150 Words: "Neptune" and "Sedna"

I spent a lot of my childhood holidays watching out for the fantastical and rarely believed in the area around my grandparents’ house.  After devouring their books on the matter, I would head out to see what I could see.

After reading the love story of Neptune and Sedna, the first Sea Imps, or Seamps, I became obsessed with spotting one of these mysterious creatures.  I would sit on the beach through summer evenings, trying to spot them popping up.

One time I did.  And they were screaming in pain.

Into the water I dove, out I swam as quickly as I could.  

So sure I had been of my Seamp.  

Yet all I found was another gangly youth, who could swim underwater a curiously long way.

I helped her to the shore, bound missing fingers with my shirt, took her to hospital.

And so this Neptune met her Sedna.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a stolen identity) or Ice Element (include a mistaken identity)) and had a word count limit of 140-150 words.  

Summer Joy. Black Sea: Odessa, Ukraine. CC2.0 photo by Dmitry Kichenko.

Street Gamers

The smells of channa bathure cooking nearby mingled with the autorickshaw exhaust, the open sewers and his nervous sweat as I faced him down.  Flashes of colour appeared behind him but I stayed focused, hearing all the calls of the street sellers as cheers me.  

As children we were professional carrom players, in the sense that it was what we did to survive.  Each day was the same, searching the streets for people to play- listening for the wooden clack of the carrom men, seeking a certain look in the eye, the player down on his luck and happy to find a child to thrash, to get them back on track.  Everyone thinks they can beat kids and ee traded off pride for a long time, hitting a different area each day.

I stopped him from pocketing the queen and scored the winning points.  The gunda tried to not pay me but there’s always someone who’ll make sure they do.  I disappeared quickly and found the others.

We shared the winnings, eating paratha together as we watched the street scenes after another victorious day.  All we had back then was our love for each other and for carrom.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a progenitor/parent) or Ice Element (include a gamer)) and had a word count limit of 200 words with no minimum.  

Kids Sharing Love. photo by Aamir Mohd Khan.

190 Words: Cursed

He stands at the centre of the labyrinth, they say, his dragonheart burning with hate. But find him you never will, no matter how hard you search.

Cursed to live forever and never be seen or heard, he screams at intruders while involuntarily moving away from them, always ensuring he is out of sight.

Stuck in a place he once loved, the frustration gnaws at him like an infected wound.  But he can only half remember that time.  Since first he found this place his life had started to change.  And though he knew there was pain to be found, he was fatefully attracted to the termite trees.  It did something to his mind, constantly twisting it.  While also planting the seed of thought that would make him return for more.

Slowly his anger grew, his heart became that of a dragon, burning inside him and stealing his mind.  He sees the body always at the edge of his vision but knows not what he did.  He remembers the cursing that bound him there but did not understand it even then.

Somewhere deep inside, a small child remembers and cries.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include something/someone unseen) or Ice Element (include something/someone foreseen)) and had a word count limit of 180-190 words.  

Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Litchfield National Park (AU), Magnetic Termite Mounds — 2019 — 3728” / CC BY-SA 4.0

100 Words: A chimney or a person?

I don’t remember that house having a chimney.  But does it look rounded, like a head?  Or am I overthinking, like he always said I was?

Never really more than a foreboding feeling, something only ever in the furthest corners of my peripheral vision.  He always denies me, guides me away from thoughts of strange activity.  

And now this photo.  Still he dissuades, denies my memories.  I look for evidence.  Then I remember but say nothing: he said that bunker had been discovered at Number 9.  And his escaped brother still hasn’t been found.  “He was always good at hiding.”

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

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

103 Words: The Hole Searching Society

45% of holes have something in them.  I’ve crunched the numbers.  Often it’s history of some kind.  Treasures of many kinds.  So I assembled a team, began to search.

Maths geeks don’t normally do this sort of thing and it took a bit of getting used to.  Somethings, though, I’ll never get used to.

Our first body was so tiny, a baby, and so well preserved despite its ancient age.  I remember us sitting about, silently hovering over her, tears in our eyes, each imagining a different scenario that ended this way.  A life unlived until its death discovered and its story told.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a statistician) or Ice Element (include an optimist)) and had a word count limit of 103 words exactly.  

“Sampling Pit.” Atacama Desert, Chile. Photo by NASA Ames. Read description here.

The Museum Mouse Makes a Request

It's the most inspiring place to be a mouse, especially scenes like looking down on the huge whale skeleton.  I mean, all the stuffed mammals and birds and insects are a bit weird sometimes.  The dinosaurs are cool, though. And the bit with the earthquake simulator. 

And it got us all thinking. So, beyond the skirting boards we started to make our own museum. We've a gallery of lost change featuring coins from all around the world. A giant nest made of dropped tissues. A history of cheeses selected from the cafe down the years. An exhibition of lost single gloves.  All under a roof of umbrellas in a forgotten space.

With the people gone, though, for most of the year (and far fewer when they did return), we've been stuck for ways to expand. 

So please, we are begging, for our own sanity, please send us human things. We need your weird stuff to keep us entertained.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a non-human character) or Ice Element (include a phrase in another language (non-English))) and had a word count limit of 150-160 words.  

“Hope.” Blue Whale. Natural History Museum, London. Photo by just-pics.

Together and Apart

It seemed the perfect way to hide.  A botched robbery, ending in multiple deaths, led us there.  They seemed so genuine.

I could only ever see in one fixed direction and could do nothing else but silently think.  

They would pose us and play with us, leave us as if we were children sitting and playing.  We were completely at their mercy.  Alive and yet unalive.

As their collection grew, my hope died, my mind kept alive only by plans for revenge and by catching glimpses of her... 

But… 

eventually they died and we were scattered.  Then I fell away from this world.  

Decades wandering the rooms in my mind, memories and dreams re-lived, re-played, wound and bound together until I barely knew myself.  

Sometimes I wonder if this was the best prison.

One day I was suddenly seized, returned, carefully revived and locked away for my crimes.  

My love is still lost.  I gave a description but she was cloth, less hard wearing than me.  And I can’t go help find her.  This incarceration is better than the first, really, but sometimes I’m not entirely sure.  At least we had been together in that house of horrors. 

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a dollmaker) or Ice Element (include a fugitive) and had a word count limit under 200 (no minimum).  

Changing role patterns. Haarlem, The Netherlands. CC photo by Nationaal Archief. Find the description here. 

Untitled

The feeling of trepidation as we entered the house is the last thing I remember before it happened.  For a long time after everything was strange, more like living through distant memories half-remembered.

Until that day my father was more like a brother to me, his mind had been altered such in the war that he was more like a small child.  From his wheelchair we would delight in everything together as I ran alongside and my mother pushed him along.  

No one could ever explain it, how and why my husband suddenly returned.  If he knows, he has kept it to himself.  All I know is a light that had disappeared from his eyes returned and he saw me once more.  I think it was that place, though, somehow, those beautiful flowers.

As a child I believed in dragons that had been chased away from their home, settling and dying here, becoming pink flowers. That those flowers contained a magic that could unfog the mind and cure any ills.  

The final part of that dreamlike time I remember quite clearly.  My daughter, who I had never properly met, offered me one of those flowers.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include an unexpected joy) or Ice Element (include an unexpected sorrow)) and had a word count limit of 185-195 words exactly.  

Woman Pushes a Wheelchair. Hitsujiyama Park, Japan. CC2.0 photo by Ajari.

89 Words: 3 Museums

Wide-eyed, innocent, young, I wandered the museum’s galleries taking in the items made by people the world over.  Music always fascinated me and my eyes fell upon a group of Burmese musicians, making my mind up.  

In Burma, the museums seemed lacklustre in comparison, so little.. and I made my mind up once more.

Changing my major to science I set about reforming museums entirely.  Now so many have a time travel room, so you can go back and see treasures plundered from around the world before being returned.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a student) or Ice Element (include a roadworker)) and had a word count limit of 89 words exactly.  

“Burmese musicians performing at the Shwedagon Pagoda in 1895.” Public domain photo by Philip Adolphe Klier.  Read a description of the photo here.

Back then I thought I could solve everything

They say that out here are spirits from prehistoric times. There’s certainly little else. And rarely people. So when a naked body is found stretched out under their art, we start to wonder if they were involved.

And there it was, laid out as if a sacrifice to the stars. Certainly not for the lighting rigs and teams of police carefully combing the area for clues. Anything that would back up what she could tell us herself.

“Detective, she’s ready,” someone said.

I approached her spirit as it floated above its former home, introduced and explained myself before asking, “Did you see who did this to you?”

We couldn’t understand her answer. It was a language none of us understood.

And that was when they came to reclaim her.

Stone Age people surrounded us, approached her, picked up the body and took it away.

We packed up and went home none the wiser. My first unexplained case.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to write outside of our usual genre - I went for Supernatural Crime) and had a word count limit of 150-160 Words.  

“Eternal Procession” . CC4 photo by Marc Toso, Ancient Skys Photography.  Read about Bears Ears (“Shash Jaá”)’s current political troubles here.

100 Words: The boy who heard, "Help!"

“Kelp!” she called out.  I heard, “Help!” and, being very young, called the emergency services.  When they arrived she’d gone and the owner of the establishment was most confused.  The police, paramedics and firefighters were furious.

I thought it was hilarious, though, and started hearing people yell out, “Help!” everywhere.  

It didn’t last long, of course.  The police soon had the payphones watched and caught me.

They said nothing, though.  Instead they taught me a lesson, trapping me in my own home, making me think it was on fire, and not responding to my calls.

I never did it again.

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

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

Necessity

My skin is as old, dry and worn as the hull of the ship that wrecked us here.  My mind, though, is sharp as a tack.

I remember days gone by.  I remember the people stranded with me.  The boy who passed the time by graffiti-ing the hull; the doctor fixing our bodies and our minds; the hunters and gatherers, the gardeners, the chefs, the cleaners, the builders.  

We all had our jobs.  Everyone was necessary.  Everyone was vital.

I was the inventor, I came up with ways to do things that others would carry out.  I was charged with making life easier and I was charged with finding a way to get us all home.  

But none of us were very good farmers.  Or so great at rationing our natural resources.

They say necessity is the mother of invention.  Once it was clear we were too many for the local flora and fauna, my hunger became the greatest necessity.  I came up with a tool that would kill silently, smothering and slicing as one.  I had recently learned to butcher.

Once my hunger was sated, I started to find a simpler solution to get me home.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include an inventor) or Ice Element (include a conspiracy theorist)) and had a word count limit of 200 Words, with no minimum.  

“Ghost ship” photo by: olivier6973

The breath of the final dragon

Buried unconscious, the town awaits its awakening and trial.  Two hundred years and still we work on it.  I’m the only one left from then and the desire is almost dead.  Even in me.

I stand in the empty memorial square, the fire from the dragon beneath burning before me.  I think of those who died as my spells failed.  

My work can be done from afar, I haven’t seen the dragon since they built over it.  Today, feeling wistful enough, I finally descended.

It had been magnificent in its fearfulness when it fell.  It seemed small now.  Its scales had mostly fallen, its sides were swollen, red.  Eyes that had blazed now glazed shut, lashes alive with parasites.  Its talons were cracked, blunt or shed.  And the pipe that took its breath away to burn for our sense of justice..

I saw only pain, my anger at what it had done finally fading from my heart.  

My hand opened and I produced a long lance, pushed it deep into the creature’s chest, stopped its movement forever.

Free myself now, I left the town to further forget what we had done.  Would they even notice the flame’s death?

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include an act of justice) or Ice Element (include a act of mercy)) and had a word count limit of 190-199 Words.  

Eternal Flame Memorial (Nizhny Novgorod). Creative Commons 4.0 photo by Andrew Shiva.

93 Words: Regrets, I've had a few

I watch a lotta toons with the kid before work, he can’t sleep.  Seen a couple with this REALLY stinky plant, that's how I recognised it.  Could tell it was right on the verge of flowering and stinking the place out.  Its owner was a green type, you know?, this was terrorism, I thought. 

So I just did it.  Picked it up like a football and ran and ran, like Forrest.  

At the surface I stopped as the cold air hit me, unsure what to do.  Before that it had been a dream.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include an animal) or Ice Element (include a plant)) and had a word count limit of 93 Words exactly.  

Train. Photo by Engin_Ayurt

160 Words: The Pause

She leaned in and said, “Come here, Blessings, my child.  The Orisa are all with you this day.  None more so than Eshu.”  She pulled back and fixed me with an unknowable stare.  

My mother has always been known as the trickster in our family and it’s just like her to offer such a mysterious blessing.  Eshu, often mistranslated as satan for so long, is himself a trickster, but also a teacher, instructor, leader.  He has positive and negative energies.

Knowing my mother didn’t entirely approve of Tzain, I worried that she meant to curse us, to send me to his home full of concern.  That pause consumed me whole and took me so far from the bliss I’d been feeling that, before she broke it, I could see how both sides of the coin could benefit.  

“But only the good parts,” she concluded as her face broke in the biggest, cheekiest, smile, and I returned to the bliss renewed.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a mysterious blessing) or Ice Element (include a mysterious curse)) and had a word count limit of 150-160 Words.  

A Yoruba bride and mother. Photo by Fhadekhemmy

8 Words: Untitled

With his tattooed back, he always had ours.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a mischief maker) or Ice Element (include a protector)) and had a word count limit of 200 Words with no minimum.  

“Pescaria no Parque das Timbaúbas” Juazeiro do Norte, Brazil. CC3.0 photo by MacioFeitosa

Untitled

I was in love with every member of our unit.  Like the Thebans and Spartans centuries before we were encouraged to form links of all kinds to keep us together come what may.  Warm kisses as we groomed our steeds were one of the many perks.

Now this fakery of a fantasia is how I live.  Recreating the events to remember my boys.

They came out of the mountains one bright afternoon, the sun behind them, masking their great forms.  They breathed fire on towns and villages, making charcoal of everything in their path. 

We rode forth, one of many units trained just for this.  Our lances in hand, we galloped across the sands to meet the beasts head on.

The first we met was easy but then it was little more than a baby that had wandered away from its pack.  Together we fought, moving gracefully through our practiced moves, firing the balls from our lances that would subdue and ground the creature for the wizards to finish off.  

We smiled and cheered together at our victory.  The last time we would do so.

Hours later all my boys were gone.  It's mother came and slaughtered us.  We were supposed to meet up with other units to take down one so large but it came at us so fast, so fiery and furious, that we didn't stand a chance.  

My boys fell one by one until only Nigel and I remained.  He had been my first, way back in basic, a simpler time, a simple love as we waited for the other three couplets to join.  They made us complete, allowed us more enjoyment, more love.  Yet each pair always had that extra little something special.  And so Nigel looked me deep in the eyes as he saved me and sacrificed himself.

Not long after, horrifically soon after, the Wizards found a way to put the dragons to sleep without a fight and it was all over.  Of course, it is the fighting that the crowds want to see re-enacted and where I sought to form a new unit.  But none of these boys were there, this love is ersatz in comparison.  

It is of Nigel, mostly, that I think of when we bed down together each night.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (love found) or Ice Element (love lost)) and had a word count limit of 250-260 Words.  I failed entirely to complete this on time and didn't want to edit down, so failed completely with the word count, too.  

Fantasia in Morocco. CC photo by Maxim Massalitin.

75 Words: The Photo

The photo was how they found her.  It took only a few moments of joyful abandon to miss the tourist taking a picture.  A date, the food, troubles ever so briefly forgotten.

Such an innocent moment.  A photo for a travel site.  

People never think about the background, who might be found by the government bots, tracked down, disappeared.  

Not forever in this case, of course.  

Thank goodness.

Her revolutionary days were still to come.

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element (include a revolutionary) or Ice Element (include a droid)) and had a word count limit of 75 Words:

“Khao Tom Pla” Uttaradit, Thailand. CC4.0 photo by Takeaway

Frozen Air

In a dinghy under the sheer cliffs of a glacier we searched for survivors.  We all pointed at the holes, planned searches of the ice caves.  Never did we think that it was in the air itself.

My crew all went in the same way, one by one.  First their eyes would freeze, their stares fixed into the distance as their screams began.  Then their noses would fill with ice, their lips would harden, crack and then break before the frost worked along their tongue, changing their screams into something more horrible as its edge deadened and it went flat.  Finally their throats were closed and the screaming ended alongside their life.  Before their bodies rested lifeless, all this ice thawed and evaporated as if never there.

Once only I remained, my ear turned cold and I heard them. 

A cold, hard whisper chilled me to my core and told me to leave.  “We are here now.  Never return.”  

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Written for Flash! Friday from the following picture prompt (we were also asked to add a Fire Element  (include something in the air) or Ice Element (include something in the water)) and had a word count limit of 150-160 Words:

“Arena Glacier” Antarctic Peninsula. CC3.0 photo by Godot13

100 Words: What did he do? (Snapshots)

“What do you think they did?”

“Photographer, maybe?  Travel writer?”

“Professional drinker?”  

LOLz.

*

Assigning Paris to the trash seems right.  “Take her to Paris,” mother said, “Wine her, dine her, show her the sights and she will say Yes.”  I lost her to a book shop.  I still don’t know why.

*

I woke up to Paris once again.  Colour vision gone it seemed.  ‘Til I saw the bottle.

*

Taking out the bins, I saw the dead man’s belongings.  They say he changed after that trip.  Could never understand why he kept that picture hanging.  It must have been the question.

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

PHOTO PROMPT © C.E.Ayr

Rejected six word story

Not a prison, iiinff yyyooouuurt mhriiennadkd.