I'm flashing again... Flash Fiction Challenge: The Donkey Curse

I awoke to find myself sitting in a strange car, surrounded by donkeys.
Nothing was familiar. I struggled to remember the night before. My mind flooded with nonsensical unrelated images: a bronze medallion, a dark alley, and an old Gypsy woman jabbing a bony finger at me and uttering something…

And then I awoke.

Strange. It was all so strange. And quite implausible. Maybe if I closed my eyes and opened them again, everything would change. I’d be back in my room, lying on my bed, hung over after a night on the town and nothing would have happened. At least nothing that involved donkeys.

I closed my eyes. But the sounds continued. The snorting and the fidgeting of equine legs. The kicking and the pacing of hooves. And the occasional braying whinny. So when I opened my eyes again, I knew.

Cursing under my breath, I made a decision. I would drive away from them. Find a town. Find my way home again and put all this behind me.

I’d only made it twenty yards before I had to stop. Whoever it was who’d done this no doubt be having a great laugh at my expense, leaving me here alone in a car in the middle of nowhere. With a flat tyre. And with no tools. And with an audience of four male donkeys, all standing around me looking interested. Who’d have thought it - stranded with a flat and four jacks and I still couldn’t change the wheel.

http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2014/05/31/flash-fiction-challenge-the-donkey-curse/

The Return of the Queen.

She felt the call in her blood, a call as old and fathomless as time itself. Raising herself onto her haunches, she pulled in a deep breath and howled.

The tiny sun ignored her, it’s ruby-red light barely warming the air. A small beetle raised its head, sensing the disturbance of her movement. Not prey. Time to hide. Anubise punched her hand into the sand, caging it within her thick fingers and then quickly transferring it to her mouth, crunching it down with a gulp and a reflexive shudder.

Ugh. Bitter. But necessary.

Climbing four-pawed to the top of the daisy-covered bluff, she hunkered down again, saying her goodbyes to her home. Readying herself for her transportation to the world her new friends called Earth.

The clothed man reached down to her, running his hand through her pelt with that easy familiarity she was growing to love. Rubbing her shoulders and neck. Pressing against her as she leaned into his touch, growling softly deep in her throat. Maybe these people could be trusted. Maybe they could help.

The man called Barker took her hand, crouching to her level and speaking to her, his words unintelligible to her ears but his intentions scent-plain. His eyes were soft and calming. He was confident but not assertive enough to be a threat. She decided she would follow him for as long as it took to realise her destiny. And maybe longer still.

“Come on, girl. That’s a good girl. Come with me now.” The man stepped away from her, waiting to see if she followed him. Drawing her after him one step at a time. Building up her trust.

When Barker led her up to the man-ship, the wolf-girl alien hesitated for a moment, intimidated by its size and its strangeness. She looked back toward the hills of her home, whiffled softly and then followed him inside.

——————————————

Back on Earth, the electrum-plated capstone of the pyramid at Giza momentarily flared white, the ruined cities of Egypt quiet as always. But not for much longer. Someone was coming to reclaim the Mira stone. The gods were coming back.

Just for fun - a flash without a prompt #2

"C'mon. My turn. I want to play."

Elizabeth passed the toy to her brother, her dimpled cheeks puckered around a gummy smile. "Okay. But don't you keep it to yourself. I wanna 'nother go!"

The five year old boy held it up two-handed in front of him. Shiny, cold and very heavy, he rubbed the metal snout against his chin and pulled the lever against it's guard. 

Click!

"My turn again." 

Daniel nodded gravely. "Kay. But I have to spin the barrel-thing first..."

Flashing for FREEDOM!

FREEDOM!

Gaia rose up from the earth, the soil flowing up and channelling itself into her face, her chest and her limbs. One hand, dwarfing the nearby bandstand, reached down to pluck up the small uncapped plastic bottle she found up-ended in the flower bed, raising it up before the two beds of blue salvia fashioning themselves into her eyes. “A botanical miracle,” she raged. “In a bottle of shampoo? I think not!” Her arm arched out and the bottle disappeared, narrowly missing a crow as it flew out of sight.

Angered beyond hope of being calmed, her ire grew, the lawns rippling as she drew more and more of the earth into her. The asphalt of the car-park buckled and cracked, the candy-yellow slabs of the walkers’ paths raining down as Mother Earth stood tall once more. Now towering above the town, she roared out loud. “Enough,” she thundered. “I demand my freedom!”

http://flashfriday.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/flash-friday-vol-2-25/

Just for fun - a flash without a prompt

She stepped into the room like it was unoccupied, placing one foot in front of another in a measured way, disregarding everyone.

Everyone else in the room noticed her. It was hard not to. The way that every conversation dropped and then died, the way that every head turned toward her, it showed that she'd most definitely been noticed.

"Nice day for a visit, Bessie. A little cooler than usual for June, don't ya think?"

Bessie hauled herself up to her full five feet seven inches, her rheumy eyes locking onto Jason's. "It is a little colder today," she agreed. "But it's nothing that the weather girl on the television didn't forecast this morning,"

Jason nodded back, his eyes slipping sideways to catch those of the men with the restrictive canvas jacket creeping up on the naked pensioner. "It's certainly a day you'd remember."

A flash in the pan? I think not!

I've just found that I like it fast. Or at least short. I know I'm being perverse in that I'm veering off at a tangent but I've just discovered that I'm like a 100 metres sprinter. It's something I should have realised before but they say that you're often the last to find out about these things. Like love. Or the style of clothes that suits you best. Or writing.

I've always been a careful writer - I used to revise as I wrote and never finish a chapter - but I've since found that I don't need to do that. I can turn the page and move on without needing to look back. And now I've discovered another thing. Flash fiction.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You'll be saying that a novel is generally between 75,000 and 100,000 words long and the average flash fiction's about 500 words in length. And I'd agree, However, if you take the 500 word limit as a guide and then write in blocks like that - running to 450 words or 600 words, if that's the way it falls - you may find that you stay fresh and can keep coming back for more, rather than running to 1500 and running yourself to a halt. Like interval training. Or something else that might raise a glow on a summer's night. So you might find that you come to enjoy writing even more than you do now and end up being even more productive than you ever have been.

And another thing about flash fiction is the fact that the length of the pieces is often quite short and you need to work on it to encapsulate the scene or the gist of what you want to write in so few words. You have to weigh your words and choose them well. Or cut out the flabby bits that made you grin but didn't propel the storyline along. And that's good writing.

So while I'm adding to my novels, I'll also be writing flash fiction. Keeping it tight and making it lean. And if I'm wanting a change once in a while, maybe I'll be doing it for real on a blog and getting an independent opinion on my writing for free.

Another day, another flash fiction competition: Mind Control

This time I had to include: “Sometimes it seems like whoever's arranging the soundtrack to my life is watching the wrong thing,” and a reference to a Billy Joel song.http://www.alissaleonard.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/finish-that-thought-47.html

My entry: 

Mind Control

“Sometimes it seems like whoever's arranging the soundtrack to my life is watching the wrong thing.”

“Do you really think that?” I looked up at Holly, my interest piqued. “I get that too. All the time. Currently the tune playing through my head’s some sort of endless Mariachi music. It’s been stuck on that for two weeks and it’s definitely getting old.” I closed my eyes and tuned into it for a moment, willing it to stop. Or at least change to another track. “What’ve you got?”

My friend frowned, listlessly stirring her cream into her coffee and looking nearly as tired as I felt. “I’ve currently got Billy Joel and ‘Uptown Girl,’” she began. “Although I’ve also had ‘River of Dreams’ for half the day. But it’s never complete tracks. Just random sections intermixed with Madonna’s ‘American Pie.’” She shot an agitated look up toward the metal ceiling where we all imagined the Playlisters lived. “The Madonna track’s a new addition today. But it’s never the verses; it’s always the choruses looping round and around all the time.”

“That must be awful. I thought I had it bad.”

We both shuddered, both thinking of how it used to be before the Governors decreed that mental sound-tracking would be a cool idea, suggesting it would reduce public dissatisfaction overnight. “Just like being a Hollywood film-star in a screenplay of your life.” That was the way they sold it to us. And we voted it in. Almost unanimously. Or at least that was what they told us.

That was three months ago and now everything had gone horribly wrong. Of course it hadn’t helped when the ‘Keep our Minds Quiet’ protesters had sabotaged the transmitter pylons, saying it was a way of introducing mind-control, but at least we’d had a regularly changing soundtrack all the time. Instead of this.

“So what can we do? Do you know anyone upstairs who can speak to a Playlister? You being a Government officer and all?”

I gave Holly a long measured look, then looked quickly around. “I shouldn’t say this,” I said, warily shaking my head. “But I’ve heard the Governors are organising an attack to seize control back. Some time real soon.”

There was a sudden muted thud and the table between us shuddered, the surface of Holly’s coffee rippling from the concussion.

And then the music stopped.

“Thank goodness for that!” Holly blew out a long breath, closed her eyes and slumped back into her chair. “Now what? Are we back to how we were before?”

“I’m not sure,” I said, counting out the seconds under my breath. “I think there’s an auto-restart sequence. It could come back in a few seconds. In three, two, one…”

The background carrier tone returned, swelling to full volume. One single high-pitched tone. Non-stop. Endlessly.

Good news to be shared!

You all know I entered a Flash! Friday competition last week? Well, I got first runner-up!

http://flashfriday.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/flash-friday-vol-2-24-winners/

Alyssa Leonard (http://www.alissaleonard.blogspot.co.uk/) wrote:

Mark Morris, “Paid in Full.” Wow. This one knocked my socks off! The idea that the aliens would pay off your overdue bills is an amazingly fascinating concept – completely unique and enjoyable. I am dying to know the consequences for putting more than one bill in there per month… Please? :) And yeah, the catch. It seems like such a reasonable question… That last line floored me. Seriously. Then my mind FILLED with questions: These people seemed like friends: were they? Did he seriously just sell out his friend? Does he find random people and convince them to go with him? And, really, what kind of person values a person’s life as less than one overdue bill for internet??? Mind: Blown. 

SO, I'm well pleased with that. Thank you so much, Alyssa. :)

If you didn't catch it then, here's another chance to read it. And thank you for visiting! 


Paid in Full

Bruce shook his head. “Next you'll be telling me there's a tooth fairy.”

“Honest, it's true. I'll prove it.” Reaching into my inner jacket pocket, I pulled out a utility bill. A final demand typed in red, threatening imminent disconnection of my internet services and further additional charges to be paid. Due today.

“And you just put your unpaid bill in the box and aliens pay it?”

“Exactly that. One every month. No more than that or else there's consequences.” I slotted the bill in the box, waited for the actinic flare and then drew it out again. “Look,” I said, “Paid in full. Written in large green letters.”

“So why isn't everyone doing this? There has to be a catch.” My friend looked at me sceptically, still not believing.

“There is,” I began, hesitantly, ”a qualifier. You have to always bring someone for them to abduct...” 

Here's another flash fiction entry... I'm on fire. Wish me luck folks!

http://ireadencyclopedias.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/what-will-you-write-1-neptune/

Conrad opened his eyes to a view of a massive blue globe.  He jerked back and twisted around in the micro-gravity.  He touched something solid in front of him.  A window.

He pushed against the window and turned around.  Conrad scanned the small room, no larger than a public bathroom stall, and empty except for an EV spacesuit and door.  He studied the view through the window.  Neptune, he thought.  How did I get here?

But then, there were other pressing matters. Ones even more important. Like how was he going to get out?

The obvious way was through the doorway. The huge armoured doorway with the coded lock and the rubberised door-seal. Only, surely that door was going to open out into space, but… yes. Yes, he’d got a suit. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do once he escaped but he'd definitely got a way out.

Fortunately, he wasn’t a stranger to EV suits. He’d been born on a traders’ station orbiting Io and had built up more time in a suit than most Fleet pilots ever amassed in the whole of their highly stressed but brief careers in space. Poor little souls. He grinned, thinking of all the times he’d spent intercepting colonists’ flitters as they threaded their way through the Jovian system's moons. Space was large and out here in the outer reaches of the solar system, the Fleet's steadying influence was almost as weak as the micro-gravity he was experiencing here now.

But at least they’d left him a suit.

Checking his diaper-like maximum absorbency garment and liquid-cooled singlet were all in good order, he checked the suit’s comms and powered systems with a quick, practised eye, confirming he’d got at least 6 hours’ charge of battery and oxygen before sliding into the suit’s womb-like grip. Then, shrugging himself into the upper section, he quickly ran through his seals’ check. Waist: green; arms and gloves (outer and inner): green; legs and mag-secure boots; green. All he needed now was his helmet and he was good to go.

Good to go and to see what waited for him outside.

Conrad punched in the code - 361965 - on the over-sized key-pad, sighing in relief when the door slid in and then aside to let him through. The date taken from Edward Higgins White II’s first self-powered EVA on June 3rd 1965, giving rise to the access code used by all Fleet commissioning engineers everywhere. God bless them all. He donned his helmet and waited for the cycle to complete.

---------------------------------------------

The drop-box’s outer hatch had just thudded back into its seals' bed, the ‘cycle-complete’ indicator turning green, when Conrad’s comm-unit suddenly came to life, spraying a burst of static into his ears. Resolving into a voice he knew. The weaselly tones of Jean-Pascal Berlotti; head of the local Fleet/Mafia justice department.

“Hello, Mr Conrad,” he oozed. “I’m so pleased you've woken up from your slumbers. It makes my arrangements for you so much more satisfying this way.”

Suddenly, the suit’s integrity warning light started flashing as the seams at the rear began to split open, the pressure differential peeling the jury-rigged material repairs apart.

“You may have noticed that your suit’s sprung a bit of a leak,” Berlotti continued, gloating. “But don’t worry, it’s not the first time I’ve seen Uranus in retrograde around Neptune…”

(My entry into this weeks Flash! Friday blog competition.) 

http://flashfriday.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/flash-friday-vol-2-24/)

I hope you enjoy it...



Paid in Full.


Bruce shook his head. “Next you'll be telling me there's a tooth fairy.”

“Honest, it's true. I'll prove it.” Reaching into my inner jacket pocket, I pulled out a utility bill. A final demand typed in red, threatening imminent disconnection of my internet services and further additional charges to be paid. Due today.

“And you just put your unpaid bill in the box and aliens pay it?”

“Exactly that. One every month. No more than that or else there's consequences.” I slotted the bill in the box, waited for the actinic flare and then drew it out again. “Look,” I said, “Paid in full. Written in large green letters.”
“So why isn't everyone doing this? There has to be a catch.” My friend looked at me sceptically, still not believing.

“There is,” I began, hesitantly, ”a qualifier. You have to always bring someone for them to abduct...”