Tag Archives: Flash Fiction

10.04.22
by

Heavy Petting

art by me and midjourney

Heavy Petting

We drove down Manor Street with the headlights off. The moon was bright enough to see by, at least enough to avoid the exposed catch basin frames and so as not to overshoot the cul de sac. Some developer had run out of money after putting the road in during the last crash so there weren’t any houses, just overgrown lots, a crumbling road, and hundreds of scattered beer cans and used condoms. Luckily, no other cars were at the turn around and I pulled to a stop at the far end.

Tricia — no, Tonya — did not waste any time. She had been rubbing me the whole way and as soon as I stopped she all but clawed me out of my jeans so she could swallow me. “The moon is pretty tonight,” I said because I thought I should say something while she worked up and down, hands and mouth. She grunted like she agreed but kept working.

I felt myself start to get close and pulled her up. I wanted to be cool and tell her to take off her dress when she said, “I want you to fuck me on the hood.” I started to say something, but I don’t know what stupid shit would have come out of my mouth. I didn’t have to embarrass myself, though, because she added, “Doggy style,” with this funny, almost hungry grin and I was speechless.

Her skin was so pale in the moonlight. At the bar I hadn’t noticed that she wasn’t wearing anything under the sundress, but now I could see it all. She jerked my jeans down around my knees, swallowed me again and then slid slowly and full of teeth off me. When she turned around and crawled on all fours onto the hood she made this growling sound that almost made me go off all by itself. When I lifted the dress I admit that I did, a little.

The scent of her was so strong, like an animal musk, I barely thought, and just thrust forward into her. She reached back and grabbed my hip with one hand to pull me deeper. I remember feeling bad because I knew I wasn’t going to last long and my older brother had always told me, “Let them come first.” There was no way, though. Half a dozen thrusts and I was on the verge.

That was when the pain hit. My hip burned like fire and the immediacy of my climax receded. “Don’t stop,” she growled. I mean, really growled. I didn’t realize until that moment that I had been doing it with my eyes closed, trying to concentrate on not going off. So I opened my eyes.

Her beautiful, pale-skinned ass against my hips was now covered in dark brown, soft fur. The hand that held me hit was long fingered, cruel, and ended in wicked nails. My hip and buttocks were bleeding as she squeezed. “Fuck me!”she growled again, turning, showing me her white teeth and yellow eyes.

And, well, I did. After a moment of pure shock, pure terror, I felt myself stiffen again and I started driving into her. The pain in my bloody hip was suddenly pleasure and her velvet covered muscles felt so good against me. She howled and I howeld and we came.

I don’t remember much of what happened after, except that she turned on me suddenly, fully human again, and kissed me deeply. She pulled her hand up from my hip and sucked the blood from her fingers. Then she looked up at the moon and said, “See you in a month.”

I fucking hope so.

10.02.22
by

The Door

created with midjourney

We found it while searching for Emily Dansforth. She was the third child that had gone missing in the last 6 months. We were expecting to find shallow graves, but instead we found this: a door to nowhere, looking like something out of Grimm’s fairy tales, just out of sight of but still within earshot of the highway.

Ms. Farnsworth, the social worker we had brought along because we thought we might have found one or more of the girls alive, said, “The wall isn’t deep enough for a door. What’s beyond it?”

I wanted to scoff. I wanted to tell her she was overreacting and that she should go back to her comfy office couches and leave us, the real cops, to our work. But I couldn’t. I just looked at it. Ancient stairs, tread by uncounted feet, led up to a gaping maw of an arch. Maybe it was ceremonial, my mind said. Light some candles and incense and everything would make sense. But it didn’t. That thing was a door. No doubt about it. But it didn’t go anywhere. It just sat there, a hungry darkness, inviting and terrifying all at once.

Dr. Byram from forensics spent three days at the site. He took samples of everything. He took shoe impressions in the soft ground leading to the… portal, I guess. He took lichen scrapings and found some blood droplets and even what looked to be human vomit near the ”door.”  After a week of analysis he pulled me aside and said, “I don’t know what it is, but if I were you, I would let it go. They’re missing. End of story.”

I wish I could. I wish I could imagine them abducted, strangled, raped by some sick fuck who was, at the end of the day, just another broken human being. But here I am, staring into the blackness. I know there is something more. I know there are answers on the other side. I know that it isn’t just a sculpture. I know it is, in all the senses of the word, a Door.

And, fuck it. I am going through. I have to know what happened to them.

03.07.20
by

The Ring Makers: Afterword

The Ring Makers started out as a necessary exercise. I was suffering from some pretty tough writer’s block and imposter syndrome. I had written some game material in the last couple years but had not been consistent with even that, and was totally bouncing off every piece of fiction I tried.

 

I knew I needed to do something. I had to get my groove back. A therapist told me “It doesn’t matter how much you write, but if it is important to you, write something. Write a hundred words a day if that is all you have in you.” This was in response to my usual caterwauling about the Elger and Moon sequel, of course, but it managed to somehow stick with me this time.

 

I still was not ready to go back to that work yet, so instead I decided to just engage in an exercise with two foci: to write every day, and to write exactly 100 words. Both are a little harder than it sounds.

 

Writing every day is tough, even when you are only talking 100 words. First, you have to actually “put ass to chair and fingers to keyboard” as the great JMS once wrote. It sounds easy until that day you realize it is 11 PM, you are more than a little drunk, and you can’t remember your Google Docs password. In the end, I only missed three days: Christmas Day and two days recently while I was away at TotalCon, all due to exhaustion. But, 97% is still an A so I’ll take it.

Writing exactly 100 words is also hard, but in a fun and challenging way. You may not know this, but I tend to go on a bit. Forcing myself to be concise helped me reign in my worst excesses as a writer and made me really examine the words I was using. Also tense: you can eliminate a lot of unnecessary words by avoiding the passive voice, FYI.

 

Finally, I want to mention this concept of the “micronovel.” I do not remember where I discovered the term, but what I tried to do with the Ring Makers was not write a novella or novelette, but an actual novel in brief. In other words, I wanted the characters, subplots, and complexities of a novel told in brief. But that brevity could not simply be an outline. My 100 word chapters were not intended to serve as a sketch of a 1000 word chapter. Instead, I wanted to tell the story through flashes, moments that told you the overall story without having to tell you everything. I feel like I was generally successful.

 

So, what is next? I am going to leave The Ring Makers “in the drawer” for a little while while I work on my next daily project (upping my daily word count to see if I can maintain it). When I revisit it, the goal will be to polish it and publish it via Amazon.

Thanks everyone that followed along this process with me. More than once, your readership, likes and comments kept me going when I might have abandoned The Ring Makers. You’re the best.

Chapter 1

03.07.20
by

The Ring Makers: Chapter 100

The Inquisitor was again the Envoy and had reabsorbed most of its Engineers, leaving only a few to maintain the Great Ring.

The vehicles carrying humans through the Great Ring to the Sentinel Station always asked the Envoy.

 

Is it safe?

 

It is safe.

 

What of the Enemy?

 

The Sentinel guards.

 

Forever?

 

For now.

 

What waited beyond the Sentinel Station, the Envoy did not know. There were so many other worlds, other species, whose own worlds had been cleansed prior to the opening of their Rings.

 

For the Envoy, this one world, this one species, was enough to worry about.

 

THE END

Chapter 99

03.06.20
by

The Ring Makers: Chapter 99

“The election is tomorrow,” said Miss Ryu. “You should get some rest.”

 

Hyong looked up from the console and rubbed his eyes. “Soon. I have almost solved–”

 

She bent down and kissed him. “It can wait. Let’s go home.”

 

He smiled then switched off his console and stood. She took his arm.

 

They walked out of the building into the rain. A heptahedron approached them and expanded its carapace. They stepped inside, thanking it politely. Despite the weather the city was bustling.

 

“I hope they aren’t too drunk to vote,” she said.

 

Hyong laughed heartily and then kissed her deeply.

Chapter 98

Chapter 100

03.05.20
by

The Ring Makers: Chapter 98

Jazarah sat on the balcony and leafed through Genet’s notebook. In the sketches, the city was thronged with pilgrims. Now only small clusters of scholars explored and studied the city and its machines.

 

She saw the flaws in Genet’s sketches now. To the casual observer, they were lifelike renderings. Jazarah recognized his exaggeration of the pilgrims’ joy and the heightened divine majesty of the architecture. She wondered if Genet would have seen it, or, if so, admitted it.

 

Color was returning to the fire-scoured landscape in the form of vivid flowering things. Perhaps Genet was right. Perhaps this was paradise.

Chapter 97

Chapter 99

03.04.20
by

The Ring Makers: Chapter 97

EPILOGUE

The floater hovered before Ellie and blurted a tirade of colors and textures.

 

“Fuck you, too,” said Ellie.

 

The security procedures are insufficient to handle the rate of immigration.

 

“Yeah, I know, but them’s the breaks.”

 

Incoherent flashes.

 

“Just go back to the Ring and stamp them through. We’ll figure out the rest once they’re settled.”

 

After a particularly rude series of signals, the floater left and Ellie turned her attention to the halftrack.

 

A few minutes later Monica yelled from the house, “Dinner!”.

 

Ellie waved back. “In a minute, lover,” she called, then reached into the engine smiling contentedly.

Chapter 96

Chapter 98

03.03.20
by

The Ring Makers: Chapter 96

Eberardo chased Lajos. The other man stopped to help a fallen woman and Eberardo tackled him. “Lajos! You live!”

 

Lajos returned his embrace, then pulled the woman to her feet. She fled wordlessly.

 

“Come on!” said Lajos, turning to follow.

 

“Wait,” said Eberardo, pointing at the massive Ring.

 

It sparked dangerously. The bombers bore down. Eberardo saw black shapes drop from their undersides. Lajos pulled but Eberardo held him fast. “Look,” he gasped.

 

The Ring came alive and the field of lightning reached out. It engulfed the bombers and the bombs. A flash of lightning later, the sky was clear.

END OF PART THREE

Chapter 95

Chapter 97

03.02.20
by

The Ring Makers: Chapter 95

Hyong laughed. Of course the aliens were waiting to talk. What better display of intellectual capacity and the desire to communicate?

 

The bombers neared. He was glad to have witnessed this meeting, however short.

 

His tablet buzzed. He swept across it and Miss Ryu appeared. Her eyes were puffy and red. “Hyong!” she gasped. “You have to go! Namgung–”

 

“It’s okay,” he said. “There is nowhere to go.”

 

“No!” she cried. “I love you!”

 

“I love you, too,” he said and then turned the camera on the Inquisitor and Jazarah. He spoke loudly above the approaching bombers: “Isn’t it beautiful?”

Chapter 94

Chapter 96

03.01.20
by

The Ring Makers: Chapter 94

Ajit had been a genius. He knew how to communicate with the alien machines. He had also been a man of his culture. He never asked Jazarah for her thoughts. Ajit had saved her, then never stopped thinking of her as a damsel.

 

Jazarh had watched Ajit and absorbed everything. She understood the machines and now, standing before the Inquisitor, she had to prove it.

 

The surface of the robot flashed with color. While technicians hurried to translate, she answered clearly, “I hear you and wish to speak plainly.”

 

“Excellent,” said the Inquisitor.

 

Hyong, Ellie and the other onlookers gaped.

Chapter 93

Chapter 95