and said, “Excuse me.”

The pair moved aside and the stranger walked to the chair, sat, and waved.

“A trick.” Bill stepped into the water. Expecting to walk, his leg sank into freezing water.

Written as a response to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields 100 word photo challenge. The idea is to write a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long based on the photo above. My story’s word count is exactly 100.

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

The Dream Master

Morpheus

Morpheus, Greek god of dreams

In spite of his exhaustion, Ian Mohr had to battle the demon Morpheus, god of sleep and dreams, every night to enter his realm. There were whole nights when the demon was successful in denying Ian entrance, but eventually the man’s sheer fatigue would defeat the sleep god.

As long as Ian entered the dream realm in a state of mental collapse, the realm and the god were safe, but Morpheus could never take the chance that the man might someday gain entrance with some psychic reserves intact.

However even gods err, and after several decades, Morpheus had a minor lapse, one significant enough to allow Ian access with some strength left within him.

This was all that it took, for once in the twilight realm, the guise of Ian Mohr fell away as he recalled his true nature and name: Phantasos, the demon’s brother.

Jealously long ago caused Morpheus to expel his brothers from the neither realms, cursing them with moral identities. Only Phantasos remembered, and only then in fragments of dreams.

Now it was Morpheus who walked the Earth as a man, one who could not quite recall who he was, what he was. Would the human that is Morpheus age and die and then forever cease to threaten to regain the dream world, or would he too remember and retake what was his?

The answer could only be found in a dream, if Phantasos would allow it.

I didn’t get much sleep last night, so this story is a natural consequence.

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane

super boy

© iStock

“Jimmy! Get off of the roof! You’ll fall!”

Eight-year-old Jimmy Parker had climbed out of the loft window onto the shingled roof and stood poised to fly, dressed in his complete “Superman” costume his Mom and Dad gave him for his birthday.

“I’ll be okay, Mom. Don’t worry.”

Jimmy thought Mom always worried too much. She’d been in the backyard hanging wet clothes on the line when she turned, looked up, and saw her only child surveying the horizon.

“Jimmy! Please! You know you can’t fly.”

He bent over slightly, almost losing his balance, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “I’ll only be up here for a minute.”

It was super cool to be standing on the roof dressed up as his favorite hero. Yeah, the guy on the Superman show said it wasn’t the cape or costume that made him fly, and Jimmy knew he’d been born in Omaha, Nebraska and not on Krypton, but he wanted to feel the wind rippling across his cape just once while he stood someplace high.

Mrs. Helen Parker, Jimmy’s Mom, was terrified, but not for the reasons most Moms would be. Jimmy’s Dad was at work at his job as a fireman, and this being a bright Saturday afternoon in April, anyone might catch sight of Mrs. Parker’s little boy. If they looked at the wrong instant, they’d take him away from her forever.

Jimmy saw his Mom still looking up at him, afraid to move. He felt sorry for her, even though he knew he wasn’t going to get hurt.

“I’m coming down now Mom.”

Just like Dad told him, he looked around to make sure no one was watching, then he blinked and he was standing right in front of Mom on the grass in their backyard.

superman

From the “Adventures of Superman” television show

“See? I told you it would be okay.”

Jimmy’s Mom bent down quickly and hugged her baby boy. “Don’t ever do that again, Jimmy. I was scared to death.”

“Okay, Mom. I just wanted to feel like Superman a little bit. I won’t do it again.”

He also wanted to see if he could teleport all the way from the roof to the ground. He’d never jumped more than from one room in the house to the next before.

Jimmy Parker wasn’t an alien born on another planet, but being a mutant born in the midwest still had certain advantages.

I really did have a Superman costume complete with cape when my family and I lived in Council Bluffs, Iowa in the early 1960s. I didn’t go up on the roof of our house, but I did run around my backyard with my arms stuck out in front of me pretending I could fly.

I wrote this just for the fun of it.

The Magic Boat Ride

boat

© KayllistisQuill.com

Landon knew the boat was magic the minute he saw it. The 10-year-old boy and his 4 1/2-year-old sister Dani were vacationing with their Dad and his latest girlfriend at a beach house in California.

“C’mon, Dani. Let’s have an adventure.” He took his sister’s hand and helped her follow him into the boat.

“What about, Landon?” She looked up at him quizzically.

He stood dramatically facing forward. “Our spaceship to Mars is taking off!”

Imagination abruptly became reality as the magical boat and its tiny passengers rocketed out of Earth’s atmosphere.

This is the third and final piece of flash fiction in my series, inspired by photos at KayllistisQuill.com. The first story is The Prayer followed by Over the Edge.

I had a little fun putting my grandchildren in this one, even though I had to age them about three years.

I allowed myself a maximum of 100 words, and this story came in at a mere 91.