Category Archives: Writing

This week’s Flash Fiction Challenge from Chuck Wendig is to use an online plot scenario generator that amuses him. The random plot scenario generator gave me:

In response, I’ll give you “Guardian Angel”. (Enjoy! Comment! Critique! Bathe me in your adoration! Point out typos and how I use too many run-on sentences!)

Guardian Angel

The train’s momentum was building unmercifully as it slid out of the Chatsworth station, slowly gathering speed and completely oblivious to Elizabeth’s cries for it to stop. She valiantly chased it all the way down the platform. She was almost catching up to it when the last car cleared the platform’s end and Elizabeth was forced to skid to a halt before crashing into the railing there.

For half a second she realized logically that she couldn’t have done anything even if she had caught up with it. Logic’s embrace was fleeting and she immediately found herself clinging to the rail for support, sobbing, trying to see through the tears and haze to find a bench.

This was the last straw. The rock bottom of her struggles was still to come but her fate was sealed with the lights of the train disappearing to the east toward Pacoima. She would inevitably get fired for being late. Then she would lose her apartment. She couldn’t even think of what would come after that. Her life was now completely in free fall.

What made it all worse was how close she had come to getting out of this precarious existence and on to the next level, where she could relax just a touch, pay off the bills, put some money in the bank, maybe even be able to afford a car or take a vacation. For two years she had worked in that miserable discount outlet store downtown, trying to get noticed, trying to get a little bit of overtime, trying to get a better position.

Elizabeth had found herself in that job after she had been forced to put her design career on hold. Times were tough and no one cared that she had an art degree and a knockout portfolio. So instead of working in New York or Miami, she worked eight hour days doing alterations in Los Angeles, cuffing pants and sewing hems for customers who needed it instantly or sooner.

All the while she had been battling Amanda.

Amanda had joined the shop as a tailor shortly after Elizabeth had. She had once been a designer of some small fame. Amanda’s design career had taken off for a couple of years but had ended with alcohol and an auto accident. Five years of in an ultra-competitive field had been a lifetime, leaving Amanda to start over.

Elizabeth and Amanda had been at odds for the whole two years they had been there together. The situation had finally come to a head with a notice that their small store was being sold to a much bigger chain of men’s clothing stores. But while the new company would be paying better and giving better benefits, they were also consolidating. That meant that either Elizabeth or Amanda would get their pink slip this morning.

Crying on the bench, Elizabeth couldn’t focus at all. For several minutes she was consumed with panic. There was no other way for her to get downtown, and the next train wouldn’t be for over an hour. The interviews with the new supervisor were scheduled this morning at 9:00 sharp. Could she call in sick and hope that they would put off her interview until tomorrow? Or would that just make their decision easy?

It took a moment for Elizabeth to realize that someone was trying to get her attention. As she looked up, still hunched over and hugging herself in her misery, she saw a dirty pair of sneakers and black slacks. From far away she heard someone saying, “Lady, are you OK? Lady? Ma’am, do you need help?”

Elizabeth sat up and wiped her eyes, focusing on the young girl standing there and reaching out tentatively towards Elizabeth’s shoulder. It took several seconds for the questions to register. Suddenly feeling terribly exposed and ashamed for having a breakdown in public, she lurched to her feet.

Elizabeth tried to run away. Running was all that she could think of. She had no idea where she would go or how she would get there but she had to get away. But her legs would not cooperate and Elizabeth lurched and almost fell. She was caught and held up by the young girl.

“Lady, you’re not OK! Do you need me to call 9-1-1 for you? Are you hurt? What’s going on? Just sit back down here for a minute and let’s see what I can do for you.”

Defeated, Elizabeth slumped back onto the bench, eyes closed. She felt the young girl sit down next to her, and then felt her shift her weight. Elizabeth opened her eyes to see the young girl pulling out her cell phone.

“No! Don’t do that, don’t call. I don’t need help. I’m not hurt.”

“If you say so. If you’re not hurt, why are you crying like that? There must be something pretty bad going on.”

Elizabeth tried to pull herself together, taking in a deep breath but at least holding the next crying jag at bay. She realized that she recognized the young girl from somewhere. In a second before she remembered where.

“You’re from the place on the corner, the all-night coffee place. I’ve seen you working there late, when I have to take the last train home.”

“Yeah, I thought I recognized you, too. I’m Teri, I usually work the graveyard shift so I can go to school during the day. My dad owns the coffee place.”

“Right. Thanks, Teri. Sorry, I’m pretty much a mess. I’m Elizabeth.”

“What’s going on, Elizabeth? You seem pretty upset.”

“Yeah, I am. I just missed my train and today I’ll get fired if I’m late. Things are already pretty shaky and this is just too much. Give me a second and I’ll be OK.”

“Can I give you a ride? Where do you work?”

“I’m downtown in the garment district. Unless you can bring that train back or you have a genie in your pocket, I think I’m just screwed, but thanks anyway.”

“Get up and let’s go, I’ve got this covered. I’ll get you there.”

“Thanks, Teri, but even Mario Andretti couldn’t get downtown in a car during rush hour in LA. Do you have a helicopter that I don’t know about?”

Teri stood up and started pulling Elizabeth to her feet. Elizabeth was startled, but let Teri pull her along toward the parking lot.

“We’re burning daylight,” Teri said. “As a matter of fact, yes, I do have a helicopter. That’s what I’m going to school for, to get my commercial ticket. It’s your lucky day. We should be at Whiteman in twenty minutes, and from there it’s only ten minutes by air to downtown.”

“A helicopter? But you can’t just drop me off in the middle of downtown, it’s all buildings and skyscrapers and houses!”

“No worries. There’s a public helipad at the hospital at Olive and Venice, right by the freeway. I’ll drop you there and you’re about three blocks from the fashion district, right? You’ll be the first one in the office and I’ll get a good start on the solo work I’m supposed to do today.”

As Elizabeth got into Teri’s car she was staggered by the turn of her fate. She was going to get her shot to keep her job after all. She looked in stunned amazement at Teri.

“This is unbelievable. Are you my guardian angel?”

“No ma’am, I only fly like an angel. I’m a pilot.”

Last week’s “Flash Fiction Challenge” from Chuck Wendig was to write the last line of a story. You can find my contribution here.

Chuck then picked his favorite five (by which he meant ten) submissions (sadly, mine was not one of them) and this week’s challenge is to pick one of the ten and write 1,000 words or so using that line as the first line of our story.

Here’s what I wrote (thanks to Ben Dodge):

EJECTA

The old man lying in the hold died three minutes later.

“What are we supposed to do now?” the Navigator asked the Captain, who was staring at the glowing flat green line on the monitor.

“How the hell am I supposed to know?” he asked. “They didn’t cover this sort of thing at the Academy. Doctor, any suggestions? Is there anything more that you can learn from his corpse that we don’t already know?”

“It’s possible, but not likely,” the Doctor replied. “We’ve been monitoring and scanning him ever since we picked him up. We took every kind of physical sample we could, but given the circumstances we obviously need to keep those in quarantine. We don’t have the setup to do an autopsy without taking him out of the hold and into sick bay. You saw how he died. I can’t recommend that we do anything that would expose all of us to whatever he had. I think we’ve done everything we can do.”

“Got it. Any idea yet what it was that ate him from the inside out?”

“No clue, beyond the obvious assumptions. It has to be some variation or mutation of something he brought with him. The proverbial cold virus gone horribly wrong after being mutated in some way, probably by exposure to a burst of cosmic background radiation. We’ve seen this before a few times. We haven’t found anything alive outside of the gas giants, big moons, and planets. What passes for DNA anyplace off Earth isn’t compatible with ours. No one’s going to get turned into a rotting horror by a terror from deep space.”

“Just to cover our asses, what’s our worst case scenario if we dump the body? Let’s assume that they might like to examine him back at MedHQ. Could we somehow get his body into a courier drone and send it back to them?”

The Doctor looked thoughtful for a second, then shook his head. “Possibly, but I would be concerned about making sure that they knew how dangerous and possibly contagious his remains are. If we were going to deliver his body personally to their quarantine facility and make damn sure that they knew what a potential ticking time bomb they were being handed, sure. But with a drone, who knows what one screw up could mean? I don’t think we should risk it. We have the samples that we’ll deliver personally the next time back, but there’s no scientific or medical reason to keep the whole body and we don’t have any safe place to put it. Do we know of any other reason to keep it?”

The Captain looked at the Navigator. “Any ID yet? Family to worry about? Is anyone going to demand to know why we didn’t bring a spacesuit full of goo back for a proper burial at some God forsaken outpost?”

“No, sir, the system’s got nothing on him. It’s the same old story with these out-system freelancers. They’re mostly hermits and whack jobs. The AI in the hut on that ice ball is barely bright enough to keep life support and navigation going. He had it headed in for a Jupiter orbit, but they don’t have any record of him letting them know he was on his way. That’s not unusual either.”

“Did you change the AI’s targeting trajectory as ordered?”

“Yes, sir, it’ll be heading outbound now. We put a pinger on the AI’s radio to warn everyone else away and it’s now on a max-V burn out of the system. If the drive holds up it should be gone completely in a couple of decades, but even if it craters it’ll be a long way out there. Why don’t we just have it haul his body along with it?”

“Are you volunteering to take it back over there? Do you have a red shirt that you’re dying to try on?”

“No, sir, but I have a suggestion. He’s still right inside of the outer doors where he collapsed. We could pull up a klick or so away from the comet with that door facing it. Probably best over by all of that loose ice & debris where the drive was dug in. If we pressurize the hold up to about ten atmospheres and then blow the door, it should kick him out pretty solidly and bury him way down into the loose ice.”

“Not a bad idea, it could almost work,” the Captain said. “Do it. When it’s done, set a course to get us back on our original heading and get us going. After he’s gone, run a full decon routine on that hold, then run another. I’ll be my cabin trying to forget watching his face melt away.”

An hour later the Navigator had maneuvered the patrol ship next to the unnamed ball of ice, hovering close to a large field of soft snow and ice tailings, the scout ship’s drive matching the low thrust from the ion drive embedded in the tail end of the comet. At the appointed moment the thrusters opposite the comet fired to drive the ship toward the ice, followed momentarily by the hold hatch door blowing open and ejecting the old man’s body like a bullet.

As expected, the body buried itself into the ice and snow, sending up a spray of ejecta. The force of the decompression mostly offset the ship’s velocity toward the comet, and not much of the debris cloud landed on the ship’s outer hull.

Not much – but enough.

As the scout ship slowly pivoted to her new heading and started thrusting gently away, a thin patina of icy debris clung to her skin in a couple dozen spots. Originally buried deep inside the comet until it was dug out during the installation of the ion drive, now sprayed across the scout ship’s hull, slowly the thin patches of ice, snow, and something else started to find and join with each other, seeking a way into their new home.

Chuck Wendig’s “Flash Fiction Challenge” for this week over on his “Terribleminds” blog was simple:

I want you to come up with the final sentence of a story.
One sentence. The last line.
Shorter is better than longer. No more than, say, 50 words, please.

I let the thought simmer for a few days, and my muse came through. (Yay, muse! You go get ’em! Kick ass, take names! Now, as long as I’ve got you on the line…)

Two nights ago, just as I was drifting back off to sleep after the dog took off howling after a raccoon in the yard at 4:30 AM waking up the whole neighborhood, the idea came to me. It’s a tad cliche, but not too bad after I cleaned it up.

“The sunset was stunningly beautiful, the towering clouds every shade of pink and orange, the sky red as fresh blood, the stratosphere thick with the smoke of all of the Earth’s burning cities, while the ghastly white glow of the approaching comet grew ever brighter above the clouds in the east.”

I especially liked the phrase “thick with the smoke of all of the Earth’s burning cities”.

OK, enough fun stuff. Back to sending out resumes.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, I wanted to try writing a short story this week (“1,000 words or so”) to participate in author Chuck Wendig’s weekly Flash Fiction Challenge. It came in a little longer than 1,000 words, but after three attempts to edit it I really liked all of the words just as they are, so we’re going to have to simply live with a large-ish value of “or so” for this week.

Randomly picking plot points & genres to mash up, I got:

Subgenre #10: Haunted house
Subgenre #18: Erotica (I kept it pretty PG-13)
Must Feature #3: A bottle of rare liquid
Must Feature #7: A secret room

Comments, suggestions, and constructive criticisms are appreciated:

The First Time Is Always Special

The kitchen door creaked open with a bit of effort. A shower of dust and falling cobwebs danced in the beam of Kurt’s flashlight as he quickly swept the beam around the dark room. A cluster of critters scurried away from the noise and light, probably mice or rats. A beam of light from the rising full moon speared in horizontally through a doorway on the left, somehow cutting through the thick layer of dust and grime caked on the glass.

“Come on in, it’s all clear in here. It’s dirty, but it’s a lot better upstairs where I set things up.”

Reaching out the door behind him, Kurt grabbed Juanita’s hand firmly and urged her forward. She came in with some hesitation, her own flashlight sweeping the debris and dust, and in the reflected light Kurt could see there was a bit of disgust and a few doubts showing on her face.

“It’s OK, it’s safe, just a little bit dusty. I checked it all out this afternoon and there’s nothing bad here. Trust me. It’s safe. And upstairs I made it real nice for us, you’ll see.” He put his arms around her waist and pulled her close to him, brushing his lips against her neck. “You’re still OK with doing this, right?” he whispered in her ear, a hint of unsteadiness creeping into his voice.

Juanita took a quick, deep breath as Kurt nibbled on her neck, pushing her hair back from her collar to let him get at the spots where he had learned that she liked to be kissed. She pressed against him and felt his hands slide down her back to cup her butt cheeks, slowly starting to knead her through her jeans. She pushed him away slightly and gave him a quick kiss, then gently but firmly dislodged his hands from her back pockets and held onto his hand so that she could keep track of it.

“I’m fine”, she said, “You know that I told you that I wanted to do this and do it tonight. Let’s see this ‘real nice’ love nest that you’ve set up for us.”

Moving through the kitchen and out the door the teenage couple came into a large dining room with a gargantuan table and a dozen high-backed chairs, all covered in filthy dust cloths. Over it all hung a large chandelier, tilting drunkenly and ready to crash down at any time. Trying not to touch anything, they pulled each other past the moonlit bay windows, around the table, and out through the half-open sliding doors on the opposite side. A wide L-shaped staircase rose out of the gloom in the entryway there.

Kurt led Juanita up the stairs, each step leading to another loud creak partially muffled by the heavy carpet covering the stairs. On the walls to their right, faded peach-colored wallpaper peeled and tore away from the wall in tatters while other spots were black with mold from water damage and rot. Juanita was glad to see that the stairway itself was clear of most debris, apparently something Kurt had done earlier in the day, tossing the detritus over the side of the banister to the floor below.

At the top of the stairs a half-dozen doorways off to the right indicated where bedrooms and bathrooms were lined up off of a long hallway. A narrow stairway to the third floor could be seen in the gloom at the far end. Another beam of colored moonlight lit the top of the stairs like a spotlight, turned into a pale rainbow by its passage through a round, stained glass window.

Kurt pulled Juanita toward the solid oaken double doors on the left side of the landing, pushing the doors open as they approached. Just inside of the door the stopped her and stepped behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and putting his chin over her shoulder.

“See what I got ready for us?” he said as he swept his flashlight over the room.

Before them in the cavernous and decrepit master bedroom was a camping tent, filled with an inflated air mattress and two interlocked sleeping bags. On the far wall behind the tent the drapes were partially shut in front of a large set of windows, allowing enough light in from outside to see that a small vase on the floor holding a dozen long stem roses. Rose petals had been spread from the hallway door where they stood to the front of the tent.

Juanita spun back to face Kurt, still in his embrace. “Mmm, it’s perfect!” She kissed him, long and with intent to commit foreplay, getting a most appropriate autonomic response from Kurt as she pressed her hips against him. Before things went too far too quickly, she pulled away and took a step toward the tent. “Did you bring the other thing that I needed? Did you find it where I told you to look?”

Kurt turned and trained his flashlight on a round tray sitting on a dresser there. The tray looked like something Kurt had found discarded in the house, dust coated and filthy but possibly valuable, made of some kind of thin marble slab surrounded with a tarnished silver rim. On the tray was a small, cut crystal carafe that was filled with a syrupy, amber fluid and two heavy glasses. At least the glasses looked clean.

Kurt picked up the tray and held it out toward Juanita, a slight tremble visible in his hands, but Juanita backed a step away from him and started to unbutton her blouse, never taking her eyes off of Kurt.

“You pour,” she said. “I’m ready.” She slowly backed up another step toward the tent and loosened another button.

Kurt put the tray down on the dresser, uncorked the carafe, and quickly splashed healthy portions of the liqueur into the two glasses. He picked them up and turned back to Juanita. She was next to the tent near the window, looking out through the gap in the drapes. She looked back over her shoulder toward him. When she saw that he was looking at her she smiled, dropping the blouse off of her shoulders and onto the floor.

As Kurt walked across the room carefully with the two glasses, Juanita spread the ratty drapes wide, flooding the room with bright moonlight. The moon was now fully risen above a wooded hillside with trees starting to drop their leaves in the shortening days of early fall and no other houses in sight. Juanita’s bare skin was as pale as the moonlight itself, her exposed breasts as beckoning as a Siren’s call.

After giving Kurt time to elevate his heart rate and ogle the gift that she was ready to present to him, Juanita reached up to hold Kurt’s face in her hands. Forcing his head up so that he looked her in the eyes, she said, “It’s my first time and I want it to be so special. Can we do that? It’s your first time too, right?”

“Yes, my first time, too,” Kurt said, nodding and starting to smile. “It will be special, I promise.” His eyes locked on hers, Kurt handed Juanita a glass. Juanita smiled and raised her glass, indicating that Kurt should do the same.

Kurt took a sip of the liqueur, then a bigger swallow as he saw Juanita drinking deeply. He was surprised to find the taste to be pleasant and not nearly as strong as he had expected. There was a bit of a mint taste and a fair amount of alcohol burn, but it was also sweet, as if it contained some honey or maple syrup. Juanita drank half of hers and put the glass down on the window sill, so Kurt did the same.

“What is that stuff? Where did you get it?” Kurt asked.

“An old family specialty, very rare” Juanita purred, her eyes half closed, her body starting to sway slightly as the potion took effect. “The secret recipe has been handed down for many, many generations.” Kurt stepped forward and put his hands on her waist to steady her as she reached down and started unzipping her jeans and pulling them loose.

In a blur, Juanita tore her jeans completely off and spun halfway around, shoving Kurt roughly to the floor in the middle of the room.

Shouting as he fell awkwardly to the floor, Kurt saw Juanita standing above him, completely naked in the moonlight, her skin jerking and crawling as if wrestling snakes slithered under the surface. She seemed to be battling to stay upright, as if a thousand electric shocks jolted her and forced her into convulsions. A growling, grating animal sound came from deep in her throat and there was a crash as her flailing arm shattered a window. Soon Juanita’s milky, naked flesh seemed to quickly darken, blur, and lose definition. Kurt realized that she was being almost completely covered in light brown fur.

As the convulsions slowed and the growling quieted, the creature that had been Juanita turned back toward Kurt. He was starting to crabwalk his way back toward the door, trying to not make a sound and not taking his eyes off of Juanita. He could still recognize features of her face as the one he had been so much in lust with, but there was now a muzzle filled with razor-sharp teeth where only moments before had been the mouth that he had been obsessed with kissing.

“It’s my first time,” the Juanita-beast said in a barely understandable growl. “My mother’s been training me to hunt for eighteen years. I can’t be gentle but I’ll be quick, I promise.” She leapt.

Kurt had almost made it back to the hallway door. Scrambling to his feet he reached for the dresser and grabbed the tray out from under the carafe. In a smooth motion he pulled the side rims of the tray apart, spreading his arms wide. The tray rim stretched like a rubber band in his hands. What had looked like a solid marble bottom now changed to an undulating surface like the skin of a soap bubble, glowing softly yellow, like attenuated sunlight.

Turning to face Juanita as she leapt at him, Kurt held the hoop-like surface out in front of him, allowing Juanita’s momentum to carry her forward into it. She was reaching for his throat and heart, but as she touched the surface of the portal she was pulled into it, not appearing on the other side as she vanished.

In a heartbeat she was gone. Kurt quickly collapsed the rim of the portal back into a small ring shape, which he held up by the rim before his face. “My mother’s been training me to hunt also,” he said to the empty room. “You’re the first one.”

Kurt put the ring onto the ring finger of his right hand as he left the room.