Category Archives: Writing

Last week, the Challenge was to write 1,000 or so words that were to be Act One of a four part story, with Act Two to be written this week by a stranger, then Act Three to be added on by someone else, to be finished and wrapped up in Act Four by a fourth author. (I love these things!)

I wrote “Beach Rode (Act One)” and this week it’s been picked up by both Angela Cavenaugh and Peter MacDonald for the second act. I am most honored to have them both find my work worthy of their attention this week. You can find Angela’s work here and Peter’s addition here. I can’t wait to see if someone else picks up either of these stories for the third act next week.

For this week’s Challenge I’m adding the second act to the first 1,000 words written by Mozette:

THE DARE (Act Two)

Act One (by Mozette)

As I stand here on the very edge of the top of the fifty-second floors of ‘The Glory Hotel’, I wonder exactly how it came to be that I said yes to such a dumb idea.

Oh, yeah, that’s right… I said that it was not just David Copperfield who could fly, anyone could.

Was I drunk when I said that?  I sure hope I was, because I really hate heights; and the last thing I need is to test my humanity right now.  Turning from my perch, I look back at my stupid friends who are pushing me, throwing rubbish from the roof at me, screaming at me to ‘do it!’, that I was a wimp if I didn’t.

Was I a wimp?

Really?

I mean I was human, but not really… you see I was born here on Earth, but I did turn out to have a few extras built into my DNA that the normal Human Being just didn’t have.

Like what?  Um… I can bench press 350kg cold.  I really can!  And yet I’m built like a weed.  I don’t look like it, but I can sucker-punch anyone into the middle of next week too.  But I’d never do it; I’m just not brought up that way – and nobody is going to force me to do that.

Other ‘skills’ I’ve been able to do is have a toughened skeletal structure… and skin that heals very quickly; and I don’t mean in 3 days, I mean as I watch it in about a minute.  This is another reason why I don’t get into fights with anyone… it would just freak the shit outa them!

And until recently – like my 18^th birthday – I found out I not only levitate, but fly short distances.  Well, I told my best friend, and I found out what a big blabbermouth they turned out to be.

Yeah, who needs enemies when you have friends like that, right?

Well, this leads me to standing here on the ledge of the building where … oh shit on a pancake… there’s the cops all the way down there!

Turning, I glare at my ‘friends’. “Well, jeez, Amelia, thanks.”

She meets my glare as she stalks up to me in her outfit which makes her look like a street-walker, “What?”

“Who called the cops?”

She looks over the edge, smirking, then stifles a laugh, “Oh, shit, I didn’t think they’d believe me!”

I step back from the ledge, “What!”

This is when things got deadly, and Amelia pulls a .32 out of her handbag, “Oh, no you don’t.  You are going to fly… you told me you could.”

“I told you it was a secret.”

“And you expected me to sit on that shit for how long?” she smiles, “Especially after you showed me… you’re a fuckin’ mutant, and you’re going to show everyone.”

“Shoot me first.” I say, “I’d rather be dead than be a joke.”

“Fly!” she screams stepping closer, just within reach.

“Make me!” I shout back.

Sitting on the ledge, she grimaces, “Don’t you make me…”

As soon as she looks away, I grab her wrist, yanking her to her feet, watching the gun fall away down below us, “Good, now you’re unarmed, we can get to business.”

Tears blur her vision as she struggles to get away from me, screaming into the night air, “Oh my god!  Let me go!  She’s going to throw me off the building!”

I held her close against me whispering, “Throw you?  Nah, that’s too good for you… to watch you fall, watch your body splatter onto the ground for what you’ve done to me.  Instead, sweetheart, my friend, dear… chump… I’m going to teach you a lesson about exactly what I am…”  With that, I take a deep breath and jump off the edge of the building, taking flight into the night air with Amelia screaming the whole time as she clings to me.

But, I have a plan…

Act Two (by Paul Willett aka MomDude)

You know what they say about plans, you make ’em and the gods laugh? That sort of thing? That meme didn’t come out of thin air. About eight thousand years of uppity human hubris made up the grit polishing that particular gem of wisdom to a bright sheen.

Yet no one listens. Especially mutant teenage god-knows-whats like me.

Amelia had always been a big talker, quick to put other people on the spot, but now the bitch had turned on me. She was the queen bee in our social circles. Now I was just a threat to take her limelight away. Well, that, plus I probably scared the shit out of her when I flew. I should have never showed her.

As if puberty hadn’t sucked enough, I got to also deal with being a mutant freak. It had been a survival technique to be second fiddle to Amelia. With the secrets I had to keep, sticking out like a sore thumb could lead to any number of unpleasant fates. It hasn’t been that long since Salem, after all. While people like Amelia might flip out and want to see me the main attraction at a barbecue, too many others would like to see me in a cage, trying to figure out how could do what I did. I’ve seen that movie, didn’t like the leading role.

Fifty-six floors wasn’t far enough to fall to reach terminal velocity, but it was more than enough to build up a lot of speed. By the time we got to the thirtieth floor the wind rushing by was extremely impressive. Amelia’s screaming made it so much better. I wanted her out of her mind with terror and at least that part of my plan was working just fine.

As pissed as I had appeared to Amelia, I was counting on the cops being there. A few witnesses were good, especially some who could unwittingly help to make it all seem real.

I needed to discredit Amelia and deflect attention away from me. She wanted attention and her fifteen minutes of fame? Great, I could do that by letting her scream herself hoarse while we fell. And fall we did. But none of that thirty-two feet per second per second crap for us.

I had picked the Glory Hotel in part because it was the tallest building in town, which meant it would be acceptable to my ‘friends’ as a launching pad for me to plummet to my death, but also because it was next to the river. And it was dark. An empty, dark, deep river.

The plan was to fall toward the water, brightly lit at first by the hotel and street lights. But once we got out over the water and away from the lights, I would start breaking hard, slowing us down before we hit the surface. We should have been going about 170 miles an hour, our impact with the non-compressive surface quite fatal. My plan had us going about ten percent of that. The splashes would still be quite loud and impressive, if a second or two late.

Great plan, eh?

How was I to know Amelia was going to be able to twist out of my grip at the last second? Or know that she couldn’t swim a lick?

I knew what was coming, so I went straight into the water. It was a good jolt, and cold as hell, but no worse than going off a competition ten-meter platform. I stayed under as long as I could for effect, swam parallel to the sea wall for about fifty feet, then popped to the surface.

Searchlights were sweeping the water and I heard two more splashes over where Amelia had gone in. There was activity all over the place there as people went in after Amelia, while other cops were looking for me. Once a light swept over me and I was spotted, there were immediately more people in the water to “rescue” me. I let them do it and tried to look stunned, dazed, and confused.

They got me out of the water, into an ambulance and a blanket. The medical tests started and the ordeal went on for quite a while. No one could believe either of us was alive. But since I wasn’t dead, the questions started. So many questions! I mumbled a lot and played stupid. “Duh, eh, eh, I’m just a dumb drunk girl who fell off the roof! Heh! Heh!”

On the other hand, Amelia hadn’t gone into the water cleanly. Spinning out of my grasp, she hit hard, breaking her shoulder and arm, screwing up her neck and back, and leaving her face sorta mooshed. It would have served her right to drown, but the cops were quick, the paramedics were good, and after they shot her full of enough pain killers she stopped screaming about that crazy, psycho, mutant bitch that had thrown her off the roof.

Three hours later a cop was dropping me off back at my apartment and telling me he would check back on me tomorrow to make sure I was okay. He insisted on taking the elevator up to the fourth floor with me and making sure I got to my door safely. He wanted to sound concerned and compassionate, but the creepiness in his look and tone told me all I needed to know. I was glad to get inside and lock the door with him still in the hallway.

On the television I wasn’t surprised to see we were the number one story across the board. Media speculation was running wild, but so far they didn’t have my name or picture. I was beginning to think  I had gotten away with it, at least for the moment.

Something tapped loudly on my window. I turned and saw someone floating out there. Hovering. Four stories up.

“Freakin’ idiot!” I heard him call through the glass. “What’s your next stupid move?”

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge is another genre mashup. Two lists, two random numbers (in my case, 7 and 5), the resultant “2,000 words or so” must contain a story combining elements of “Zombie” and “Heist/Caper!”

Time. Again, I really should work on these assignments earlier in the week. It would give me time to edit, re-write, make it better. If nothing else, I need to work earlier in the night, so I can get it posted by midnight instead of at 00:13. On the other hand, after almost two years of daily posts on this site, thirteen minutes late can still count as a Thursday post. Government work, and all of that.

But I like the gist of the story I wrote!

DEADERS

“You brought what?”

“It’s an infrared night scope, so that we can see them moving around in the dark, just like they see us.”

For the five thousand and third time I wondered how Ryan had possibly survived this long while being as freakin’ stupid as he was. Ryan was the poster boy for the theory that Darwin was wrong.

“Ryan, do you know what ‘infrared’ means?”

“Huh? No, but it says ‘night scope,’ so it’s got to be useful, right? What’s wrong?”

“This thing works by detecting heat, Ryan. That’s what ‘infrared’ is, heat. The police would use this to see people or cars in the dark, because they’re hotter than the bushes and buildings around them. Have you ever seen a warm Deader?”

I couldn’t see Ryan’s face in the dark, but I was pretty sure his lips were moving while he thought through the problem. It’s a good thing that he was good in the sack. Well, that plus the fact that he was about the size of a small tractor and the only live human that I had seen in months.

“I’m sorry, Becca. I thought that it was a good idea. I thought it would let us see like they do.”

Great, now he was going to pout. “It’s good that you’re trying to help, but next time check with me. I don’t know how the Deaders see us so well in the dark, but I’m sure this won’t let us see them. Okay? Where’d you get that thing, anyway?”

“That police station two towns back. I had already grabbed all of the guns and ammo they had and I found this. I thought that it was a good idea.”

Wonderful, now he was going into some sort of OCD loop and repeating himself. It always seemed to happen when I really, really needed him present in the here and now. Maybe it was his coping mechanism. I usually waited until after we were done trying not to die before I fell apart, but that was just me. To each his own.

“Ryan, it was a good idea. You did fine. I just don’t think it will help us tonight. Maybe if you leave it right here, we’ll pick it up on the way back to the truck when we’re done. Then we can look at it and figure out some way to use it. Can we do that?”

There was a pause as he thought about it, then the soft crunch of him setting the case down in the pine needles. “I’ll put it right here next to this big tree so that we can find it.”

“Good plan.” It was a lousy plan, but it would shut him up and move him on to the fun part of the night. And by “fun” I meant “incredibly dangerous.” “When we come back up the ropes it will be right there. The ropes are ready, right?”

“Yeah, Becca, we just have to toss them down. They should put us right on the roof.”

“Did you double check your guns? You have your knife? And no lights. We go in there in the dark, we come back out the same way.”

“I know the plan, Becca. Get in, grab all the food we can stuff into the baskets, and get out. No lights, stay quiet, try to avoid stirring up the Deaders.”

“Good, Ryan. Let’s do this before we realize what a stupid idea it is.”

In the dim starlight coming through the breaks in the clouds, I could just see the edge of the bluff. Not quite high enough or steep enough to qualify as a cliff, it would still be almost impossible to climb up in daylight without climbing gear or a rope. In the middle of a moonless night pursued by a horde of pissed off Deaders it would be worse.

One by one, Ryan picked up the coiled ropes, swung them, and flung them out into the darkness. All of them had large, crude cloth bags on the end for us to fill with our hard earned booty. After all six lines were set, we groped our way through the dark, grabbed a rope, and started backing slowly down the slope.

As quiet as we were trying to be, there wasn’t any way that the Deaders wouldn’t be aware that something was going on. Their sense of hearing wasn’t nearly as good as their vision, but the sound of the ropes banging down onto the warehouse roof would have tipped them off, and our descent wouldn’t be very stealthy.

We were going to do our best to avoid confronting any Deaders to begin with. Our reconnaissance earlier in the day hadn’t shown any of them on the roof or visible in any of the windows. While there might be thousands of them shuffling around in the parking lot outside, we were betting our lives that they hadn’t gotten inside.

As we finally reached the flat, gravel topped warehouse roof, there was just enough starlight to see where the six dark ropes were against the white roofing material. Not for the first time I wished that we could have just a little bit of light pollution bouncing off the clouds to make things easier. I was not blind to the irony of spending a life wishing for a truly dark sky only to have my fulfilled wish be the thing that might kill me.

We gathered the ropes together and spread out the bags at the edge so they could be filled quickly. Whenever we got close to the edge, we could now hear the Deaders shuffling around below us. When everything was set, it was time to see if we would get lucky and live tonight.

Holding onto Ryan’s hand to keep him near, we went over to the fire escape hatch near the center of the roof. Ryan pulled a crowbar out of his backpack and started to open it.

The explosion was the last thing I had expected.

I heard Ryan grunting as he pried the hatch opening up. Without any warning there was a blinding flash and the loudest noise since the last space shuttle launch. I was flying through the air and hitting the roof hard, face first, a bit like a rag doll. Not my most graceful performance.

As I sat up I decided that I probably wasn’t broken anywhere, but I was scratched and bleeding. My shoulder was protesting with every move, but if I had to climb a two hundred foot cliff with it while a horde of zombies were on my trail, I could probably make do. Good thing, too.

My ears were ringing and I strained to hear anything through the internal noise. Nothing, or rather, I couldn’t hear anything. Not the wind, not my own movements, not the possible screaming of the Deaders or Ryan.

What had happened to Ryan? I looked around as best I could, but the flash of the explosion had destroyed any semblance of dark adaption my eyes might have had. The clouds had started to thicken and cut off what little light I had. Ryan could have been five feet from me and I wouldn’t have seen him.

Heart pounding, high on adrenaline, there was no time to lose. I started crawling around in a  circle, slowly moving out, feeling my way and trying to find anything. I never found Ryan, but I did find the hatch.

The good news was that I now had a vague idea of where I was on the roof and which way my escape ropes were. The bad news was that I could feel the fire escape ladder vibrating and shuddering as something slowly climbed it. Probably several somethings. There was no way to see that scenario ending well.

Crawling as quickly as I could toward the ropes, I grabbed the first one I found. I was getting a bit of my vision back and could see where the other ropes were lying. I considered taking them all back up with me so that the Deaders couldn’t use them to climb up behind me, assuming that Deaders could climb a rope, but doing that would strand Ryan. I needed to leave him a chance at saving himself, so I left the other ropes.

The climb up was sheer terror. The last year had forced me to get into the best physical shape of my life, but it was still tough pulling myself up the steep face of the hill, through the brush, in the dark, deaf and almost completely blind. The constant fear of grabbing hands from below just added the icing on the cake.

After an eternity of maybe five minutes I reached the top and pulled myself over the edge. I wanted to lie there to rest for an hour or two, but the life expectancy of doing that worried me. Instead I needed to see if I could find Ryan and help him in some way. If that failed, I needed to make sure that I wasn’t being followed by any Deaders.

The clouds had now completely covered the sky and started to descend. I looked over the edge and couldn’t see a thing in the inky black below me. But lying on the ropes connected to the tree, I could feel three of them jerking and pulling, like I had a marlin hooked on the other end. I guess that answered the question of whether or not Deaders could climb a rope. Even if one of the climbers was Ryan, I was in deep guano.

Looking back from the edge, I tried to see where the truck was parked. The edge of the road was only about a hundred yards through the trees, but in the dark it might as well have been a hundred miles. I could see nothing. Running through the trees might not be a good choice either, even if I could figure out which direction to go through.

The jerking on the ropes was getting more pronounced, and two more of the ropes now had activity. I didn’t know how to help Ryan, but I could buy myself some time. Pulling my knife from my boot I stumbled to my feet to find where the ropes were attached to the tree. Stepping forward to start cutting them, my foot hit a box.

The infrared night vision goggles.

Any port in a storm. I grabbed the goggles and slipped them on my head, then groped around for some kind of controls. A switch on the left side activated them, and suddenly I was a bit less blind. Holding my hand up in front of me I could see it clearly. Turning away from the bluff, off through the trees I could see the truck, its engine still cooling where we had parked it, but still warmer than the trees and hill behind it.

Dropping to my stomach, I leaned over the cliff and looked. There wasn’t much to see since the vegetation, dirt, and building had all reached thermal equilibrium hours ago. But there was enough to see.

Coming up one of the ropes, glowing brightly as he sweated and scrambled for his life, was Ryan. The other five ropes all were jerking, but the climbers were still invisible to me.

Quickly I cut the five ropes holding Deaders and started pulling on the rope that Ryan was on. With my help he was up next to me in a few seconds. While he lay gasping for breath, I looked over the bluff again, but couldn’t get any clues about the progress of the Deader’s pursuit. But I knew it was there, one way or the other. They were like pit bulls crossed with rats. They would find a way.

I pulled Ryan to his feet. I still couldn’t hear much of anything, and I was sure that he was still blind as a bat, but I put his hands on my shoulders and whispered, “Hold on, we’re going.” He must have gotten the idea, giving my shoulder a squeeze. The semi-blind leading the blind, we started through the trees.

Good plan indeed, Ryan.

See, I told you I was working on this and would get it done (just barely!) on time.

Following the holiday season, Chuck Wendig has once again risen from his festering and purulent killzone shack in the woods to bestow upon us this week’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Resuming in the new year with the traditional “1,000 words or so” to be based on a character we create using the “Who The Fuck Is My D&D Character?” website. In my case, I am an “ambitious human rogue from the Iceberg Sea who loots every kill but leaves enough to pay for their burial.” Okay, well, at least I’m human…

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

BEACH KILL

The rustling of palm fronds waving in the warm breeze high above me was the only sound other than the crash of the surf and the shrill call of the gulls wheeling in the tropical sunrise. The beach was almost smooth and pristine, marred only by the two converging lines of footprints, soon to be erased by the rising tide. And the body, of course.

Careful to keep an eye on the troll, making sure that it was truly dead and not simply more-or-less dead, I brushed the sand from my leather tunic and retrieved my sword from where it had buried itself hilt-deep in the sand. It would take days of cleaning and honing the fine steel to rid it of scratches from the abrasive volcanic debris, but it was better than having the troll in possession of both the blade and my soul.

I was still getting adjusted to this warm and wet world so far from my beloved Iceberg Sea. Where the snap of frigid air and crystal-clear clarity of the air in my home harbor always served to keep a rogue’s wits sharp and reflexes quick, the atmosphere in this sauna of a land made one sleepy and sluggish, especially following the third rum. I must be more careful.

A dozen or so well-placed kicks convinced me that the troll had indeed succumbed to the knife I had inserted into its eye. Grunting as I rolled its corpulent carcass over onto its back, I saw the obsidian blade buried all the way to the ivory handle, which was covered by a congealing mass of the thick, green, malodorous goo that served as blood for the beast. As much as I loved that dagger, given to me as a gift by a beautiful lady in Stångùüûstëêngærttœn, I decided to leave it there rather than retrieve it.

Pulling my short dirk from the top of my high leather boots, I cut the troll’s purse away from its belt. It was heavy with an assortment of gold and silver coins from many unknown lands. The coins should be more than enough to purchase passage away from this muggy hellhole and back to the white and frozen lands of my birth.

But first, in order to appease the Seventeen One-Eyed Gods of my people, I needed to leave a payment for the burial of my fallen foe. I had not been in this land long enough to know of their customs and the costs of their goods and services, but the brute was massive and starting to smell badly. Burial would not be easy or cheap. I left a small gold piece in each hand and a silver doubloon between its teeth, hoping it would be sufficient to appease the Seventeen.

Leaving the body, I was almost to the tree line above the beach when I heard a shout behind me. Approaching at a trot was a band of elves on horseback, accompanied by a cleric of some sort. Two of the elves were riding up to the troll’s corpse, while the others shouted and pointed at me.

I tried to flee into the jungle, but mounted as they were on destriers gifted with the speed of lightning, they caught me easily. I drew my sword to defend myself, but faced with five swords and three drawn bows, discretion seemed the better course. Smiling broadly and moving slowly, I dropped my sword and raised my hands.

The cleric started babbling at me in a whiny, nasal voice, using a language I did not recognize, but which sounded similar to others I had heard in these islands. I kept smiling, shrugging, and shaking my head as he got more and more agitated, pointing back at the troll corpse lying near the waterline. He was not happy about something, but at least it didn’t seem that the troll had been a friend of theirs.

Suddenly there was a scream from the two elves examining the troll. Turning to look and were greeted with a most astonishing and horrific sight. Scampering out of the sea in a wave of clacking pincers was a legion of small black crabs. Crawling over each other in a mad dash, screaming shrilly as they skittered along, they swarmed the area around the body.

The elves as a group turned and fled for their lives. The two nearest the troll just barely managed to regain their mounts and gallop away ahead of the ravenous chitin cloud. The elves near me split into two groups, each heading a different direction away from the scene at top speed. The cleric was clinging to the neck of his mount for dear life, trusting the horse’s instincts and terror to get him away from the danger.

I saw the troll’s body being consumed in mere seconds by the central group of the crab army, while the outliers of the monstrous mass of arthropods cast about looking for additional prey.

Not waiting to see if they considered foreign humans to be edible, I grabbed my sword and sprinted into the trees. I did not know how or why the Seventeen had chosen this method to welcome the troll to their bosom, but I was grateful to see that my burial offering had been sufficient to not only buy the troll’s disposal, but my freedom as well. Mysterious were the ways of the Seventeen One-Eyed Gods, but as a free man instead of an elven prisoner, I was not in a position to question their methods.

Using my sword to hack through the thick underbrush, I headed off in a direction I hoped would take me back to the harbor and an exit from this horrid place.

Then I ran into the gru, lounging next to a sleeping gazebo.