Short Fiction

100 word fiction – Sarcasm

Sarcasm drips so easily from your palate to your tongue that it’s hard to keep up with you. But I try.

“So you’re saying you don’t want broccoli for dinner tonight?”

“Oh yes, I love broccoli. I love to look at it and smell it and do all kinds of naughty things with it.”

I slow my speech. “So, you’re saying, you don’t want broccoli, for dinner tonight?”

“What the fuck do you think?”

“I’ll do beans.”

“NO! NO! I don’t want beans, I want broccoli, you stupid bitch!”

I long for you to grow out of the terrible twos.

The Interview

“All right then Mr. Jones, everything looks good. We’ll be contacting you within the next two weeks to let you know if you’ve got the job.”

“Thank you so much. I look forward to hearing from yo…”

“Oh! One other thing. I keep forgetting to ask this question. New protocol and all.”

“Yes?”

“Tell me, Mr. Jones. How many times per day do you urinate?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How many times per day do you urinate?”

“Um… about three?”

“Excellent. We’ll let you know then. Thank you for applying for a job at Google.”

The Man in the Mirror

Chain mail

“How does your chain mail feel?” I ask him from the driver’s seat.

“It’s heavy,” he scowls.

*****

It all started one day when I was sitting in the parking lot of a Tim Horton’s, eating ham and Swiss cheese on a croissant with lettuce and tomato. I was half-way through my sandwich when I heard a knock on the back window of my mini-van. I thought at first that maybe it was someone I knew. I looked in both side mirrors to see if someone was approaching the front of the car but I saw no one on foot. When I looked in the rear-view however, there he was. Needless to say I jumped – I’d thought I was alone.

“What are you doing in my car?” I shrieked at the diminutive green man in my farthest back seat. I hopped out of the van before he could answer, which was silly, because I’d left my keys in the ignition. When I reached in through the window to retrieve them he spoke.

“You asked for me!”

“I did what? Who are you?”

He puffed up his chest and gave me a wide multi-cuspate-toothed smile. “I am your prince charming!” His sharply pointed ears twitched and his finely pronged nose lifted as he said this. He was obviously quite proud of his appearance.

“But you don’t look a bit like a prince charming to me!”

“I don’t?”

“You’re green!”

“Oh my!” he exclaimed, and he disappeared.

****

Three days later I heard a knock on the window of my van. I was driving at the time.

“I can’t look right now,” I said, because I was concentrating on the road.

“That’s okay,” came the same voice I had heard from the little green elf-like man.

As soon as I came to a stop light I tilted my head so I could see into the farthest back seat of the car. He wasn’t there. The light turned green. I started driving.

“Pull over,” he said.

“You’ll have to wait.” I was getting annoyed at this strange being I’d been anticipating for three long days.

Just as I got to a driveway, I heard, from directly behind me.

“Oh dear. I’m still a bit green.”

By the time I pulled over I was alone.

***

It was two weeks before I heard the knock on the back window of my van again. I had just pulled into the parking lot of the local mall, and was looking for a spot. It was raining heavily and I lacked an umbrella, but I needed drugs. From the drug store for a change.

“Are you still green?” I asked.

“No.” His voice was as smooth as silk and as deep as dark chocolate.

I found a spot and backed in, hoping for a glimpse of my prince charming. When I put the van in park I saw him leaning between the front seats, in my rear-view mirror. He was stunning. Everything I had ever imagined in a man and… that voice…

“I’m yours to do with whatever you wish.” 70% Cocoa.

“Stay here then, I just have to run in…” The store was about to close.

“I also belong to your van,” he disclosed in a timbre fit for only the bedroom.

“What the…”

“I can’t leave your van.”

“So what’s the use of having a prince charming?”

“We can go parking.”

When I came back from the drug store he was gone.

**

“Why do you even bother with the chain mail?” I ask him.

“I failed as a prince charming, I thought maybe you’d like a knight in shining armor.”

“Well there was that one time…” We’re at a stop sign. I look in the mirror and see the grin I’ve come to love more than life itself.

“That was fun,” he smirks.

“Why can’t we do that again?” I ask, starting to move down the street.

“Because regardless of what you want, you NEED a knight in shining armor now.”

“What for?” I ask.

*

I open my eyes and there is a light shining above me. Florescent. A face with a mask.

“How are you feeling?” I masculine voice with raised, groomed, eyebrows.

“My van…” I croak. I barely recongise my own voice.

“Ma’am, your van was totalled. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“No!” I screech.

I want to die.

Puppet Master

My mind is a playground full of weird and wonderful toys. People. People are my toys to play with. They are my puppets. I am the puppet master, that’s what I am. My control is complete and the utter trash that I spew is unrivaled.

I am not God. I’m not a deity of any kind. I am Lord of my self-absorption. My will encompasses millions upon millions of souls and they aren’t even sure I exist.

I am a ghost. I have no empathy for the living.

I am Ouija. And I am bored.

Fit to be Tied

A little tale of revenge, by me 🙂

Visitor

My mind is haunted with thoughts of you. If only you could see or hear me. If you could just speak…what would you tell me? What would you want to know of me? Would you be happy that I live…here? Would you want to spend time with me, if you knew me?

You’ve seen me in the crowd. I know you have. You waved, once, from afar. But you wouldn’t know me to see me now. I’ve changed a little. I’ve become… I’ve become more calm. Less likely to rip up my life and chase a dream.

Just a dream, some might say. To know you would be like remembering a long, distant past full of promises that turned to dust and ashes.

So I’ll ask you, just this once. Do you wish to see me? Please answer yes or no in the little square inside the box on the page marked ‘My Apparition’.

The Confession

“There’s something I have to get off my chest.”

“What now?” She’d heard all his bullshit before – at least she assumed it was bullshit. Nothing he said when he was feeling guilty ever made sense.

“I think you should sit down.”

“Are you at least going to take your coat off?” He was still wet, dripping on the floor.

“I have to go back out.”

“Okay then, hurry up. I don’t have time for this today.”

“I’ve been seeing another woman.”

“Oh, that old thing again?” She didn’t believe him this time any more than she had the last three times he had confessed this same sin against their marriage.

“I’m leaving with her now. She’s out in the car.”

She tapped her foot. “Can you pick up milk while you’re out?”

A single tear fell from his cheek. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

“Actually, I was at the store just yesterday and I forgot.”

He stared at her, agape. “Do you even care?”

“Of course I do! I can’t have coffee without milk!”

He turned and stepped back out into the pouring rain, checking for his wallet.

Beauty’s Calling

hair

Prince Blorigan heard of Beauty through one of his own servants. A cousin of a friend who knew a girl who had been to visit Beauty told the tale of a teenaged boy locked in a tower catered to by only women. It was a sin against humanity if ever Blorigan had heard of one. And so, curious, he plotted to see for himself.

Blorigan, with the aid of trusted woman in his household, went about dressing himself up as a young girl to gain entrance to Grim’s castle. Once inside it was simple. Gush over never having seen Beauty up close (as though anyone had seen him from afar) and tell of a cousin who had had the pleasure of Beauty’s company and it was only a matter of moments before Blorigan was in the presence of the beautiful young man.

The Prince had with him a fan which he held up to his face as he tittered with the six other girls who had been invited to sit with Beauty that afternoon. He hadn’t expected to find himself quite so enamoured of the young man. He was, indeed, very beautiful. Blorigan was quite nervous. For it was told that after court with Beauty was held, he would go around the room and kiss each of the girls on the lips, deciding which, if any, would have a place in his chambers to help him dress in the morning and undress at night. None of the girls lasted long, unless they happened to be in Beauty’s employ when one of the older women left, unable to give away a son of Beauty’s father, Grim.

As Beauty moved around the room, bending before each of the girls to give them each a chaste kiss on the lips and then straighten and smile, Blorigan began to tremble. Should he be outed by Beauty (who would surely be surprised to feel the roughness of his closely shaven skin) the consequences of his deception would be dire. He began to wonder what had gotten into him, thinking he could get away with it, let alone being well received by Beauty. So it was with nervous bravery that Blorigan lowered his fan and accepted Beauty’s kiss. Beauty, startled, pulled away just enough to stare at Blorigan’s lips before kissing him again. He didn’t smile. Without glancing away from Blorigan he ordered the rest out of the room.

“But Beauty!” exclaimed the lady who always accompanied the girls. “This is highly unusual.”

“Leave us!” Beauty commanded.

Blorigan heard the shuffling of feet and the soft thunk of the wooden door closing against its frame. Without a word Beauty reached under the Prince’s skirt and felt there a hardness.

“You’re like me,” Beauty whispered.

Prince Blorigan nodded, speechless.

“You must stay, and teach me,” Beauty breathed against the Prince’s lips. “Are you,” Beauty swallowed, “are you the only other one?”

“No, the world is filled with men as well as with women…”

Beauty cut off his words with another deeper kiss.

“Stay with me,” Beauty repeated with a groan.

“I can’t,” Blorigan said. “I have a kingdom to help my father rule. I am a Prince and must marry soon.”

“You will marry a woman?” Beauty asked, unbelieving as he pressed himself against the Prince.

“We will teach each other perhaps, before I go.”

“And you will return?” Beauty demanded, dropping to his knees for a better look.

“As often as I can,” Blorigan sighed, his head tipping back and his eyes closing.

Beauty’s Education

hair

Life in the castle was an endless cycle of excitement and monotony. For days on end Beauty was locked up in his chambers with his tutor, a nubile young woman of brains who carried her children with her (or lead them around depending on their size) where ever she went. All of the children were daughters – it was well known in the kingdom that Beauty’s father, Grim, would only have members of the gentler sex in his household, with the exception of Beauty himself. Whenever a male child was born it was given away – an agreed-upon expectation of the women who were privileged to be in Grim’s servitude and allowed into his bedchamber.

Beauty was hidden away from the world, an eyesore to his father but the glory of the domestic help who cared for him, for they knew he was destined for greatness. (They would whisper among themselves that perhaps Beauty would be even greater than his father!)

And so the women of the grand estate had a vested interest in Beauty’s education and his upbringing. They urged him to be like his father, though he had not his father’s direct influence. Therefore the consensus was that Beauty should be as they wished his father to be.

While monotony reigned over Beauty’s days, he would take in the vision of his teacher’s breasts as she nursed her daughters, unable to avoid licking his lips at the sight of her wet nipples. By night he would be alone, a slave to his dreams. Even as he grew into the age of double digits the scenery remained unchanged. Excitement had finally come when he gained the age at which he was allowed visitors; girls in training from other castles who would become his father’s servants. Only then was he allowed to touch. Only then did his education begin in earnest.

Beauty’s Beginning

Beauty

Beauty

Beauty was born without a mother. That is to say his mother died in childbirth, leaving him in the peculiar care of his father and his father’s servants. Since Beauty’s father was a soldier, he was often absent from the family estate. Beauty, therefore, spent all of his waking and sleeping moments with the women who cleaned, cooked, and cared for the castle in which he lived.

So uninterested was Beauty’s father in him that he even went as far as to allow the housemaid-turned-nursemaid (she gave birth to a daughter at the same time Beauty was born and was able to nurse him at her breast) to name the poor boy. Having used what she thought was the best name available on her own daughter (some said she was the spawn of the gentleman for whom the woman worked), and she couldn’t very well call the boy Adrianna two (or too, the woman knew not the distinction) she simply called him what he was.

From the time Beauty was a babe he learned the ways of women. They taught him to clean and to cook and to care for them when they were tired at the end of the day. Time and time again his father would return home from battle only to find his son rubbing the feet of a char woman. The more it happened the less his father expected of him.

And so Beauty went without the benefit of a role model. His father was the only man Beauty knew of, for his father surrounded himself only with women unless he was off to war. From his father Beauty learned only that if he was ignored, there would surely be a woman to take care of him.