Category: Flash Fiction

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The Ward

There was the flap of wings and then a thud on the bench beside him. “It’s been a while,” a voice said.

Viz shrugged. “Only a few centuries, brother.”

“Because you do your job poorly,” his brother snapped. “Speaking of which, where is your ward?”

He gestured towards the woman he’d been staring at. She was sitting at a ragged park table, crying. “There.”

His brother scoffed. “At least it’s alive this time. Do you know how annoying it was to wait—what was it again—a few centuries for it to reincarnate?”

A man approach his ward. She wiped her face and stood, mumbling an apology. The man embraced her. “It’s all right,” Viz heard him say. His ward went rigid. Then, sobbed on the man’s shoulder.

His brother groaned. “Well, that’s finally done.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

138 words

Written for: Priceless Joy’s FFfAW Challenge – 199th, Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers

Picture by: Jodi McKinney

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Vulnerable, yet Beautiful

He passed her crossing a busy intersection on his way home. Her arms clasping her sides, shielding herself from the night’s air. Her dark eyes peered from under the sweater’s hood when he mumbled, “Hello.”

She looked away and walked faster. Rude, but he understood. She was probably like him, retreating to her sanctuary after a day of dealing with the world.

He saw her again on the balcony across from his. She was sweaterless, but the frigid cold didn’t seem to bother her. She was simply watching the snowfall. Vulnerable to the icy wind around her, yet beautiful.

Photo by: Filip Gielda

Written for: Bikurgurl’s 100 Word Wednesday: Week 104, Bikurgurl

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Blue Skins aren’t Allowed

“Blue skins aren’t allowed on Station 3,” the terminal conductor repeated with some annoyance.

Her father waved a holo display in the conductor’s face. “Would you look at the papers. She’s a legal citizen and has the same rights as—”

“I don’t care what it is. Letting that thing on the transport will only cause problems with the other passengers.” The conductor slammed the transports’ doors and fired up the engines, leaving the two of them alone on the space bridge dock.

“Your species is filled with assholes,” Jamie finally said, interrupting the silence.

Her father chuckled. “Yeah, maybe.”

Written for: Bikurgurl’s 100 Word Wednesday: 76, Bikurgurl

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The Performance

A martian usher escorted the woman away from the rest of us enslaved musicians. As she stepped onto the levitating stage, the alien audience let out a deafening cheer that rumbled the ship.

“She’ll be the one that wins her freedom,” Mikhail, my accompanying pianist, said as the ship began to quiet.

I nodded. Why wouldn’t she win? She was Alyssa Garner! A gifted violinist coveted by conductors back on Earth.

Alyssa’s bow hung in the air. Once it was silent, she struck the strings and played a strong chord. She progressed through her piece. Her delicate fingers gliding across the violin’s neck with practiced precision.

A true master.

But her enchantment on me shattered when she yelped. The stage split and sucked her into space. A raucous noise, that I can only describe as laughter, erupted from the audience.

I wrote this for a comedy flash fiction challenge years ago. I didn’t win, but I still find this scene funny. I think that says something about my sanity 🙂

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I Waited on Death

We’re all waiting to die.

I learned that truth at a young age and hoped Death would save me from the minutiae of life. When he didn’t—if Death was indeed a he—I got desperate and figured I’d force his arrival. I remember sitting in my room holding my father’s gun to my head, the cold barrel digging into my temple. A twisted smile plastered on my face. I felt as if I was a lover waiting for my date to arrive, but the bastard stood me up.

For the sake of my concerned parents, I started preoccupying my time with normal things while I waited for Death. This meant getting a job at a local market where I dealt with high nosed customers. Secretly, I hoped I’d trip and break my neck or get hit by a car.

Nothing.

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The Exile

In winters like this—where the wind was a silent enemy that blistered everything it touched—his tribe would hunker in the belly of the White Mountain. Families drawn close and circling small fires never expecting to lose each other.

At least that’s how he felt before the exile.

This dangerous train of thought faded as his silent enemy shook his makeshift home made from branches and thickets. His body, numbed from the cold, protected a waning fire.

Written for Rochelle Wisoff’s Friday Fictioneers 4 May 2018, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields-Addicted to Purple (a belated entry)

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Life Assignment

I stepped into a sterile glass box that whirled as it carried me into the computerized brain of the Ancient One. Red lights ran the length of my body, gathering data for the algorithm that would determine my life’s purpose or, as the Ancient called it, Life Assignment.

A disembodied voice told me this was the day I’d truly begin living my life, but what the machine considered living…wasn’t living at all.

Written for: Sonya’s Three Line Tales, Week 106, Only 100 Words

Continue reading “Life Assignment”

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Rest

She lay rain-soaked on the cold pavement. Her eyes fixated on the gray clouds overhead as a paramedic pumped stale air into her lungs. She inhaled, but her lungs refused to contract.

I’m going to die, she thought. Yet, her body continued its futile fight for survival.

Then the blaring sirens, roaring rain, screaming paramedic, and her laboring breaths dimmed as if someone had turned the volume down on her life.

It was just her and the paramedic in the rain, but she could feel another presence. A safe presence.

Something warm caressed her cheek. “Rest, child,” a voice whispered. “Rest.”

Written For: Bikurgurl’s 100 Word Wednesday (week 56)  Continue reading “Rest”