Category Archives: Flash Friday Fiction

“Kindred Spirits”

You should have seen me in my prime. I was the feather in the duke’s cap, his prized possession. The beau monde, princes, even foreign dignitaries flocked to me in grand carriages, eager to seek out my many hidden pleasures: the sumptuous banquets, the illustrious balls, the secret trysts, the endless pleasure seeking.

Ah, those were the days.

Now look at me. The Odd Fellows Home for Orphans, Indigent, and Aged. A setting for a horror film if I’ve ever seen one. Mewling infants cry for parents they’ll never have. The older ones are no better, shuffling along my hallways, eyes vacant as if focused on days gone by. All reeking of poverty and loss, nothing like the blithe beauties and dashing rogues of yesteryear.

Even my magnificent fountain, once the welcoming centerpiece of my masterful estate, lies dormant, covered in hideous netting in order to keep these idiots out. “For their own protection,” I hear.

How did it come to this? I am a shell of my former self. An eyesore, some say. A visual reminder of all that society wants to ignore, to obscure, to forget.

My cement eye sees the fear in their faces as they are led through my doors, doors that used to signify One Had Arrived. Doors that now open only to lost opportunities, lost selves, lost lives.

I listen to the young girl whispering confidences to me from her bed, telling of tragedies I can only imagine. I smell the fear on the sick and the dying, who know they have already come to their final resting place. I feel the pain of those abandoned, clinging to the meager comforts I offer because I am all they have in the world.

Now they are all that I have.

We are the things that nobody wants.

Perhaps these are my glory days after all.

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Let me know what you think of my entry in this week’s Flash Friday Fiction contest! And come join the fun – it’s so fascinating to read everyone’s entries and see how varied the stories are based upon the same visual prompt.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

The preacher had spoken those words at grandma’s funeral. He’d liked it at the time, the image of being nothing. No more mama crying as she darned the same pair of socks for the tenth time. No more brother stealing his bread, the only food they had all day besides the ever-present pot of onion soup. Onion water, really. No more da sleeping off the moonshine he distilled himself. “Keeps me sane,” his da had claimed. “Man can’t stay sane with no work and all you yappin’ kids.” Bruises on his mama’s arms and the welts on his own back proved otherwise. There was no sanity here.

When the cloud had appeared on the horizon, he’d fantasized it would whisk him off to a new life, like Dorothy in that wizard story. It hadn’t, of course. The dust had settled. Life had gone painfully on. Escape hadn’t come until his 18th birthday, and it’d come in the form of Uncle Sam, not some little old man behind a curtain. War was hell, they said, but he’d thought any place was better than Texas.

He watched the skeletons shuffling by him. Empty eyes. Walking zombies. He looked at the metal sign hanging over his head. “Arbeit Macht Frei,” it said. “Work will make you free.”

His captain pulled him over to a small building. “Gaskammer” read the placard. “Gas chamber”. “Look,” said the captain, chewing on his cigarette. “Claw marks where they tried to get out.”

He ran back outside and vomited.

There was no freedom here.

He watched a young boy with a hollowed-out belly holding hands with his emaciated mother. Pain echoed in every step she took, but a fierce smile broke out over her face as they walked through the barbed wired front gate. She looked to the sky and blew a kiss from her hand to the heavens.

He knew now that he’d known nothing of starvation, nothing of suffering.

Clicking his boots together, he chanted, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.”

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Visit Flash Friday Fiction to enter your own story based on the photo prompt. This week’s word limit was 350, +/- 10 words. Let me know what you think!

She had to see for herself. Grandma had forbidden it, but she was going anyway. They couldn’t stop her.

Angela couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t. She’d told Jess she’d always protect her. She’d said there were monsters in the house. Not the kind in the closet, apparently. Angela had said if the monster ever touched Jess, Angela would slay him. Like a dragon.

She bet this bridge led to the magical place, the place her sister often talked about. A place with princes and fairies and happiness, not dad yelling and mom crying and empty beer bottles in the sink. Otherwise why would Ang jump off it? It didn’t make sense.

She didn’t know why mom’s face had gone white at some stick she’d pulled out of the trash. She didn’t know why dad had screamed at Jess, calling her words Jess didn’t understand, something about being a ‘hor’, whatever that was.

“I’m not a whore,” her sister had screamed. “The only monster who’s ever touched me was YOU!”

Her dad’s face had purpled. Jess knew that face – it meant bad things were about to happen. She’d run to her closet and hid.

She should have stayed. She should have helped Angela. Angela would have helped her. But it had been so scary, the yelling and the hitting and the slamming of the door.

Grandma found her later. Jess didn’t know how long she’d stayed in the dark. She didn’t want to risk the monster coming after her.

She looked now at the path behind the house, the one that led down to the bridge. They weren’t supposed to go there. Momma said it wasn’t safe.

Angela had often whispered to her, “Anywhere is safer than here.”

Jess started walking. If Angela had gone to the fairy world, she was going, too.

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My weekly entry for the marvelous Flash Friday Fiction contest. Let me know what you think!

“I’m telling you, Merlin, he’s not coming back.”

The wizard sighed, resting his chin on his hand. He was tired, so tired. It had been over a thousand years. Where was the king? Where was his friend?

He sipped from the cup on the table. The Holy Grail, they called it. He’d always thought the name ridiculous – it was just a cup, more like a Tupperware tumbler than the fancy goblets they imagined.

The elixir in it kept him young, allowing him to blend in with current society. He snorted. Was it worth it? He longed for the freedom of his robe. And forget the foot-torturing things they called shoes; if he couldn’t wear his boots he’d wear nothing at all. The hat stayed, though. Without it he felt naked. Frail. Alone.

He closed his eyes. He couldn’t face the reality of his own sadness. His own loss. His own failure.

“Check again. There must be someplace we’ve missed.”

Weariness bowed the fairy’s head as she studied the map in front of her. Searching every corner of this earth, attempting to blend in with untold numbers of societies across centuries and continents – it was exhausting. Even her beloved unicorn was browning with age. Soon it would lose its horn. She wanted to weep for the shame of it.

“Give up,” squeaked the tiny sprite. “There IS no Once and Future King. It’s a myth!”

Merlin stared at the sprite in horror.

“If Arthur is a myth, then we are nothing but myths as well. All of us,” the wizard intoned.

“Hold on!” exclaimed the fairy. “The snail moved. I see a spot I haven’t checked before. Some place called…Memphis, Tennessee.”

Merlin closed his eyes, the tornado on his head whipping up images.

“Graceland,” he said, after a long pause. “The King is at Graceland.”

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This is my entry in today’s Flash Friday Fiction contest. Let me know what you think!

UPDATE Sunday 9/1: I scored a 1st runner up from the judge! Woo hoo!

“If he’d just stopped to ask for directions, we wouldn’t be in this predicament,” she exclaimed, stiffening her shoulders.

“Directions? How does one ask for directions while on a ship, my dear?” he said. “I hardly think the captain intended to wreck upon this island.”

Setting the map down, he looked out the window. “Not that here is a bad place to be, darling, don’t you think? I can smell oranges in the air.”

“What about those bizarre things on the beach?” she interjected irritably. “They look like giant Easter eggs.”

“True,” he conceded. “But what luck to stumble on this hotel! Have you ever had such fresh cream?”

Agatha let out a loud “Harrumpfh!” This was not how she’d imagined her honeymoon. They were supposed to be exploring the churches of Florence and walking the streets of Rome, not stuck on some God-forsaken island peppered with bizarre statues.

Waving her hand in front of her face, she muttered, “There aren’t so many mosquitoes in England.”

Chester stroked his wife’s fiery red hair and dropped a kiss on her forehead.

“You’re right, my dear.” He started to chuckle.

She gave him a questioning glance.

“…But England does have your mother.”

She felt a smile tickle the corners of her mouth.

“And she’s a far more vicious bloodsucker,” he added.

She burst out laughing. “Indeed. Perhaps we should never return at all.”

“That’s my wife!” he laughed, pulling her in close and raising the map. “So, after this, where to next?”

“Anywhere with you,” she said softly. “Anywhere at all.”

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I wrote this today for the weekly Flash! Friday micro fiction contest. Let me know what you think!

UPDATE: Hooray! I won an Honorable Mention for the second week in a row. Woo hoo!