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Saturday, November 29, 2014

Inland Tides - @FlashFridayFic

Another entry for Flash! Friday. This week's prompt was an image of a woman wading in an ocean tide.



Inland Tides

Monica's toes explored the cracks in the highway pavement hoping for a nibble. The lobsters made their homes in the crevices of the old interstate that had once bisected Atlanta. The road and most of the city that had gone underwater back when her parents were still children. With the water up to her chest, anyone floating by on a raft wouldn't know she was pregnant. Even the baby’s father, if he were to ever own up to it. 

A spine poked her big toe and she immediately took the tickle stick from her belt loop. In two steps, Monica had the small lobster in her bag with the others.  She now had enough to sell at the flotilla. Hopefully none of her customer were former clients from her old line of business. Soon she’d have enough to move inland and make certain her child didn't have to come of age in this drowned echo of a city. 

Friday, November 28, 2014

New Fiction Short: The Bronze Shade

I've shared a new short story on the fiction website Farther Stars than These. "The Bronze Shade" is my response to the blank eyes in those ancient Greek statues that used to creep me out as a kid.

An excerpt:

As they filled my cradle, I had worried that the drowning would be painful and I started to thrash, begging for my caretakers to take me out. Now I am thankful that they rebuked my pleas for mercy and had weighted me down with the stones. I cannot tell if their motivation lied in their commitment to the task at hand or the lifetime of money I’d paid to have it done to me. (Laughing ~1 min straight.) I awoke from the bath, no longer subject to my millennia of dreams. Yet with no eyes to see, I question if I am still in the dream.

Jeanie sat in the board room and reviewed her last page of notes from last week’s interview with Haetor. She trusted the court-appointed translator’s notes from the sessions; he had no motive to deceive her. Was it bad to emphasize Haetor’s last statement in her presentation? It was the one coherent section from any of her interviews and she wanted to use it to add some humanity where she failed to find any. Everyone deserved a fair trial. . . 

Read the rest at : www.fartherstars.com




Saturday, November 22, 2014

Noir Society Vinyl

Just a single piece of flash fiction this week for Flash! Friday. A phonograph theme.




Noir Society Vinyl

The parties were always the same: After polite introductions, Paulson took requests for the first hour then played another hour of curated recordings from his own collection. The twenty people seated before him were a shadow of the original Adventurer’s Society that had birthed their splinter movement. These refined men and women were those dedicated to the darker, more sinister, and truer experiences in the world around them. Through pain, one could better understand life.

Paulson slid the vinyl disc from the plain matte black sleeve. Careful not to graze the incision on his thumb from the night’s earlier blood ritual. He may have been a practitioner of the black arts, but was no masochist. The polite chatter, clinking glasses, and even the whimpering of the corgi puppy in Dame Grenier’s lap stopped as he laid the needle on the record. With a hiss and a pop the audience were treated to Paulson’s latest sound recording: a murder by strangulation.


 

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Sequestered Vessel @FlashFridayFic

Another Flash Friday entry from this week's prompt.

Sequestered Vessel


He didn't have the breadth of thought he was once capable of, but Byron was more than able to preserve his sense of self and his desire to reclaim his life. Byron had tracked down Dr. Skinner after the previous scientists had no answers to share.

There was a chain of command that Byron was killing his way up and everyone blamed the same thing: the government sequesters. Thanks to legislative gridlock, all funding for the secret Permanence Project had been frozen. Eight months in, and no end to shutdown in sight, the Project and is mission of permanent life through consciousness transfer had been abandoned.

Byron, had been in a temporary host, awaiting a human vessel when the lab was shut down. But now he was a macaque with a knife hunting for answers.  If Dr. Skinner had no answers, Byron was more than happy to embrace the instincts of his current vessel and open the man’s neck.





Saturday, November 15, 2014

Honeymoon @FlashFridayFic

Another Flash Friday entry. This week's prompt was a macaque on a balcony. 


Honeymoon

Wyatt heard his wife’s terrified screaming from the other room. He ignored her and kept shaving. She’d been doing that every time she looked out their honeymoon suite window to the balcony and down the ten stories to the bay below. He hoped her occasional shrieks weren't bothering the other guests. 

Shelley was silent again. Wyatt thought it would be good to buy some kind of hood for her in moments like this. His contract guaranteed a million dollars a year for the first ten years of their marriage so expenses like these were insignificant. 

He heard the balcony door slide open and the screaming started again. Wyatt burst out of the bathroom and found his wife poised on the rail outside. Shelley stopped screaming. Her tail was straight up. He looked at the carefully balanced monkey and slowly approached. He couldn't let her die two days into their marriage. If she did the bet would be off.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Traveling Haze @MicroBookends

Tried my hand at Micro Bookends flash contest this week. You have 100 words, a photo prompt and have to begin with "word" and end with "blind." Very tough.


Traveling Haze

Word of the haze arrived with a klaxon’s blare only an hour before the rouge cloud arrived. The defoliant, a leftover echo of a failed weapons test, enveloped the path between Jacob’s house and the hospital. They should have planned ahead to make certain that he and Evie were off the island during her last trimester in case this happened.

The hospital said they’d find a way to send a nurse as the baby was presenting breach. Looking out the window, Jacob saw her. The oxygen tank would save her lungs, but she wasn’t wearing goggles. Only squeezing her eyes shut. The acidic haze threatened to render her blind.

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Rolling Brotherhood of the Vision Family #FlashFiction

Back at it for Flash! Friday. We had a train theme and 160 word limit


Rolling Brotherhood of the Vision Family

Honey gripped the knife handle to the point where her fist was as white as her robes. She was ready to do everything in her power to keep Brother Gemini from getting to the Apostle first.

Like every Saturday morning, Apostle had strapped himself to the front of the outside chassis of the train engine. Their leader was receiving God’s treasured guidance as a whisper in the pummeling wind as the train accelerated through the mountains and away from the judgment of any one land-anchored community. She’d secreted her weapon from her bunk in the wives car, and quietly made passage through the two children’s cars, the worship and fellowship cars before noticing Gemini trailing her.

Now was it was her last chance to escape before she could bring another of the Apostle’s babies into the Vision Family. Honey kicked Brother Gemini away and started sawing at the straps holding the Apostle to the front of the train.




Saturday, November 8, 2014

Trackside Mechanics #FlashFiction

This week's Flash! Friday had a train theme and the usual 160 word limit

Trackside Mechanics

The pops of distant gunfire verified that his fellow riders from what remained of the National Guard were making good use of their time while Seamus tried to get the spray container to give up its contents. It wasn’t the first time he had to stop the whole operation to fix the one of the five dozen cylinders of pesticide that comprised the majority of the train.

 He looked up and found his problem. A mottled severed hand had somehow screwed itself into the end of the industrial sized sprayer on this side of the cargo container. He snorted at the thought of the vermin finally learning how to stop their own extermination. Seamus dislodged the obstruction and pink vapor immediately sprayed out. The hand disintegrated leaving behind its engagement ring. Seamus collected this treasure to add to his collection of artifacts from the first leg of their journey to eradicate the zombies that had been rampant these last decades.