100 Words: Home At Last (How many whiskies?)

Home at last, he goes straight for the drink.  His empty tumbler is ready for me to refill before I reach him.  

As I pour I wonder, “How many whiskies this evening?”  

“Not as many as last night,” someone inside me answers, “Or any night before.”

I inwardly nod as I serve and receive a smelly, foul tasting kiss.  He won’t start to slow down for a while yet, so he doesn’t notice the strangeness in taste or appearance.  

Not in his drink, and not on my face.  The face from within, brought out for the first, and last, time.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (see here for other stories): 

PHOTO PROMPT © Fatima Fakier Deria

250 Words: Shouting across the bar

She shouted across the bar, pointed to the little map.
He listened, didn’t hear and shouted back. 
It went back and forth.
They got nowhere. 
Well, they got lost.


They asked for Becks, he gave them Metz. 
They got irate, refused to pay and stormed off. 
He, shamefacedly, had to explain to his boss. 
And paid.


He didn’t recognise them.
He couldn’t understand their annoyance.
He let someone else take over.


He didn’t see them.
For over forty minutes.
No wonder they soaked him.


Immediately after, a frequent customer smiled kindly and asked for his number.
He gave her a flier, underlining the bar’s number.
She asked again, he gave an annoyed look and jabbed the flier.
She pushed it back and walked away, normally he had much more to say.
He shrugged, carried on.

It was only later he realised it was her.
And, while pouring her usual for someone else, he wondered… and spilt the drink.
And was ordered away from the bar.


It was just one of those shifts, one spent well outside the required zone. 
One not taking in anyone’s words or faces, just order, fulfillment, order, fulfillment.
A buzz filling his head.
Why did they play the music so loud? 
Often he dreamed of sleepy seaside tavernas. 


While collecting glasses outside he spotted his regular drinking alone across the street. 
In the relative quiet of the nightlife he crossed toward her preparing his apology.
Hoping it was necessary. 
He had often dreamed about her too.

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Written for Faber Academy's QuickFic from the following picture prompt (there was actually a choice of three...).  
Well done to the winner and and runners-up! (including me!)

250 Words: I punched the picture and left

I focused on the Elvis poster to avoid the painting.  I’d only wanted a quick browse of the LPs, not the dredging of my mind for something I can only speak about in dreadful rhyme:

In an old house in a distant place it occurred. 
A terrible memory my mind has often demurred,
Pushed back, buried deep,
Inescapable only in sleep;
When nightmares return me -
Thank God, though, not nightly.

But the picture there
Laid it all bare,
Brought back our host,
The malevolent ghost
And its countryside mansion
With bloodied flesh stanchions
Flanking the door -
And corpses of creatures lining the floors,
Its terrible eyes,
The blood curdling cries
Its birdlike fingers and thighs.

It touched my head,
Brought out all my dread
In glorious technicolour.
It drew from my mind
Every awful unkind,
Scenes that could not be any fuller -
That it made me relive,
My soul drained through a sieve
Leaving little left to use.
Shaved my brain with a chiv,
Unwilling gifts I did give
As a base for all its abuse.

This ghoul was no fool
It gave me a rule
To send others into its school.
The experience has past,
But what I then did shall last
And is why I don’t like to remember.
Those dreams in my sleep
All concern the poor peeps
I have sent to it for to dismember.

*

I lost a year after that, and have spent each since trying to forget, getting angry and frustrated when I remember. 

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Written for Faber Academy's QuickFic from the following picture prompt (there was actually a choice of three...).  
Well done to the winner and and runners-up!

250 Words: Escape into jade skies

The forest had been such a peaceful place.  Full of noise, of course, but our noise. 

As I said, peaceful.


For a time they came to build.  We sent scouts, were assured by them this was only a  temporary disturbance.  They weren’t clearing enough of the forest for this to be business or pleasure, they said.  Seems funny now how they used the word pleasure when all I feel is pain.


A season after they left the buzzing began.  We were blasé at first.  “It will stop soon, just as before,” we said. 

Then light and dark, day after day, week upon week it carried on filling my head with its fuzzy hurt, surrounding me in the trees and bombarding me.  It’s like my thoughts won't ever stop, like my blood beats backwards, like a parasite is burrowing deep, is stuck at the centre of my mind twitching and wriggling and pecking at my core.  

My anxieties heightened until I could only exist automatically.  An automation that stops me from falling forever from my tree.  Instinct always takes over.  Believe me, I have tried. 

That is why I look up. 

Where the sun adds to my torment, the clouds invite me.  I dream of spreading my wings and ascending into jade skies, a safer softer green than that which throws sound at me. 

Up I will fly until the buzz fades, until silence reigns, until I can rest in jade clouds forever.

That green fills my mind as I rise.

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Written for Faber Academy's QuickFic from the following picture prompt (there was actually a choice of three...).  
Well done to the winner and and runners-up!

100 Words: Arboreal Life

I used to live in that tree.  Nights were the worst time.  That light shining down.  The cold.  Trying to get sleep, scared stiff of falling.  Owls.  Foxes.  Cats.  The police, well-meaning neighbours.  ‘Til I was a fixture.

I remember one night, early on.  Mr Smith.  52.  Cigarette break after one of his dreams.  Haunted stare right through me as he took long drags.  

“I think it’s you,” he said, “In my dreams.  Waiting, knives concealed.”  

“Nah, guv, not me.” I said, opening my coat to show I had nothing there.  

He smiled.  Went back in.  Never saw him again.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt: 

PHOTO PROMPT © Ronda Del Boccio

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