Numbers

They were my numbers, I was sure they were my numbers.  I checked and re-checked and yet, on the phone, they said the prize had been claimed.  I spoke really quite sternly at them until they suggested perhaps I was applying my numbers to the wrong day.  When I saw they were right, I apologised a lot and hung up, red-faced and terribly embarrassed. 

It was only then that I noticed the haunted hotel story and recalled a conversation I had had with my son about both that and the lottery competition. 

What a cruel trick to play.

I had to get him back.

I acted quickly and worked fast, without thinking about it too much, if I’m honest.

That’s how I ended up ruining his chances with the girl he’d really liked for ages.  They were just starting to get close, apparently, and my leaking of photos of him building his model railway had dampened her enthusiasm, somewhat, sending him back to the romantic drawing board.

If she really likes him, she’ll come round, I’m sure.

I don’t think he will mess with his mother again, though.

Hopefully.

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

 

Lyssa Medana

100 Words: As I left for St Louis, MO

After the plague, most towns and cities were abandoned to allow survivors to group together maintaining what we still had, rebuilding societies elsewhere.  I decided on St Louis, an image of her Gateway Arch filling me with hope as I walked there.

As we stopped tending our landscapes, nature began taking over again.  There had been talk of this return for a while, cracking sidewalks and crumbling walls. 

It was as I left town that I saw it.  I hadn’t thought nature would reclaim vehicles, yet there it was, a plant growing from a van.  “Life finds a way,” indeed.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

 

Copyright-Roger Bultot

 

An InLinkz Link-up

100 Words: After the Stag

He cursed them as he stamped along the wharf having woken naked, cold and with a terrible headache.  They’d left him clothes, at least.  A sou'wester and hat filled with fish and stinking so bad he spent half the walk dry retching.

Filled with anger, he felt they’d gone too far.  Sure, he’d participated before, ramped it up with each marriage.  This, though, was too much and he was determined to tell them so.  Especially when the rain hit.

He never did.  Not after finding a stag worse off: in lingerie, handcuffed to a bhoy and sick from the bobbing.

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Written for 100 Word Challenge #391 on Velvet Verbosity; the prompt was the word Wharf.

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250 Words: What happened when we summoned the Biblical Beast

We dabbled a lot at Uni and for a few weeks it was with the occult that we concerned ourselves.  It started with ouija boards run by us before we started to explore the darkest recesses of the oldest libraries to find and explore further the arts of the dark.  And after one too many Hammer Horrors, we decided to summon the Beast of Revelations.  And to slay him.

We did it in the middle of a rainy, stormy winter’s night, sat in a chalked circle on the hard floor of the basement laundry room.  As the rattle of the windows in their frames grew evermore, and the candles flames flickered more violently, so our chanting grew more determined, finally fixing itself on the repeating of the numbers,  “616.  666. 616.  666...”

On we went, continuing even as the Beast began to appear: a dim, ghostly pillar of light that slowly transformed to take the rough shape of the Beast, before becoming more solid until he was formed in completeness. 

He was not what we had expected.

Before us stood a man dressed in a blood stained toga (so he had already been slain!) who jabbered in what we presumed was Latin.  Fearful and scared was his tone, and the look on his face grew with concern, then horror, at his modern, and very non-Roman, surroundings. 

As was soon the case for those surrounding him as we began to look to one another mouthing, “How do we send him back?” 

Hidden in Alphabetical Order

“Here it is, hidden in alphabetical order, as you thought,” whispered Steve as he pulled an ancient tome from the shelves of the classic fiction section.

“Excellent,” replied Jackie, “He served us well by moving it from Special Collections.”

Together the pair returned to the office with their precious find.

“What now?” asked Steve.

“We wait.”

The book had been missing for decades, ever since it had moved it to the barely used classic fiction section, in practice more a museum display of books, and MISSING was stamped on its record card.  On a high shelf it sat unnoticed while a feverish hunt had gone on around the world to no avail.

It looked unassuming enough.  A plain navy blue cover with chipped gold edging, the faded name of the author and title upon the spine.  Events, though, had transpired; secrets had been discovered and now it was down to Jackie and Steve to protect them.

After they had been waiting a short while, Steve asked, “What’s so special about this book- it’s just a lot of old stories and pictures.”

“Not everyone thinks they are merely stories, do they, you know that.

“It is not that, though you are right.  

“This book is a one-off and it hides a secret, supposedly.  A secret the author took to his grave, only for it to be discovered centuries later.  Hidden somewhere inside is the means to find the entrance to the Underearth and all those hellish creatures and people who live there - including He Who Destroyed, of course.”

Steve shuddered.  “Why not burn it then?” he asked incredulously.

“Well, that might be best.  Our predecessor didn’t in case someone ever had a good, genuine need to go down there.  The information could well be dangerous but in the right hands could do a lot of good.”

At that moment, a youngish man with close cut hair and beard walked in.  

“I was expect-” started Jackie.

The man pointed at the book and gave a page number, “They sent me instead.”

Steve opened the book, saw the picture and was amazed when he saw the caption.

Jackie was less impressed.  “You expect us to believe you’re Merlin.  Any wizard can change their appearance.”

“Only I know about that portrait.  You know how little seen that book has been.  Anyone else would have killed you already.  And..”  He pointed to the window behind them. 

Beyond it stood a tree where one had not stood before.  One that could only have been Merlin’s tree with its singular leaves and beyond ancient boughs.

“Fine.  Take it.”

Merlin stepped forward, whisked the book away, turned his back and was quickly gone.

Back to his tree and his endless movement with another item to add to the collection of things he knew his future apprentice would one day give away and help cause the end.

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Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the written prompt, "There it was, hidden in alphabetical order," by Rita Holt.

100 Words: The rose I have set my life to win !

My vision of her etched in my memory, carried as a keepsake, a reminder of my promise to win the Rose of Upland Farm.

At every dance I searched for her, praying I could at least be her partner for a few minutes.  I begged my father to approach hers, to enquire.  I walked past the farmhouse often, hoping for a second glance.

When these avenues came to naught I began to believe she’d been an apparition, a tantalising trick of those beautiful red roses.  

Until I saw her from my window. She’d seen my gaze, had been searching too. 

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Written for the Light and Shade Challenge from the following picture prompt (well, more from the quote featured, which became the title- I found the poem (available here, and below) it is the last line of and wrote something to follow on from it):

Image courtesy of the British Library and taken from page 115 of 'A round of days described in original poems by some of our most celebrated poets, and in pictures by eminent artists engraved by the Brothers Dalziel'

A LIFE IN A YEAR. THE OPEX WINDOW. 

She had but lately come from school ; 

I had not seen her when in the calm 

Breath of the Summer morning cool 

I took my way past the Upland Farm. 

What did the Summer roses say, 

That round the half- opened casement clung ? 

Bed, red to their very hearts were they : 

Did they tell me that I and the world were young? 

Just for a moment they swayed and shook, 

Parted to show me a sudden face : 

Can a face alter a life ? a look 

Make of the world another place ? 

Just for a moment the roses shook, 

And a face looked out from among them, then 

Vanished but not from my heart the look, 

At a window that never will shut again. 

Still at the Upland Farm the rose 

Blows on the wall and blooms within ; 

Still in my heart it blooms and blows, 

The rose I have set my life to win ! 

100 Words: The desk that would change everything

He thought buying an old writing desk would change everything.  “The thoughts and writings gone before will inspire me,” he thought.

Once home he sat on the chair and it creaked in a welcoming way.  He moved forward, another creak urged him on.  He leaned down on the desktop, pen in hand, and a further creak said, “This is it!”

But they were misleading.  As he moved his pen and his bum, creak after creak became a cacophony that completely blocked his creativity.  

Before long the desk became a storage cupboard and he worked silently at a flat packed desk.

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Written for Friday Fictioneers from the following picture prompt:

Copyright – Jan Wayne Fields

An InLinkz Link-up