Flash Mob Writes 1×01

Prompt: https://flashmobwrites.wordpress.com/2015/02/27/flashmobwrites-1×01/

In my dreams, I was a person worthy of her love. She’d picked me over all the others, and we came together to pledge our lives to each other. A holy fool all colored blue in the waning light of an otherworldly star said a bunch of things I didn’t understand, and it was over.

In my dreams, I was a person worthy of her anger. She’d cry and scream, but never leave, even though I was a bastard, even though I was a liar and a cheater and a thief. I hated myself too, but she could have left, and she didn’t.

In my dreams, I was a person worthy of her disdain. She didn’t need me, didn’t want me, but would keep me around as a trophy, an emblem of the trials of her younger years. It was no way to live, but I stayed drunk enough to deal with it, and the time passed.

In my dreams, I was a person worthy of her betrayal. What happiness I had, I’d taken from her unjustly, and it was her life’s work to make me pay every way that a man could. But she wouldn’t let me go, because her need to watch me suffer outweighed everything else in her mind.

In my dreams, I was a person worthy of her respect. She stayed with me just to see what I would do, how I would attack the challenge of each new day. We did great things together, she and I, in dreams that had no substance beyond the aether in which they were formed.

In my dreams, I was a person worthy of her disinterest.

In my dreams, I was a person worthy of her lust.

In my dreams, I was a person worthy of her.

In my dreams, I hadn’t ended her life.

Flash Friday Vol 3 week 12

William the Conqueror

The Conqueror crushed boulders beneath his enormous feet, striding through the blasted land like a child through a sandbox. There were none who would dare oppose him, not since the Battle of the Feast at his last birthday celebration. Many things ended that day, and The Conqueror wasn’t happy. If there is no one to be conquered, who is The Conqueror to be?

With every step, The Conqueror came closer to the scene of the Battle. The destruction was wide-ranging that day, and The Conqueror had to avoid the remnants of the Seventh Fleet, the Great Rose Garden, and a shrubbery before he came to the epicenter.

There was naught here but destruction. The grass that was able to grow was forever tinted a fluorescent green. A ring of brightly colored trains were smashed face-first into the bark of an oak tree. And the debris from a dozen dozen dismembered beings would forever stand as a warning to all those who would dare oppose The Conqueror.

But wait? What was this, over here, near the fish pond? Was that his Bumblebee? And in the water? Hotshot? Mommy said they’d been lost in the Battle. The Conqueror smiled, and strode into the water. There was still Conquering to do, after all.

ThursThreads – Year Three!

Prompt: http://siobhanmuir.blogspot.com/2015/02/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-three.html

“So there I am, pointing ol’ Betsy here at the two mopes, and the dame won’t shaddup. I told her to split, and she was all like ‘If they stay, I stay.’ Y’know, like she was some hero broad or sometin.”

“Yeah, so whadya do?”

“I whacked all tree of them, that’s what I did.”

“Holy shit, George. You know who she wuz, right?”

“I hadn’t seen her mug before in my life, and I don’t care if she was Mary, Queen’a da Scots. Those two hadta die, and she didn’t scram when I told her to scram. I don’t like loose ends. Why, who wuz she? Some high-society broad?”

“Naw, not that kinda dame. She was Mickey’s daughter, Louisa.”

“Whathefuck do I care if she was Mickey’s daughter or what her name was? Mick knows he’s fish food he ever comes my way, and he thinks he can do da same to me, with or without no daughter. So now he’s extra honked off. Big deal.”

“Big deal is dat he loved her sumpin’ fierce. She was his only girl, y’know. Man like dat don’t take this lyin’ down, fish food or no.”

“So I’ll watch out for Mick. Geez, what crawled in your butt about dis girl? You know I can handle myself against Mickey freakin’ McWhateverthefuckhisnameis.”

“It ain’t Mickey you should be worryin’ about right now, George.”

“Meanin’ what?”

“Meanin’ she wasn’t just Mick’s daughter.”

“What the fuck you talkin’ about?”

“She was my fiancée.”

VisDare 85

Prompt: https://anonymouslegacy1.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/visdare-85-second-sight/

Monica’s fingers weaved through the sunbeams, creating universes in the dust motes floating through the air. Here, a world is created out of nothing, whole civilizations coming to life as the glare of the late-afternoon sun reveals lives which had heretofore remained undreampt of. There, hope comes to an end too quickly as darkness comes to a billion peoples, any trace of their existence wiped out in an instant.

Here, on the worn shag carpet in the peace between the end of the school day and her parents’ arrival home, Monica was no longer fugly. She was no longer clumsy. She was no longer the designated reject. She was not yet stupid. She was not yet dreaming of an excuse to explain away another bruise. She was not yet a thing, unwelcome in one moment and the target of unseemly gazes the next.

In this moment, she was a queen.

Flash! Friday, Vol 3-10

Prompt: https://flashfriday.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/flash-friday-vol-3-10/

Of Mice and Men

“Kitten again?”

“We’re lucky to have found this one. With the war on, there’s no decent food to be found.”

“Pah. There isn’t even enough meat on that one for me, much less you. You, who should be dining on lion with Senators, reduced to scavenging in the streets.”

“I’ll make stock from the bones, and there’s some dried turnips in my pack. I’ll be fine. And you know there’s no Senate anymore, Grandpa. Not since the rebellion.”

“Ungrateful peasants. If I was your age, I’d grab my sword and show them what I thought of them. They used to run in fear from me, you know.”

“I know, Grandpa.”

“It got so they had to put four, five – one time, even six – in there with me, or it wasn’t a fair fight.”

“I remember, Grandpa.”

“Do you now? How do you remember, you pup? You wouldn’t have been let in at your age.”

“You used to sneak me in, Grandpa. Said I was small for my age. They didn’t believe it, but no one questioned you.”

“Ha. They wouldn’t have. And look at me now. And you – reduced to eating kitten broth.”

“I know, Grandpa. Eat up, now. They’re sure to find us if we don’t move again soon.”

MWBB 2.37 (Warning: Adult themes, NSF many audiences)

Prompt: https://thetsuruokafiles.wordpress.com/2015/02/10/mid-week-blues-buster-week-2-37-the-valentines-day-edition/

Do Not Go Gently

She smiled, and leaned over to kiss me. Her breath was sweet, smelling of toothpaste and wine, and our tongues touched, just for a moment. I twisted against the ropes holding me down, and shifted to try to release the pressure in my pants. She drew back and laughed, that dark laugh that first drew me to her, and leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Do be patient.” Her breath was hot, and I began to sweat.

“I’m going to turn out the lights now.” She moved easily over to the switch, letting her finger linger before flicking it down. The room went blacker than night, and I strained to know what was going on from the sound of her movements. A light step here, and a swallow there as she drained the last of the wine. The slither of silk over skin as she shed the burgundy negligee she’d been wearing.

The metallic shink of a knife drawn from a sheath.

She circled the bed, her bare feet padding lightly as she considered her next action. “Ooh, I do like this. It’s more…dangerous…this way, don’t you think? With a blindfold, you don’t know what I’m going to do – I have all the control. But this way, neither one of us knows. Neither one of us is in control.” She laughed, and I moaned deep in my throat. “Well, that’s not true, is it? I’m standing here, holding a knife in one hand, and, ohhh, touching myself with the other. Mmm. Whereas you are tied to the bed, aching – straining – to be touched. But you can’t do anything except cry out, and you won’t do that. Because I have what you want.”

Cold steel brushed against the bottom of my foot, just a touch at first, then slightly more pressure. I marveled at her ability to control the blade in the dark, to know just where she wanted to put it. And then just a bit more pressure, and I felt my skin break as she began opening me. There was less pain than I’d expected, and a growing numbness radiated from her first cut.

“Oh, I know how you like the pain, dear one. And there will be pain. For you. And so much pleasure. But I can’t have you going into shock just when it’s getting good, can I? Don’t worry – the numbness will wear off. Eventually.”

She leaned down and kissed my toes, lightly, then followed each kiss with a small pricking from the knife. As with the first cut, my toes gradually grew numb, first on one foot, then the other.

I didn’t know how I’d last until she reached her destination, but I did. The top of my feet. My ankles. My calves. At each step, she followed the same routine – a kiss, wet and lasting, followed by a gentle slicing, then numbness. I was amazed at how skillfully she moved, how I could barely feel the tugging as she sliced my skin free from the tissue beneath.

She paused as she got to my groin. This would be the last time we’d be together like this, and she savored it. She didn’t let me come, of course, but she did everything with her mouth that I’d ever begged for in the deepest reaches of my fantasies. And just when she couldn’t find a way to hold me off any longer, she took me deep into her throat and drew the knife up between my legs. She stabbed me, hard and deep, and I died twice – le petite mort and le gran mort pulsing through me at the same instant.

I didn’t see her weep as she finished her job, nor get to hold her as she sent my skin out to be harvested for donation to the underground organ clinics. I also didn’t feel the cancer eat me from the inside out, or suffer for months under the ministrations of nurses who wept as they cleaned the foulest things imaginable from my decaying body. This way, I got to give something back, and left the world the way I chose. What she got out of it, I never would know.

698 words
@drmagoo

Finish That Thought: 2-32

Prompt: http://alissaleonard.blogspot.com/2015/02/finish-that-thought-2-32.html

I could see her hiding behind the desk. Master was in the hall, his footfalls echoing off the bare walls. Master wasn’t screaming, which is why she was hiding. Screaming never ending in hitting. The quiet days were the scariest.

She wasn’t supposed to be in Master’s office, I knew. Her arm still ached from where Master had given her a separated shoulder because she’d laid a hand on the doorknob after tripping over her own feet. Master had a lot of rules, but there were two that outranked all the others. Be quiet – always quiet. And stay out of his office.

That I was ever allowed to enter the house was something of a miracle. She had been in the hospital for her sixth birthday, the recipient of a broken leg that was either the result of a mis-timed jump from a swing or Master picking her up and slamming her down on the ground after a mis-timed sneeze, depending on who you believed. The nurse, taking pity on the sweet little girl stuck in the hospital for her special day, had wheeled her down to the special room where I was kept. I had no fur, so I didn’t bother anyone’s allergies, and I had no vocal cords, so I couldn’t make any noise.

I was the perfect pet for her, though none of them realized why they all suddenly thought I should go home with her. Just because I couldn’t make noise didn’t mean I couldn’t communicate. My kind could survive in a vacuum, under water, or on land – of course we evolved to be telepathic. And when it occurred to Master (with my help of course) that giving her a pet for a birthday present would help make it look like he was the caring, worried father he was pretending to be, I became hers.

There hadn’t been any incidents since we’d arrived home, not until today. I’d been able to glean most of their past together while they were asleep, and slowly, my plan had come together. For everything to work properly, Master needed to be angry. Angrier than he’d ever been. He needed to lose control. She didn’t want to sing when she’d come home from school. And she certainly hadn’t wanted to sneak into Master’s office. But the time was right, and I didn’t give her a choice. It was for her own good, after all.

Master kept all his secret things in his office. The drugs. The pictures of him with children. The money.

And the gun.

When his steps stopped outside the door, she began to panic. When the doorknob started to turn, she started crying. And when the door swung open, Master’s bulky form outlined against the glare of the hall lights, she screamed.

But I was stronger than panic. And crying. And screaming. And her aim was true.

VisDare 84: Waiting

Prompt: https://anonymouslegacy1.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/visdare-84-waiting/

The kids always asked me where my reindeer were. “In the shop,” I’d say, and then close my eyes so I didn’t have to look at their bewildered little faces anymore. Some kids kept pestering me even when I pretended to be asleep – it was New York, after all, and no one here cares much about even feigning a basic level of courtesy. To them, I’d beckon them close, and while staring at their parent or nanny or whoever didn’t know how to get them to shut up, I’d whisper ever so softly, “I killed them. Just like I’m going to kill you. Merry Christmas.” It was a joy to watch them cry.

I didn’t kill them, fer crying out loud. But this city – man, it does things to you. And if I wasn’t stuck here on the D train to hell at midnight, I might’ve been nicer.

Maybe.

Flash Friday, Vol 3-9

Prompt: https://flashfriday.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/flash-friday-vol-3-9/

That Which is Unseen Speaks the Loudest

“Good morning.” The businessman – or solicitor, or shopkeep, or whatever – tipped his hat and moved on, barely registering my existence as anything other than a vaguely human-shaped object which had passed briefly into his sight. He didn’t see me for who I really was – he couldn’t have. He didn’t see that my umbrella was moth-bitten to the point where one would rightfully assume that it was the next thing to useless. He didn’t see the grimace on my face, the pain from the corn on my left foot balanced by the plantar fasciitis in my right. My boots kept my feet dry enough, but they had given up any semblance of quality support somewhere around when the umbrella was new. He didn’t see the way my left hand curled into a fist to keep the thin gold ring from falling off fingers that were once strong enough to dig trenches but now struggled to hold onto a railing. He didn’t see the hand that had once fit so well into mine on so many walks because its owner was now worm food under the grass at First Anglican. And he didn’t see the gun in my right hand, aimed at my temple.

But he heard the shot.

207 words
@drmagoo

ThursThreads, Week 154

Prompt: http://siobhanmuir.blogspot.com/2015/02/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week.html

“That’s five hundred for me…, three, four, five, and three hundred for you.” I counted the bills out on the back of an overturned milk crate, used as a makeshift desk in my ‘office.’ “That makes us even.”

Tommy wasn’t great at math, but even someone of his limited mental powers could tell the difference between five and three. “How do you figure? I thought we were going halfsies.”

“Because it was my plan, and I’m the older one. I’ll get in more trouble if we get caught, so I get more of the money.”

“But…”

I scooted over, putting my arm around his shoulders. “Big Tom,” I began, because he always loved to be called big. “What are you going to use the money for?”

The smile on his face was instantaneous. “A new bike! There’s a bright red one down at Old Man Johnson’s. It’s got white-wall’d triers and a silver horn that honks like a geese, and…”

“And how much is that bike?”

“Old Man Johnson wants twenty dollars for it, which is why mamma said no.”

“And now you have three hundred, and mamma can’t say nothin’ no more, can she? But I don’t need a twenty dollar bike, do I?”

Tommy smile vanished, and his head hung. “No. You need medicine, don’t you?”

“I do, and it’s super-important. Mamma didn’t understand that, but you do. So, are we square?”

Tommy hugged me. “We’re square.”

Poor kid. I probably should have only given him two hundred.

250 words
@drmagoo