Category Archives: Writing

It’s the first Flash Fiction Challenge of WLTSTF’s second year. This week we’re allowed 1,500 words instead of the usual 1,000, any genre, picking five characters from a list of fifty randomly generated characters. I used a random number generator and was given:

• #12 – The laid-back champion who hates children
• #13 – The dexterous, funny hermit
• #21 – The awkward, tolerant, philandering teacher who hates children
• #32 – The poised sailor who is considered the best in his/her profession
• #03 – The unathletic, boastful gigolo who belongs to a secret organization

Given that motley crew, plus one not-so-sublte addition, the story structure was obvious. It came in a little long, but three edits got it down to 1541 words instead of 1750+.

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

SAMPLE COLLECTION

The waiting room was beige, dirty, and decorated in a style best described as “abandoned 50’s government surplus”. I wasn’t sure if I was in purgatory or an actual level of hell. It could have gone either way.

Before I could do more than glance at the other occupants, a grimy door with a “Staff Only” sign on it creaked open. A wild-eyed, bearded, vaguely subhuman creature shuffled through. He was blonde-ish, disheveled, carrying a clipboard, and wearing a lavender lab coat with a nametag that said “Chuck.” He smelled of cheap booze, strained peas, and copier toner.

Chuck limped over to the lady sitting closest to the door. She was leaning back in her faded orange plastic chair, her long and athletic legs stretched out, and her arms folded under her small breasts. She looked Russian, probably a Commie.

She was wearing tights under some sequined costume that was a cross between a one-piece bathing suit and a tuxedo. It was odd that she was barefoot while wearing way, way too much makeup. There was a pair of ice skates on the chair next to her.

Chuck handed her a plastic, gun-shaped, video game controller. A pair of images appeared on the wall over the door. Chuck pointed to them while saying something to her which the room’s acoustics kept from me, but she immediately raised the “gun” toward one of the pictures, pulled the trigger, and the game was on. Pair after pair of pictures popped up, all showing people in various scenes of daily life. Whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, male, female, all kinds of combinations, but always with an adult and some kid. The skater lady would blow away one picture or the other, the losing image shattering, exploding, or bursting into flame. I didn’t know what the goal was, but a lot of pictures of a lot of babies and teenagers got offed. She was a good shot, which definitely showed she was a Commie.

Chuck made a note and a checkmark on his clipboard before moving on to the next person in the room. This poor schmuck was huddled on the floor next to his puke green chair, trying to hide underneath it, his eyes furtively glancing from side to side all around the room. I wasn’t sure if he was terrified or getting ready to attack. He was dressed in rags and smelled terrible, but he didn’t look emaciated or sick, so I didn’t think he was homeless, but it was pretty clear that he didn’t like strangers. When I got back to the office I would have to see if we had a file on him.

Chuck reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a bag of tennis balls, handing them to the guy while saying something softly to him. Confused, the guy stood up and said, “Sure, why not?” He started juggling five balls, while launching into some kind of speech. Again, with the funny acoustics, all I could catch of it was, “Three guys walk into a bar…” The dude was focused on his juggling like his life depended on it.

Chuck made another note and checkmark. He left the juggler to his punch lines and stepped in front of a woman who was shifting and squirming in her hard plastic chair, trying to figure out where to put her hands. As Chuck stopped and looked down at her, she finally put them under her thighs and sat on them.

From somewhere a small table appeared between Chuck and the squirmer. Chuck began to explain something to her. She nodded politely and paid attention to what he was saying, but when Chuck leaned down to pick up a folder of documents off the floor, she let him have an eye roll that would have been the envy of any prepubescent tween, then had a perfectly sincere and straight face showing when Chuck sat back up. Pinko, punk kids, never have any respect for their elders.

Chuck laid out a series of pictures, starting with a small child and then a rogue’s lineup of adults. The lady pointed at the picture of the kid and went off into some kind of diatribe. The words weren’t clear, but the derisive tone was. Chuck pointed at the pictures of adults before asking something, which made her shut up and start to blush. He asked again, forcing her to point at one of the pictures. Like he was playing three-card monte, Chuck turned over that picture to reveal  the nervous woman and the man pictured in flagrante delicto.

Another set of pictures, another apparent series of complaints about a kid seen in a schoolyard, another reluctant revelation, and another embarrassing picture with the kid’s father. The third time it seemed she had been caught with someone’s mother. I had to admire her promiscuity.

Leaving her to sort aimlessly through the pictures, Chuck again updated his clipboard went to a stocky, bearded man who was wearing a crisply tailored dress uniform. The navy blue coat was trimmed with four ornate bars of gold braid at the end of each sleeve. Across his chest were three rows of ribbons, the bottom row with two gold medals hanging down. I didn’t recognize the medals so he was probably from some foreign country, here scouting an attack on the good ol’ US of A.

The sailor stood as Chuck approached and looked him straight in the eye. He wasn’t sure what was going on here, but he calmly spoke to his examiner and answered his questions directly. Chuck seemed to be asking about some of the ribbons. The stories and explanations behind them were concise and to the point. Chuck quickly seemed happy with what he had been told. He offered his hand for the captain to shake before leaving. The weathered old sailor looked off toward a rolling horizon that only he could see, while Chuck updated his clipboard again.

I wasn’t going to stand up as the son of a bitch approached my chair. I didn’t know what his game was, but I wasn’t going to play it unless it was in my best interests. Unless he knew one of the secret signs of our Order, it was going to be nothing but name, rank, and serial number.

“I saw you watching when I was talking to her,” Chuck said, jerking his head toward the woman in sequins. “What do you think?”

My best interests, ahoy! “She’s pretty tightly wrapped, could use a good time to relax. She’s got a nice body, but I’ll bet she’s inexperienced where it really counts. I could show her an excellent time if she was interested.”

“Really?” Chuck asked, raising a furry eyebrow. He gestured at my silk shirt, open to the navel to show off what I had to offer, gold chains glaore, bling to the max, masculinity personified. “Are you sure you’re her type?”

“Chucky, baby! You have no clue of the exotic, erotic wonders awaiting her inside these pants. The ladies love this.” I grabbed my crotch and gave it a suggestive thrust to make my meaning clear. Sure, I could stand to lose a couple pounds, who couldn’t? No way that meant that this wasn’t Grade A Prime for the ladies.

Chuck nodded toward the other lady, still looking through the school pictures. “And her?”

“She’s wasting her time chasing all of those divorcees and lonely losers. If she really wants her world rocked, she should see me. If she scratches my back, I’ll make sure that I scratch hers, and by that I mean…”

“Yes, thank you,” Chuck cut me off, “I’m sure I know what you mean.”

As he made a final check on his clipboard, a booming voice came from the ceiling and the walls began to fade and become transparent. “Well done, Chthux!” a deafening voice exclaimed.

Suddenly I felt very light, disoriented, floating up out of the chair as I sat up, startled. My four companions were all thrashing and drifting through the air along with me. As the walls disappeared, it seemed that we were in a large, transparent egg surrounded by stars. A huge, blue and white globe floated below us.

The worst transformation was Chthux, who was shedding his human form and devolving down into something from an 19^th Century horror story. There were multiple eyes, appendages, and a fair amount of slime.

The booming voice came again, this time from one side, and when I next spun around that way I could see a larger, uglier, slimier version of Chthux coming toward us.

“You have passed your human abnormal psychology stereotype field collection test with flying colors, my son! Now you will be able to conduct your own experiments on these vermin!”

“Thank you, father,” Chthux said. “What shall we do with these specimens?”

“You must be starving and you have earned your reward. They shall be yours to consume. Savor them and be ready for our next trip to the surface! Bon appetit, mon ami!”

If there’s one thing the guys at Area 51 taught me, it’s that the only thing worse than slavering, slimy, space aliens are poser French slavering, slimy space aliens.

Okay, it’s Flash Fiction Challenge Thursday, and thanks to tonight’s literal “must win” playoff game for my beloved LA Kings (we were down 0-3 games — and we did win), it’s late and I must write like the wind. It’s the usual 1,000 words, any genre, picking our opening line from one entered into last week’s Flash Fiction Challenge.

I picked:

I’ve been trying to write all night while watching the game, so this may either be the finest my muse and my distracted subconscious can give (“Don’t think – it just hurts the team!”) or absolutely putrid bile from the nether regions of existence. But with fifty-five minutes left before midnight, I just figured out how it ends. (And with two minutes left, I’ve run out of time to edit. Time to post!)

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

HAUNTING

He’d haunted her for three years, and she still hadn’t noticed. He wasn’t worried about it, assuming he had eternity to practice and perfect his craft, but it did have him bemused in an ethereal sort of way.

For the first few months he had thought he must be doing something wrong, that somehow his paranormal exertions had no actual effect on the world in which she lived. His memories of being alive were vague at best (he was only sort of sure he actually had been alive at some point) but he might have been some sort of a klutz then also.

Whatever his state of existence was, there weren’t many guidelines. He was tied to her wherever she might go, that was clear. Each time one of his random flashes of consciousness started, like waking from a deep, dreamless sleep, she was there, shining like the sun, drawing him up to the surface of reality from the black depths of oblivion.

Their locations were varied every time he awoke, but he slowly started to recognize recurring settings. Her home, her office, the park where she walked her dog, her church. He was distantly curious about God’s opinion of his apparition in one of His houses, but the cosmos remained silent on the matter.

Everywhere they went, he kept an eye open for any others of his kind. Whatever he was looking for, it never was noticeable. The world was a pale, pastel, slightly out of focus realm all around him, while she was a quilt of sharply focused bright colors. No matter where he looked, no other shades, ghosts, or ghouls were visible.

Lacking any instructions, he started to try to get her attention. Could he touch her? Feel her? Talk to her? If so, exactly how was it done?

The days and months passed as he explored his universe and looked for a clue to his nature. Were there magic words or spells that he needed? In order to manifest, did he have to concentrate, furrowing his brow and crossing his eyes, or should he simply relax and let it happen?

Was a certain emotional state needed? Did he need to nurture a burning hatred? Would only the howling of his tortured and vanquished soul be able to make it through to the other side? It seemed like so much effort for so little return.

Perhaps he had been unlucky enough to be stuck haunting someone unhauntable. That might be a just punishment for being dull and boring when alive, to be literally ineffectual and invisible in the afterlife. It was something to ponder.

The first time he noticed any effect on the world came on a night where he coalesced in her bedroom, finding her with her new boyfriend, Ken. Ken was a complete jerk, so self-involved and shallow, interested only in getting into her pants so he could brag to his frat brothers about his latest trophy.

It looked like the time was near, even though it wasn’t clear she was enjoying the experience. She wasn’t actually saying “no,” but neither was she very enthusiastic. She was confused and scared, feeling pressured, feeling anything but passion.

He stood close to the two of them as they groped on the couch. The more he watched, the clearer it became to him that she did not want to proceed further, but Ken hadn’t cared about her desires to begin with and he cared even less now.

He started for the first time to get angry at his inability to intervene or help. She deserved so much better than Ken. Lashing out, knowing that it would do nothing, he brought both hands down in a blow to Ken’s back, his hands passing through the couple like smoke.

Immediately, Ken sat up and clutched at his chest and throat. His eyes were wide open, his mouth agape. The breath seemed to have been knocked out of him suddenly. He started to turn blue before finally shuddering and gasping as he sucked in another breath.

She had backed away from him on the couch, terrified, clueless as to what had happened or what was going on with Ken. She started to lean forward to hold his shoulder, to steady him, to check and see if he was okay. Ken slapped her hands away.

He had stepped away from her and Ken, taken totally by surprise by Ken’s reaction to his blow. Had he actually done something?

Ken looked at her in horror. “What did you do to me?” he shouted.

“What? I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“You didn’t feel that?” Ken asked. “You didn’t feel something ice cold pass through here, like a frozen sledgehammer? You didn’t feel like someone just threw ice cold water over us?”

“No, Ken, I didn’t feel a thing. Should we call someone to get some help? You don’t look too good.”

“You didn’t feel anything? Did you do something to me, like a taser or something?”

Ken was scared and losing control quickly. His arm cocked as he lashed out at her face.

He stepped forward again and tried to grab ahold of Ken’s head. His arms were like mist and passed right through Ken’s skull from both sides, as if he were clapping his non-existent hands onto Ken’s ears and squeezing.

Ken howled in terror and fell to his knees. He hugged his chest while he held his head. Ken moaned before starting to push himself back away from her and the couch. He stumbled to his feet and fled out into the hall.

She was shocked, but also relieved. She closed the door and stood briefly, leaning against it, trying to compose herself.

She moved back to the couch as he followed, afraid to touch her. He didn’t know what he had done to Ken, but he didn’t want to do it to her.

She picked up her phone and headphones from the table. She sat on the couch, snuggled into the cushions, and pulled a comforter up over her.

He stood behind her, listening to the faint, tinny music escaping from the earbuds she was wearing. He recognized the song and unbidden began to sing along.

She raised her head to look around, looking for something or someone. He continued to sing, pouring his soul into the song.

She settled back to listen, closed her eyes, and softly began to cry, carried away from her fears and loneliness by the haunting voice from nowhere she could suddenly hear.

As expected a while back, not with a bang, but with a whisper.

Less than two weeks short of this site’s first anniversary, after posting somethingat least once a day, every day, come hell or high water, travel, sickness, whatever, yesterday there was no post. Simply put, I started to write four or five times and each time got distracted, diverted, or dismayed. By the time I was up until neatly midnight, fully engulfed in a project for a CAF meeting this morning, I simply forgot, or thought that I had, or forgot to double check.

C’est la vie!

We’re going to hell this week in Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge! The usual 1,000 words, any genre, dealing with the topic of “hell”. It seemed obvious to me.

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

405^405^405

Grey skies, leaden, gloomy, dark enough so I was half blind with my sunglasses on, but bright enough so I was squinting and getting a headache with them off.

We crawled past National. Even the carpool lane was at a virtual standstill. I couldn’t even remember how long I had been stuck here. The mental agility to calculate my ETA had long since abandoned me.

The air was heavy, muggy, an unusual misery for Los Angeles. It was unnaturally hot for this time of year, even for Southern California, up into the upper-90s even with the overcast. On top of that, out here everything stank from exhaust and diesel fumes. What happened to all of the pollution controls they had put on everything thirty years ago?

Of course, today had to be the day the air conditioning had given up the ghost on this piece-of-crap-mobile. Sometimes it felt like it was actually blowing hot air on me. That might end up being useful if the radiator ever came through on one of its threats to overheat.

The multiple lines of cars and trucks stretched on and on beyond the end of eternity. We were barely crawling, a couple of car lengths here, a couple more there, followed by sitting perfectly still for five minutes or more. Repeat endlessly.

I had tried to get some traffic news on the radio, but everything I could pull in was either in Spanish, Korean, or so full of noise it couldn’t even tell what language was being spoken. All across the AM spectrum there were bursts of loud static, as if from massive bolts of lightning nearby. There should have been peals of thunder loud enough to crack the windows, but I couldn’t hear a thing over the sounds of the traffic and car horns.

Everyone out there was just as pissed off as I was, going nowhere fast and making lousy time doing it. Some drivers would occasionally try to force their way into a neighboring lane, earning themselves a chorus of braying horns, explicit obscenities, and rude gestures from twenty-nine different cultures.

Every time I had gone seeking a lane that was crawling ever so incrementally faster than the one I was in, the new lane would come to a complete halt as soon as I got into it. I hadn’t bothered for a while.

We crawled around a curve at about a quarter the speed I could walk. The sign said we were coming up on Sherman Way. (Sherman Way? That’s nowhere near National. Weren’t we just passing National?) But I knew there were services there I needed. My gas gauge was on empty and my bladder was on full.

It took almost twenty minutes to go the mile to the exit. Twice while moving over to the right I thought I was going to get shot at by some irate, road-ragey type, but I had to keep going. I had needs.

The off-ramp was just as crowded as the freeway had been. I was trapped behind a semi as we headed down the ramp, so I couldn’t see anything other than the back of the truck and the very top floor of a hotel peeking over the tall sound walls. I had been hoping for at least a little movement on the surface streets, but obviously I had been wasting my time. I couldn’t even see the stop light at the bottom of the off-ramp.

Then we were merging back onto the freeway. What happened? Where had I gotten back onto an onramp?

How could I be this lost in an area I had driven every day for the last forty years? I was now desperate to get off on Van Owen, the next off-ramp.

Except, once we finally crept forward to where I could see the sign past the truck, the next exit was Beach Boulevard, in three miles, not Van Owen. Beach Boulevard was in Orange County, not the San Fernando Valley.

I didn’t have any choice but to keep crawling along until I could get off this God-forsaken twelve-lane ribbon of Hell. Stewing and trying hard not to think of anything involving fluids, I kept on keeping on.

An hour later, we still hadn’t gotten to Beach. We weren’t moving fast, but we did occasionally move. How could we not have gone three miles? I would have liked to have seen some buildings near us, but everything was hidden by the sound walls. All that I could see were the other cars.

Another hour later, another sign came into view. “Long Beach Boulevard – 2 miles.”

The road and the conditions had made me complacent, beaten me into a daze, but now I was starting to panic. The adrenaline was doing wonders for my focus. Where the hell was I and what the hell was going on?

At the side of the road, I spotted one of the Caltrans mile markers. Okay, even if I couldn’t see over the sound walls, I could see those. I was at mile 666. On a seventy-two mile long freeway.

Panic began to rise uncontrollably. As we kept creeping forward, I looked around desperately at my fellow drivers, hoping maybe someone could help make sense of the situation. I was sweating like a pig as my head whipped from side to side, looking into the cars and trucks around me.

Every car was occupied by one person. Everyone was travelling solo. Every single person I saw was wide eyed, terrified, sweating, and desperately looking into all of the cars around them.

Something caught my eye in the rear-view mirror, something moving fast in the gridlocked array of steel and glass. Between the lanes whipped a squadron of motorcycle riders, splitting the lanes and flying like demons. In a flash they were gone, leaving only a fading scent of sulfur.

Time slowed as the next mile marker came into view. I was at mile 666. The exit ahead was Sherman Way.

The car was filled with hysterical screaming, but I couldn’t stop myself. I had no choice but to keep driving.

Another new and interesting assignment this week in Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge! The usual 1,000 words, any genre, utilizing somewhere any five words from a list of ten random words! The words I got were “whalebone,” “orphan,” “casket,” “acid,” and “topaz.” Piece of cake, especially after I decided to let my protagonist get her snark on. I even made it well under the word count, only 847. But they’re 847 really good words.

As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

THE MUSEUM JOB

“When you said you needed help getting some whalebone, I figured you were making a corset,” I said, glancing around for cameras or security guards.

“Shut up and hand that vial of acid to me,” Crawford said, “and be ready to back around the corner quickly.”

“How about I back off now, all the way around the corner to home, where I’m far less likely to end up getting shot or arrested?”

“Maria, you’ve always blathered on and on and on about how your life is so dull and boring. Here’s a chance to do something new and exciting, but all you’ve done is bitch about it!”

“Multiple felonies weren’t what I had in mind!”

“Just be ready to move when I tell you to. When this relay melts through we’ll have thirty seconds to get through the door and down the hallway beyond the view of the security cameras inside above the door.”

Thirty-three seconds later I was panting a lung inside out and sweating bullets, back pressed against some sort of casket or sarcophagus. The museum was only dimly lit at this hour so I couldn’t tell if I was desecrating a display about ancient Egypt or the history of funerals in northern Minnesota.

Crawford had passed me and gone into the Hall of Gems across the hall. I could just make out his zebra camouflage overalls lurking behind a “Topaz Through Time” exhibit. He was gesturing at me with a complex series of hand signals I no doubt would have understood if I had been an Army Ranger or had memorized every scene in every “Rambo” movie.

Instead, it was all gibberish to me. For all I knew, he was telling me to take two balls and lay down the bunt. I responded with the one hand signal I knew he would recognize.

He eventually dumbed down the hand signal demonstration enough so I could figure out that he wanted me to join him, slithering across the polished marble floor on my belly. When he counted down from five, I got on the floor, flipped onto my back, and pushed across the floor like we did when we were in kindergarten. No way I was going to go face first.

“Smart ass,” was all he said when I got to him.

“Bite me,” was my snappy response. I was starting to feel that the lines of communication were becoming strained in our relationship.

“The direct route is through here,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the other fancy gem cases, “but it’s all heavily alarmed, so we’re going to go around the long way.” He pulled out his phone and pulled up a map of the museum’s current exhibits. “Down the hall to ‘Crazy About Calliopes’, across to the right into ‘Lost Children of World War II’, and back through ‘Crater Lake Critters’. Got it?”

“Sure, organs, orphans, and Oregon. How hard can this be if you figured it out?”

“Just stick with me and don’t do anything stupid.”

“Do you mean ‘stupid’ as in breaking into the Natural History Museum, or ‘stupid’ as in not knowing the difference between ‘there’, ‘their’, and ‘they’re’?”

He ignored me. “If we get separated, just do your best to avoid cameras, guards, and alarms. I’ll meet you at the door to the marine mammals wing. On three — one…”

I flopped back down on my back and started scooting down the hall again without waiting to see if he would make it past two. In twenty feet my thighs were killing me, so I got up and duck-walked sorta bent over-ish.

I was past caring if I got caught. I could just plead insanity and point to all the time I had spent with Crawford as the cause.

Crawford was behind me, hissing and being stealthy in a very noisy way. I ignored him. About the time I thought he was going to resort to bird whistles and monkey howls to get my attention, the guards appeared.

Once we were in handcuffs we made much better time, even if our destination had changed. Who knew they had a holding cell in the museum basement? Couldn’t they have just made us part of the Torquemada display?

Crawford finally ended his sullen silence as we were marched down the subterranean hallway toward a door marked “Security.”

“I hope you get what you deserve when we get there,” he muttered. His guard swatted the back of his head to shut him up.

“Hit him again,” I said, ducking forward as my guard tried the same on me.

As the guards opened the office door, I was blinded and startled by the bright light and wall of noise that erupted from within.

“SURPRISE!” all of my friends shouted, surrounding a flaming birthday cake that would have given the fire marshal a coronary.

“I told you being a patron of the museum would come in handy some day,” Crawford smirked.

“Hit him again, really hard, right between the eyes,” I begged the “guards.”

Another perfectly good birthday wish ignored by the gods.