Flash Fiction Fridays: It Was Good
Posted: 2007/08/31 13:39
IT WAS GOOD
The thunder that filled the sky was a friendly thunder. Deep and resonant, like when Agatha laid with one ear against her father’s chest while he talked and his voice rumbled about inside his depths. She knew it would rain soon, but it was the kind of warm buttery afternoon that could never be ruined by rain. Only enhanced.
The first drop caught her high on her unsleeved arm, a fat splatter laden with potential. Then it was like someone unzipped the sky. There was a single dry moment when she could hear the applause of the rain clapping against the leaves high above but none of it had yet reached the ground.
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Caleb Monroe
Posts: 147
Karma: 4
Bonus Fiction: "Melquíades Is Dead."
Posted: 2007/09/05 14:00
“MELQUÍADES IS DEAD.”
Through the fine silk sheets you are aware of the coarse grass mat between your shoulders, providing little more comfort than the hard earth beneath it. Objects in your field of vision look bloated, distended. Try to remain as still as possible—any movement in this state is uncomfortable. The hut around you already has its own sense of movement. The room is tilting on its side so slowly that no one but you seems aware of it. Realize for the first time how strange the weight of your beard feels on your chest.
Your head is propped on the knees of an old gypsy woman. The air around her moves ponderously, burdened by fragrant perfumes and scented scarves. Her hands as they stroke yours feel like calloused parchment. She is wrapped in a thick, brightly-dyed woolen blanket as defense against the cold. The grease in your hair moves down your temples in warm rivulets.
I felt a tickle on my hand and held it up to see a tiny black ant making its way through the almost invisible hairs on the back of my finger. I caught it with the thumb and forefinger of my other hand, grasping it tight enough that it couldn’t escape but light enough so as not to smash it. My first instinct was to roll down the car door and throw it out, but we were on the inner lane of a street awash in traffic and it would surely be ground under a tire out there. I knew in a few moments we would be turning onto a smaller residential street, so I determined to hold onto it until then, where it would be safer.
I realized the ant must have gotten into the car somehow when we were at my mother-in-law’s. There were tiny ants like this all over the place in her driveway area and on the nearby plants.
Easing himself through the hole as carefully as possible, Julian clicked on his flashlight. The air in the small cave had a strange odor to it. Considering when it was sealed, he realized he might be smelling the first century BC. He considered this for a moment, the idea that every age has its own scent. Then his elbows were in the fine soft dirt and he was pulling his legs in after him. There was just enough room that he could stand without having to duck. But little enough room that he still felt like he needed to.
Light from the opening behind him aided the flashlight, giving him a vague visual sense of the entire chamber. It was small, about the size of his kitchen back home in Surrey. Other than where it had been sealed off, it appeared to be an entirely natural formation. And every single inch was covered in writing. It wasn’t hieroglyphics or cuneiform, but bore characteristics of both. And characteristics of some writing system he had never seen before. Even though he couldn’t read it, felt incredibly familiar. His initial impression was that it had been written haphazardly, madly on every surface. But on closer inspection, he realized it was in a precise gridlike pattern—it was simply the writing surfaces that curved and flowed in unexpected manners. Natural rock.
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Caleb Monroe
Posts: 147
Karma: 4
Flash Fiction Fridays: Diabolos Ex Machina
Posted: 2007/09/21 15:24
DIABOLOS EX MACHINA
The alley was bitterly cold, but Simon didn’t notice. The fight had heated his blood and he felt overly warm inside his thick coat. He was kneeling on a man whose face felt like oatmeal every time he hit it. Even the jaw and cheekbones no longer offered any resistance, and the man had stopped moving long ago.
Still, Simon battered the man several more times before his rage abated to human levels and he became aware of how tired his arm was. He got to his feet and kicked the man over so he wouldn’t have to look at him. Of the man’s two friends, one was unconscious or dead, and the other had stopped whimpering a while ago. But there was still a faint cloud of breath near his head. Simon knew he was playing possum, desperately hoping the terrible injuries he’d already sustained were all there would be. They had all been so tough when the altercation began.
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Caleb Monroe
Posts: 147
Karma: 4
Flash Fiction Fridays: The Deepest Sleep
Posted: 2007/09/28 14:54
THE DEEPEST SLEEP
When she smiled at him, the entire world disappeared, cast away to some distant, silent place. And when she kissed him it all came rushing back again, starting at her lips and the base of his spine and meeting somewhere between his shoulder blades with a warm pulse. She smiled and kissed him often, giving reality a sort of heartbeat—alternately ethereal and so overly real that it was he who felt ethereal.
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