Sunday 15 March 2015

FlashMobWrites #03 Fall Out of the Atmosphere


I was left for dead.

Clawing my way through mud, I dragged my broken body through the decay of the forest floor. This was not my day to die. A hole in the ground was no place for a sorceress to rot. But I bled like any human. My strength and spirit seeped out in the blood oozing from the gash in my head but I pushed myself forwards, snagging a fingernail on a root and ripping it clean off. Pain scorched my body, paralysing me to the floor.

Maybe this was my time to die. Submitting easily to my fate, I closed my blood sodden eyes.

When I awoke, darkness surrounded me. I lay for a while, adjusting to the night as a cool breeze dulled the burning pain. I’d stopped bleeding. My strength was returning, I felt the energy tingling in my fingers, healing my fragile shell. Magic coursed through my body. And my mind turned to revenge.

Making him suffer would be easy. How was the tricky part. Being a sorceress opened up so many ways.  I had to choose carefully as I wasn’t his only victim but I would be his last. Begging with his last breath, on bended knees, he would eventually fall. Out of the atmosphere, a shooting star blazed across the indigo sky, interrupting my thoughts. It died just as suddenly as it appeared, leaving the night empty. That’s what I would do to him. Leave him empty. Leave him in a state of permanent darkness to match his heart. Leave him with the nightmares of his victims’ last moments, playing over and over in his tortured mind. Leave him broken, screaming out in pain, screaming for me to end his misery, begging me to let him die.

He would never die.

He would never live.

Eternal darkness waited for him. His soul would be nothing more than a black hole, consuming his body from within.
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A new flash fiction challenge to get stuck in to. Flashmobwrites, hosted by Ruth Long and Cara Michaels. 300-500 words and a choice of prompts.
Cara: 'leave the evidence far behind'.
Ruth: 'fall out of the atmosphere'.



       

Thursday 12 March 2015

Thursday Threads wk 159 Maybe You'd Like to Give It a Try


A Honourable Mention for this little story. 

Huddled close to the fire, Ella watched as Conor placed their skewered dinner carefully on top. The flames licked at the flesh, hissing and crackling as fat dripped down. It had been three days since they’d eaten a proper meal, three days of scavenging, three days of walking, hiding and killing.
Killing.
Technically, the Infected were already dead so killing wasn’t quite true but you never ignored an Infected. That’s how you lost people. Ella shivered.
“Reminds me of the bbqs we used to have, although the choice of meat was better,” he laughed.
“It’s not funny.”
“You gotta lighten up. This is the new world now, you eat what you can. Gotta stay strong.” He turned the skewer. “You have to at least try it.”
“Maybe you’d like to give it a try but I’m not. I can’t believe you’re going to eat it.” Ella turned away as Conor slid the meat off the skewer, tearing the hot flesh with his fingers. Bile rose, burning her throat, at the sound of Conor’s chewing, her appetite for even the meagre berries now lost.
“Are you sure you don’t want some?” Shaking her head, Ella sipped some water, thinking back to the days of Sunday roast; a simple roast chicken with all the trimmings. It turned her stomach. She would never eat meat again. “Shame, it tastes just like chicken.”

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Written for Siobhan Muir's Thursday Threads over at The weird, the Wild and the Wicked

Judge, Tina Glasneck
Tina says: The Cannablism story was dark, just like I love a story, and I couldn't help but wonder what got them to that point -- and I also wondered if they were eating the flesh of other humans, who'd they'd killed or actual zombies, and infected meat