fiction

Just A Day in the Life of a Villain, Volume 1

“I’m sorry Mason, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to terminate you. You just don’t have what it takes.”

Mason stared at the dank, dripping wall of the cave, in shock. It couldn’t possibly the last time he’d see the inside of this place. His job had been his life.

“But sir…” he began.

“I’m sorry,” Master Humpsmadinck repeated.

Mason stood. He stared at the man who had been his boss – his savior.

“You may as well just take the bicycle.” Master Humpsmadinck said.

Mason’s eyes went wide with disbelief. “Seriously? You’re going to let me just… take it?”

“You may as well,” Master glared at him through lowered eyebrows and his upper lip curled. “I can’t exactly use it now, can I?”

Mason thought of the Master, with his cape flying behind him, riding the bike and he let out a little giggle. He jumped when his superior slammed his palm down on the desk.

“I don’t understand what you thought you were doing!” Humpsmadinck’s face nearly glowed as his colour rose in his cheeks. Mason had never seen him this angry before.

“But sir… you told me to bring him back here.”

“Mason, how many times do I have to tell you? You DON’T carry a dead body on a ten speed!”

“But it was wrapped in a black garbage bag…”

“And that’s supposed to hide the fact that it’s a 200 pound dead man? What if the cops had followed you back here?”

“I didn’t think of that…”

“Exactly!” Master screamed, his voice cracking. “You don’t think! Now I’m going to have to reanimate the man you brought back here to do your job. Do you know how much work that is?”

“I can help you!” Mason said hopefully. He was genuinely shocked when Master began to laugh.

“You have to be joking! You? Help me reanimate a man you just brought back to the office in a garbage bag on a push bike? Puhlease!

“Get out of my sight.”

Mason’s jaw dropped. “That’s it? You’re just going to let me go?”

Master smiled. “That’s right. Thank you for reminding me. I said you would be terminated, didn’t I?” And with that he pulled a gun out of his desk drawer and shot Mason in the chest.

Out of the Frying Pan – Flash Fiction Challenge: Bad Parents

Sturgis peeked out from the closet and watched the faint line of light between his bedroom door and its jam flicker as the bodies passed back and forth. The fishy smell of his own pee, puddled and dried and puddled again on the shag carpet underneath him filled his nose. He’d tried to go in his shoe but it leaked. At least the screaming had stopped.

The men with the black coats with POLICE came in a while ago. Some of them spoke in low voices, while others laughed and said bad words. Sturgis wondered when they would finally leave.

It started the way it always did. Mom dressed up in her shiny silver pants that showed all her lumps and creases, and shoes that made her almost as tall as a man. She piled her hair on top of her head and painted her eyes so many different colours that it was hard to tell what colour they were supposed to be. Then she bounced him out the door in her tight sparkly top, her bosom patting him on his head, and into the car for the long, boring drive to Auntie Bambi’s house. The car radio was broken, so Mom sang. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire,”  over and over. He’d never heard the song on the radio before, but Mom seemed to know it. She always kissed him on his forehead and told him she’d be back in three days. Sturgis didn’t know why it was always three days, but it was.

Today was only day one.

Sturgis loved Auntie Bambi the best. She called him Fishie hugged him a lot and told him he was handsome. She always felt soft, and sometimes in the winter she would warm him up by opening her shirt so he could get closer. She said her own little boy, Ralfie, had been just like him before Ralf got scooped up by the cops. Auntie Bambie had given Sturgis Ralfie’s room and told Mom to drop him off any time. He thought Auntie Bambi loved him more than his mom, who told him she hated the city he was named after.

This time wasn’t any different from any other time. After Auntie Bambi was done hugging Sturgis, she always got on the phone and invited a man over. While she waited for the man, she told Sturgis that when he was bigger she’d invite him over all for herself, just like the men. Then she’d send Sturgis to his room, even if it was early. Sometimes she forgot to feed him, but most of the time she called him out to the kitchen and sat him down in front of a plate of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while she and the man went out on the veranda and hid in the corner behind the big piece of wood that was nailed up between the house and the house next door. Once, Sturgis peeked out; he never told anyone what he saw. He just really wanted to forget all that soft white flesh bouncing like Mom bounced, but when Auntie Bambi held him, he remembered what it looked like all over again. Only then it wasn’t so bad.

Sturgis thought about getting out of the closet and telling the POLICE he was there. He almost got up once. But then he thought about all the questions they would ask him, just like on TV. They’d take him to the COP SHOP and interragade him. Mom told him that people who got interragaded got Gatorade, but he thought Mom was just joshing him. Even though Sturgis was pretty thirsty, he didn’t want to leave Auntie Bambi’s house. He thought maybe Auntie Bambi didn’t want the POLICE to know he was there either. Maybe that’s why she’d been keeping so quiet.

The other reason Sturgis didn’t want to be interragaded was because he didn’t want to have to tell the POLICE what he heard. The shouting started before dinner time. He didn’t know the man who came over but the man seemed to know Sturgis. The man kept asking about Mom, and wanted to know where he could find her. He said some very very bad words about Auntie Bambi–even worse than the words the POLICE said when they were joking–and then he started looking for Sturgis. That’s when Sturgis hid in the closet.

Then the big sounds, like firecrakers on Canada Day, went off. And then the sirens brought the POLICE.

Sturgis hoped the POLICE would leave soon. He needed to pee again, and Mom would be mad already that he’d gone in his pants. Usually when he had an accident at Auntie Bambi’s house, she washed his pants and didn’t tell Mom. But mostly he wanted a hug from Auntie Bambi. Her softness would make everything better, like always.

 

Find the Flash Fiction Challenge at Chuck Wendig’s site: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/06/27/flash-fiction-challenge-bad-parents/

 

Shadows

I stand here on the porch in the lowering gloom of dusk and I look upon my creations, pondering on what will become of them when I’m gone. I am the last of my generation. My children have passed, stricken before me by the cancer that now takes my air and presents me with fire in its stead. Fire like that which has recently vanished from the western sky, only blacker – poisoned.

I have one grandchild, too young to understand the ramblings of an old man. My notes and journals – they are part of my creations. They are dinosaurs awaiting an excavation that may never come to pass.

I close my eyes and wonder if they will ever again open. My eyelids are tugged by an uncontrollable weight. It’s all right though. My creations will linger here for me. They will see the light of another day, perhaps without the gentle touch of their creator.

SoCS – Read, Read, Red.

The red phone rang nervously – or maybe it was Jeff who was nervous. He’d read somewhere that when the red phone rings, it meant disaster. Perhaps it was the reading of the seer, the fortune teller but he knew the red phone would ring.

Many nights he’d lain awake but now the day had come. He picked it up and said hello into the receiver.

“Jeff? It’s your mother. Why did you wait so long to pick up the phone?”

“Mother? Why are you calling me on the red phone?”

“Jeff… you were never born.”

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This week’s prompt will be slightly more of a challenge, should you choose to accept. Your prompt is to include the word read (present tense), read (past tense) or red. The extra challenge? Publish without reading. Just do your best while you write, then make a really squinty face and pluck up the courage to hit that button. If you’re brave enough to do it, make sure you tell us you’re going to at the end of your post.

Find SoCS here, http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-june-1414/ and write your own Stream of Consciousness Saturday post!

HRChallenge – Build a City

Dust motes drift aimlessly above empty streets. The air is all but still, and yet newspapers litter every corner, along the curbs, fallen alongside darkened skyscrapers from whence they clung during the sandstorm. The city, an oasis of light and diesel-fueled traffic by day, is still at two am. From the perspective of overhead planes, it appears to have been abandoned by aliens, discarded like shining refuse shit out of a UFO. One lonely two-lane blacktop leads in and out, the yellow lines painted upon it the only colour between the dunes.
By day the city bustles, businessmen march up and down, talking to unseen associates on their headsets like crazy bagmen in designer clothing. They leave their wives at home – few women work in the city. There are no schools for the children. The young are kept hidden by their mothers, lest the ones who placed them in this city – this arid sea-scape of dust – return.

Find the HRChallenge here: http://aopinionatedman.com/2014/06/02/harsh-reality-flash-fiction-challenge-part-1-of-2-create-a-city/

My Addiction, Part Middle

Why
are you running away
when we were getting
along so well —

Why
do you not answer my calls?

Why
are you so aloof
when I want you
so much —

Why
are you looking at other girls?

Why
are you making my life
so miserable
…?

My Addiction

My addiction is not
to the drug that makes me high
or the wine, blood red
that flows through my veins

My addiction is
the space between your knees
your bow-legged walk
in your jeans.

My addiction is not
to the high that is the taste
of ice cream or chocolate
or mountains of candy

My addiction is
the anticipation of your face
your voice on the phone
your knock on my door.

My addiction is not
the taste of caffeine
or the air that I breathe
or the roof over my head

My addiction is
your back
as you walked away
from me.

Portrait of the Perpetually Lonely

Romance is in the air. It’s what my horoscope keeps tellin’ me. An’ I keep lookin’, keepin’ on searchin’ for that perfect other. The One.

I see him in ever’ face. Ever’ darn word I read here on these internets. But this one’s gone married, an’ that one’s too darn young. Some of ’em are even the gay. Damn shame that is.

I can only write poetry when I’m done drunk. Well not done done, but you know what I mean. Hafta have some of that wine in me. Not the high falutin’ stuff, jes’ the cheapo crap you get down there at the liquor store. The kind with the twist cap. Don’t take much to get my skinny ass plastered. I get a ragin’ headache goin’ on nex’ mornin’ though I tell ya.

So I was talkin’ to my pal Phil t’other day, an’ I tol’ him I was lookin’ for the The One. An’ he says, well damn, Nessie, I got one! So I cuff’d him right ’round the ear an’ I tol’ him where he could stick his one an’ it wa’n’t gonna be in me. Damn Phil. Hehe. Always gettin’ in a good joke.

Yep. The One. Always searchin’.

Entranced – Stream of Consciousness Saturday (Entrance)

You stepped through the door and it was like a bolt of lightning to my soul. Your eyes hypnotised me and your arms as they drew me in, felt protective and yet…

The knife in your hand as it stabbed me in the spine…

I died, still entranced by your eyes.

This post is part of SoCS: http://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-may-1014/ 

A Life Lived

She started with a salty goodbye. A sayonara of oceanic proportions, in which ships sank and seashells shattered.

And around she went in the arena of ago, an archipelago amass in aromatic ages.

Until at last she settled, safe within the enclosure of a promised land of epic proportions.

And there she landed a lover, who loved her lonely ass.

Years yonder, she yearns for her yesteryear land.

For her lover forgot, and found a flagrant floozy to fuck.

So she dreams, and connects her current conditions, completely crushed

By sorrowful sayonaras, and restless regrets.