Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Every Friday I write and post a brand-new, never-before-seen prose story of 500 words or less. Here's the first:
ALPHA LOVE OMEGA
The sky rattled with thunder. Sammy's joints ached, the mountains were the color of snot and the clouds looked like coffee stains against a yellow sky. The rain was corrosive, but not enough for concern. He’d run out of oxygen long before it mattered.
He had briefly considered going back to the wreckage to bury the others. But their bodies were shells, their essence was gone and he was damned if he’d spend his last living hours in service to the dead.
It was a small, privately-maintained park on the northern edge of Greenwich Village, half an already-tiny triangular city block. The signs asked that visitors please stick to the walkways, but Jessica knew she couldn’t hurt the grass. Each of her steps left strange little swirls in her wake because the grass bent toward her whenever her foot touched down.
It was the middle of summer and butterflies gently stroked the air around the flowers. There were no other people. Sensing her approach, the park had gently planted in the mind of each of its occupants that it was time for them to leave.
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Caleb Monroe
Posts: 146
Karma: 4
Flash Fiction Fridays: Fish Out of Water
Posted: 2007/08/17 06:09
FISH OUT OF WATER
The sky gleams like steel.
Feel the briefcase in your hand. Enter the mouth of the subway. Swipe your card and enter the humid, crowded platform. Know you are an easier target down here. Push the thought from your mind.
She enters behind you. You catch only a peripheral glimpse, but it’s not the visual that gives her away. Track her by her absence of sound as she sneaks up on you.
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Caleb Monroe
Posts: 146
Karma: 4
Bonus Fiction: Tidal
Posted: 2007/08/17 16:32
TIDAL
She came from near the sea. The water was in her blood. He loved that about her.
In the mornings she was placid like a cold mountain lake. To intrude on her, to touch her, was a sacrilege he could never perpetrate. He would wake before her and lie still. Near her. Votive. Her still form taught him all he knew about nature. At times, she would stretch and pour herself over him and she was a draught to cure everything. But hers was a body of water and usually she went straight to the shower instead. She left the door open and he knew that was for him, so he could listen to the irregular pounding of the water on the tub basin as she interrupted the steady warm hiss from above. He would turn onto his back in the middle of their shared bed and slide back down the line of waking to that sound. Once, near the start of their days together, she had emerged from that steamy womb naked and drenched and dripping. She left water prints on the carpet and pulled the sheets off his body and laid herself over him, soaking the bed. Foot to foot, belly to belly, cheek to cheek, lip to lip. Her wet hair was cold against his neck, but her body was warmer than usual from the shower. He remembered that every morning. Usually she came out dry and he would go to make breakfast while she dressed.
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Caleb Monroe
Posts: 146
Karma: 4
Flash Fiction Fridays: The Slow Shrug of Stones
Posted: 2007/08/24 12:44
THE SLOW SHRUG OF STONES
Time moved differently for Parkin.
It was a large stone slab wedged against the underhang of a shallow cave where the sand met the cliffs north of Malibu. It experienced months as a slight tickle and decades as a gentle smoothing of edges. The ocean seemed frenetic, and most animal life was so quick it appeared as no more than a flicker at the edge of Parkin’s senses, if at all.
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Caleb Monroe
Posts: 146
Karma: 4
Bonus Fiction: Human
Posted: 2007/08/30 02:28
An old story:
HUMAN
The looming silver behemoth lumbered through the star-dusted vacuum with an ease belying its bulk—a tear-shaped drop fallen from the eyes of those who had seen the death of their Mother. It’s lustrous, fifty-mile surface of plating and antennas regal but sterile. Near the rear, where the steel leviathan’s invisible wake distorted stars and made them twinkle, a man looked out a reinforced plasti-glass viewport at the greens, browns, and blues of the great sphere hoving into view below that his descendants would call their new Earth.
She was a crawler—a surface-monkey, some of the insiders would say down their noses. She could see a shape darken the dull yellow light emitted by the square viewport visible between her braced legs. She finished tightening the worn pon-wheel and slipped her tri-wrench back into its pocket on her thigh. She slid her moor line—the ship’s artificial gravity did not extend everywhere—to the nearest longitudinal cross-slit and used small metal rings on the hull to pull herself down to peer inside.
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