Tag Archives: flash fiction

The Voice

woman nagging

Image: BlokeSupport.com.au

Won’t she ever shut up? She keeps going on and on and on about the most inane topics. I’m losing my mind. I’ve done everything I can to put up with her, but she keeps running her mouth and I think I’m going to die.

There she is, lying at my feet, her throat opened literally from ear to ear. Her blood’s pooling under her. I’m sure it’ll ruin the kitchen’s hardwood floor but I don’t care, do you hear me? I don’t care. Just to add punctuation, I take the knife I killed her with and throw it on the floor as hard as I can. It makes a nice dent and adds more blood splatter to the floor and cabinets.

I don’t know what I’m going to do now. I’ve done everything I can, but I can still hear her in my head. That incessant nag, nag, nag. It won’t go away. She’s dead and her endless monologue still won’t go away.

I walk over to the knife, stepping in her blood and tracking it across the floor. I pick it up, hold the blade to my throat, and do the only thing I can think of to make her voice stop forever.

The Child Came Home

boy coloring

Image: Children’s Advocacy Center of Grayson County, TX website

Julian was 35 years old when reality became too much for him. It wasn’t so much his dull job at the accounting firm, or his break up with Jill after seven years of living together. His parents think it must have been the disappointment, the loss of hope for the future that took his mind and spirit. He had such expectations at the beginning of November and now in December, they were crushed. So Julian’s parents watched as he sat on the floor of his old room with a coloring book and crayons. He was their little boy again.

This was a piece of flash fiction (less than 100 words in this case) I recently submitted to The Drabble. I received an email from them saying it didn’t meet their needs, so I figured why waste it? Yes, it is a commentary on how some people, at least according to the popular press, are so overwhelmed and dismayed by Donald Trump’s recent election win, that they seem to retreat into less “mature” behavior. I wasn’t poking fun at these individuals, but rather trying to communicate the tragedy involved in such decisions.

She Who Endures

rain forest

Image: ABC.net.au / Rocky Roe

The plague struck swiftly, perhaps not by human standards, but certainly quickly enough to sicken three-quarters of the people of the Earth within fifteen years. At first the disease seemed very widespread and indiscriminate, but five years into the plague, the CDC’s Chief Epidemiologist, Dr. Sandra Fry, determined that it was most virulent in high population centers with a heavy industrial base.

The nation with the largest number of deaths by year five was China, which correlated very highly to their level of pollution and generally poor environmental standards.

However, as the plague progressed, the Euro-Asian continent fell, as did North and South America. By year ten, four billion people were dead. Disposal of the bodies in any civilized manner was impossible due to the shortage of manpower and resources, so they were bulldozed into mass graves.

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The Old Elf Of Christmas

Warning: This is not a tale of heartwarming enchantment.

Seven-year-old Shelley thought it was a little strange that there was a Department Store Santa seated at the far end of the playground. It was Christmas Eve and so much snow had fallen that Daddy had to spend hours yesterday and today just shoveling it all off of the driveway.

After lunch, she begged Daddy to take her to the playground. She could see it from her backyard and there were other kids playing on the snow-covered swings, slides, and other equipment. Mommy had just put her little brother down for his nap and agreed Daddy should take Shelley out to play. She had a lot of cooking to do to get ready for the rest of the family to come over on Christmas, and wanted them both out of the way.

Daddy took a folding chair with him and sat at the edge of the playground with his cell phone surfing the web.

Shelley took off to play with the other kids, but now they were all gone. Instead, there was Santa sitting on a red chair smiling at her.

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Daedalus One

rocket

Image: Space.com

August 29, 2064, Cape Canaveral, Florida

“There it goes. All our hopes for the human race surviving on another planet.”

Chester Menkin put his arm around his wife Helen’s zaftig waist as they watched the launch of the Daedalus One probe together. It was quite literally a “hot August night” as the Orion rocket’s enormous engines erupted with man-made fire, so like the gift of Prometheus, thrusting the space craft away from the launch pad and the surface of our world.

“We’ll eventually go extinct here on Earth, Chester, but we send the best part of ourselves to the stars.”

Dr. and Dr. Menkin were a brilliant Genetics team and responsible for successfully encoding human DNA onto bacteria so “we” could be sent on the long interstellar voyage to the new planet.

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A Time To Follow Your Heart

chanukah

Image: StepByStep.com

Sarah stood across the street from her Bubbe’s and Zayde’s house. The evening of December 24th, the first night of Chanukah this year, was cool, even in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, but she had dressed for the occasion. She made sure the coat she was wearing wouldn’t attract attention in case anyone saw her.

Sarah wished she could get closer. She wished she could just knock on the door and go inside, but she wasn’t supposed to be there and she wasn’t supposed to change anything.

Wait! There they were. She could see them through the window in the front of their house. Bubbe and Zayde. Her big brother Aaron, all of seven years old, was excitedly jumping up and down next to them. Sarah couldn’t hear anything of course, but she could see everyone’s facial expressions and imagined Zayde firmly but kindly helping Aaron to calm down.

Tradition says that the Chanukah menorah must be placed either in a central area of the home or by a window. The latter is to proudly announce that a miracle had occurred and this was the commemoration of that miracle. Sarah was watching her family tonight thanks to a miracle she had created herself.

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Dreamless

coma

Image: From the 2012 TV Miniseries Coma

“Why is it so hard to wake up?”

“Because I don’t want you to wake up.”

“No, I’ve got to get out of bed. I can’t be late for work.”

“You are a lot more late for work than you think.”

“How do you know? Who are you? Why can’t I open my eyes?”

“Because I’m a Dream Eater and as soon as you stop resisting, I’m going to keep on eating yours.”

“What are you talking about?”

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Tomb of the Pilot

glenn and friendship 7

Image: NASA

“I can’t believe we finally made it, Kent. We’ve made it to the tomb.”

“We aren’t there yet, Bethany. We still have to make it across this field.”

Kent and Bethany had been traveling by horseback for weeks, following the ancient maps and clues left by the Predecessors. They weren’t entirely sure how long ago the Predecessors lived or when the original maps had been created. Certainly it was in the time before the fall, before the plague that was rumored to have killed billions, before the return of the remnant of mankind to their simple farms and fields.

They stood a moment reviewing the scene in the mid-morning sunlight.

“There’s not much left. I mean, the reproduction of the map of this area showed more tombs and graves, many, many more.”

“Time, weather, a multitude of other factors have destroyed all this, Bethany. The Pilot’s tomb is supposed to be one of the few left.”

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Desire

the kiss“I think it’s working Gregor. I’m beginning to feel something.”

“Me, too. It’s kind of strange, embarrassing even.”

Gregor and Aabha were in bed together in a small, spartan, dimly lit room. They were sitting up, their backs resting on pillows pressed against the headboard. A blanket chastely covered them both up to their collar bones. If anyone had been watching them, it would have been clear they had never been together before.

Aabha turned toward Gregor, looked into his green eyes as if seeing him for the first time, then slowly reached out to caress his cheek.

She giggled. “You need to shave.”

He reached up and pressed her hand against his face. “I suppose I do.”

“It’s really affecting me now, Gregor…the Desire.”

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The Dragon Quest of Peres the Knight

dragon

from “The Hobbit” (2012)

Even for a Knight with the valor of Peres the Worthy, entering the lair required all his courage. He had never faced such a formidable foe as this fiend. She had captured the fair one, presumably for a meal or two, and Peres knew her kind grew hungry at sunset.

The sun was all too near the western horizon as he descended into the cavern.

Armored boots are not much for stealth, so the evil Drusella heard him coming long before he entered the treasure chamber. Unlike the other caverns in the lair, this one was brightly illuminated, and torch-light reflected off of a myriad of gold and silver coins, as well as a plethora of precious gems.

His lovely one Katin was restrained in the very center of the cave, an iron collar around her neck with a chain extending from it to a sturdy pillar of wood. She saw him and gave him an expression most pathetic. It was clear that Drusella had lashed her as she was bleeding from a dozen wounds.

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