100 Words: Untitled

I was organised for years.  Every aspect of my life I had control over was rigorously sorted.  Everything was in its right place.  And inside, my mind functioned as a perfectly oiled and ordered machine, barely a thought went astray.

And then you disappeared.

I could never remember a thing.  I missed trains, lost pencils, our dog ran away.  I sat and stared.  Everything blurred and streaked away.  I regressed back to the days of caves, my world narrowed to the shadows on the wall from the outside world.  Nothing I saw made sense anymore.  

Organisation became a distant memory.

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

PHOTO PROMPT © Jan Wayne Fields

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.

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.

100 Words: Untitled

I saw a storage facility on TV and recognised potential.

In each room something different, each organised to the nth degree.

Bliss (well, Dewey), it would be.


I became very rich, very young, and quickly realised my dream.

Just one room at first, each collection given its own section.

Then a couple, three, four… you get the picture.


Now I have my own purpose built facility.  Hundreds of rooms organised by my own custom Dewey (Melvil was a little too Nineteenth-Century-Minded for me).

Across them, vast collections of things.  If you can think of it, I’ve probably got them all.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt (apologies for the Library Classification scheme joke but #iamalibrarian):

PHOTO PROMPT © Amy Reese

An InLinkz Link-up

100 Words: Untitled

At sunset I remembered a film in which a zombie, still aware of his former self, lived aboard an abandoned jetplane.  He got his heart beating again but I felt mine had stopped forever.


I let him take the flight and spent the night at the airport’s viewing platform, watching the sun go down, the planes land, takeoff and taxi around, the sun rise again through bleary eyes.


Alone and facing an unknown future, my phone started to vibrate and shook me out of myself.

My sister, the only person who had stood by me, started my heart once more.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

Copyright-Rich Voza

An InLinkz Link-up

100 Words: Untitled

I hit the ground choking and spluttering, my throat starting to constrict.  My head soon started to catch up, mind, the bones in my skull splintering, then shrinking and reforming, a process that caused the sort of agony I could only have imagined before. 

My face began to itch then grow warmer as thick fur sprouted and grew to further alter my image. 

As the process repeated itself in a wave down my body, the main thing I noticed, aside from the searing pain, was the world becoming much larger. 


Once completely changed, I purred, scratched, then walked away nonchalantly.

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Written for the 100 Word Challenge on Thin Spiral Notebook; the prompt was the word Change.

I also did one last week for Duty, but too late to link up.

100 Words: Untitled

Other kids would go to school and I would look over the fence when passing, a pang seething deep inside of me.  But it wasn’t the learning that I was jealous of, the chances they would get.  What I was learning would eventually make me very rich indeed.

No, what I was jealous of was their playtime.  I was begging as a baby, picking pockets by six, ever on up the crime ladder I went; and always on the clock. 

Yet they had time to do something that led to nothing, that brought only sheer joy.  And I hated that.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

 

PHOTO PROMPT © David Stewart

An InLinkz Link-up

100 Words: Untitled

The experiment changed him far more than he desired.  He had merely wanted to live forever but a few unexpected conditions had reared up, snapping and snarling.

An insatiable desire for blood sent him out to kill each night (now allergic to sunlight, he hid in pitch darkness by day).  Once a serial killer, he fled far from the labs he needed to fix himself.

Far he fled, away from people, eventually, to Australia, and a secret bunker under a cattle ranch where a cup of cow’s blood a day had to suffice until he could find the right cure.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #415 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Cup.

100 Words: Untitled

Crouched down deep within the hedge, a small sharp knife in hand, my feet slowly edging their way into the mud as the rain streaks down.

How did I wind up here?  Over thirty years of meekness created by him.  Never could I rise to his peak, never was I strong.  No matter how good, how much I have succeeded, I am still unable to lead.  And he is why.

The front door opens and two people walk down the path, away from me. 

The weak will never forgive and the weak will never act: only seethe and blame others.

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Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt, a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, "The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."

Untitled (or, Stereoscopic)

A scientist picked up his new invention and handed it proudly to his colleague.  She took it by the handle, raised the lenses to her eyes and looked through, tilting it from side to side a little, taking in the 3D image it created.  

“Well, it’s good,” she pronounced, “But I’ve made something better.”

John was a genius, an inventor of some renown but he had the misfortune of having an even greater genius for a sister.  Every time he showed Jenny something he had come up with, John was praised and then informed that she had already thought of it and created something better.

“You have a better image than my Stereoscope, dear sister?”

“Of course - this is but a child’s plaything, John.  Come to my laboratory in two hours and I’ll show you.”  And, as ever, with that, Jenny turned and walked from John’s laboratory and home through the bustling London streets.


Two hours later, John was standing looking up at a huge photograph of an exhibit in an empty gallery at the British Museum (Natural History)- a dinosaur skeleton.  His sister handed him a pair of goggles and began to talk.

“You see, dear brother, a photograph is not just the reaction of a surface to light, it is the capturing of a single moment in time and space; and so, once I found the means to access that moment in complete fullness, I was able to create a means to develop a truly multi-dimensional photograph,” she said, waving at the enlarged picture.

“Imagine, John, being able to visit the British Museum, Natural History in this case, without the crowds!  To see the statues, skeletons and books without bother!  Well, here it is!  This is how!

“Put those on,” Jenny urged, nodding at the goggles.  “I’ve a pair too,” she added, removing them from a pocket.

Together the siblings donned their eyewear and looked up at the picture.  Immediately it he could see it was a far greater quality 3D image than he’d accomplished.  In fact it appeared as if an extension or alcove to the room.  John walked from side to side watching in amazement and admiration as the picture moved.. “as if it were real..” he said, voicing his thoughts.

“Because it is,” announced Jenny, “come on!”  And with that that she beckoned John on and walked into the picture.  He followed, the same disbelief on his face that would appear when in that room.

While investigating the skeleton close up, John had a thought of a particular photograph.  A chill ran down his spine and yet, with a sudden determination, he asked of Jenny, “Can I have one of these?”


As a child John walked to and from school alone through one of the spookiest parts of the city’s suburbs.  On his route lay an alley that seemed to be dark throughout at all times of the day and year.  Every day, morning and afternoon, John would speed up his walk as he went past that horrible place.

Always, though, he wished to be daring enough to go in.  Jenny would, he knew, but he never could.

Once, though, just once, John had been a little bit daring.  At fifteen, shortly after Jenny had bettered his attempt at creating a camera, John had taken his one with school and, on the way home, stopped at the alley, held up that camera and taken a picture.

Once developed, John kept it hidden, occasionally taking it out and daring to stare into the dark wondering what was in there, wishing he’d been brave enough to enter.

Well, now he could.  Once Jenny had set up the apparatus in his laboratory, John set about finding the negative created a new, giant, print.


John stood at the entrance to the alley, resisting the urge to turn and run away as he had run past during his school days.  He moved about, peering into the dark from different angles trying to make sense of it, trying to see if any light could get in and show him something.  The stalling tactic got him nowhere, though, so he walked quickly into the alley instead.

It was as pitch dark within as John had always imagined it so he put out a hand to trace along the cold brick wall to his right.  After a pace or two he did the same on the other side too.  Onward he walked, his fingers feeling the way, his breath the only sound.  

Before long John reached the end, instinctively predicting its appearance before smashing into the brick wall.  Smiling, he turned to go back, pleased to have finally beat what had haunted his imagination for some twenty years.  

“There’s nothing here,” he said to himself cheerily but before he could take the first step back toward his lab John was stopped by a rasping intake of breath.  

Then a voice from the darkness ahead of him, a voice that began sounding awfully ancient yet seemed to become younger as it spoke, responded, “Isn’t there boy?”  


The next day, while searching for her brother, Jenny took the same journey into the photograph, returning unharmed but with John’s body.

For the first time since hearing a certain story at school Jenny felt scared.  She remembered the tales now, tales of an alley over by the boy’s school.  The tale of a teacher who had locked girls in cupboards and left them there for days, a teacher who had also cooked girls in a kiln and eaten them for supper, a teacher who had eventually been expelled and imprisoned in that alley by the then headmistress, who the tales named as a witch.

Suddenly fearful, Jenny felt a cold run right through her before saying out loud, “Miss Gunness?”  After a moment she added, under her breath, “John, what have we done?”

The response, a young woman’s voice, came from the far corner of the room: “Saved me.”

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Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompts:

Image in public domain and courtesy of New York Public Library taken from Wiki Commons

and 

Thomas Marlowe

Note: I wrote the first section to go with the first picture but did not finish it in time.  Which was fortunate, as the second picture, and challenge, allowed me to expand and extend the story, taking it in a completely different direction.

250 Words: Untitled

I hear what you are saying, Gordon, but we have given them so many chances already.  And they persistently disobey us and veer wildly off the tracks we lay down.  No matter how much good they do, it is all undone very quickly- before we can even offer congratulations.  I want to be nice, Gordon, but they won’t let me.

No, we must sweep it all away- put it down as one of our mistakes.  Lord knows there have been many before this.  Other projects that we have junked and filed away to forget.  At all sorts of stages.  Even this one had some previous versions, remember?  It’s fucking cursed, Gordon.  It’s only your soft spot that’s allowed this shambles to carry on.  Now look at it- fucking horrific, even you must admit.  Even you know it deep down, mate.

Remember Project [code removed]?  That went sour like this- exactly the same.  Folk fucking each other over, pyramids, poverty, similar projectile weapons.  Should have stopped that mess quicker too.  Fortunately they took the decision away from us.  No one likes to kill billions, after all.

No, fuck it, Gordon, that shit won’t wash with me.  We scrap it totally- go back and start with the same variables- steer the ship properly this time.  Give these humans anything and they will stamp on it immediately and without fail.  The planet the inhabitants call, “Earth,” must be destroyed henceforth.

Manuel!  Burn the atmosphere, wipe the canvas.  Let’s start again, shall we, lads?