Peter and Vegas
Posted: September 26, 2018 Filed under: Writing | Tags: dark, fiction, flash fiction, olwg, prompts 1 CommentI sat on the old brown leather couch and tried not to move, as the poor thing creaked and squealed with the slightest twitch. I’d never been to Peter’s apartment before; it was the kind of place that girls ‘like me’ didn’t frequent. Peter was more…dirty than that. As in with filth, not just pervy.
I could hear him in the kitchen talking to his roommate, sharing a recipe for butter noodles or splitting up a bag of potato chips, who fucking knew. When I’d met the roommate, he winked at me and told me to call him ‘Vegas’ for some ungodly reason. Vegas was fifty if he was a day. I had no idea what his real name was, but I didn’t really care to know.
I still don’t know why I agreed to go home with Peter that night. Maybe because it felt like an adventure. Maybe because it felt new and different. Maybe just because he was a dirty old man who may or may not have more than enough drugs for both of us.
I shuddered, and the crusty old couch echoed my sentiments.
I remembered the camping trip my father took me on when I was ten. The one where we found a body in the desert, his intestines pulled from a hole in his stomach and tied to the branch of a creosote bush. I’m pretty sure that was the day that I changed from a normal kid with normal potential to something fortunately rarer, something darker.
But back to Peter. He had cheap whiskey, but he had expensive coke. I’m fine either way, but Peter wasn’t. We retired to his bedroom as Vegas retired to his own, and commenced to getting shitfaced. Peter didn’t even finish the whiskey, from a bottle shaped like a human skull, before passing out. More of a gentleman than I’d expected, though: he didn’t even try to cop a feel once he got me in his bedroom. He actually just wanted to talk.
I don’t care about talking, but I’ll listen to you if that’s what you want, if what you’ve got is good enough for me. Anyway, I said Peter was an old man, but I guess he was thirty or so. Not really old in the grand scale of things, but he’d been rode hard and put up wet, so ‘old man’ suited him.
I listened to him snore for about five minutes before I gathered up all the coke and the money that I’d seen stashed in his underwear drawer, of all places. Jeez, Peter, can’t you be a tiny bit original? I shrugged, not really caring.
I listened at the door for any noises that might tell me what Vegas was doing and whether or not he was going to prevent me making a clean getaway. When I couldn’t hear anything, I opened the door and gently closed it behind me. I snagged my jacket from the back of the couch on my way to the front door, and that’s when the yelling started.
I jumped, fearing the worst, but it turned out to be your everyday smidgen of domestic violence in the apartment down the hall. None of my business. Two flights of stairs and I was clean gone, free to live another night doing whatever the fuck I wanted.
Insurrection
Posted: July 1, 2017 Filed under: Writing | Tags: dungeon, fantasy, fiction, flash fiction, girl, prompts, serial, story, wizard Leave a commentNatalie peered around the corner, wondering how much longer she would have to wait before the bird’s murky song echoed through the halls and set her free.
The wizard colonel in charge of the palace was unaware of her existence, and that was the only thing saving her ass right now. Natalie crossed her fingers that he wouldn’t find out about her before it was too late.
The first notes trickled through the corridor, and Natalie blew her advantage by stepping out at just the right moment, right into the path of Wizard-Colonel Larkspur. Their eyes met, and as he raised an eyebrow, the fear in her expression made him realize that this was a person he needed to know more about.
“Seize her!” he commanded, and the first three guards behind him grabbed Natalie by her arms and waist before she could turn and run in a desperate bid for freedom. “Bring her to me.”
The guards somehow managed to march Natalie the four feet between them, and the wizard colonel reached out a finger and tipped her chip up so he could look deep into her eyes. The puzzlement cleared from his face in an instant, to be replaced by a loathing that even the guards behind him could feel. Natalie cringed at the hurtful gaze, fearing the worst was about to happen.
“Take her to the dungeon at once!” His voice trembled the slightest bit on the last word, and Natalie was the only one who caught it. Her heart lifted anew with fresh hope, and she cooperated with the guards tugging her along.
She looked back over her shoulder just once, and her timing was perfect enough to catch Larkspur mid-shudder.
Natalie began to smile as she stood a little straighter. Maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed after all.
The Chase
Posted: May 24, 2017 Filed under: Writing | Tags: chase, escape, fiction, flash fiction, prompts, race, random, run Leave a commentKevin looked back over his shoulder, just once, as he ran down the empty street. The drone was still back there, following him. He cursed his luck; why did this have to be the one day that not a single person wanted to be out enjoying the sunshine on Fourth Street? Any other day this place would be thronged with people.
He felt like a fool for choosing the path he had, and nearly wasted running energy to facepalm himself as he remembered that the boat races were this afternoon. Of course no one was on Fourth! You couldn’t get any farther from the river and still be downtown.
Kevin huffed and puffed and tried to urge a tiny bit more speed from his worn tennies. He couldn’t check for it any more without slowing down or risking a dangerous fall, but he imagined the drone inching closer and closer, nipping at his heels, as it were. A silent tear ran down his face. If he got caught, the scandal would annihilate his reputation.
The daylight was creeping from the cracks and crevices of the still neighborhood, and Kevin let the loaf of bread slip from his fingers and into the clutches of the grocery manager’s drone. Entropy slithered upward another notch, and Kevin’s family would go hungry tonight.
A Slight Inconvenience
Posted: May 22, 2017 Filed under: Writing | Tags: daisy, distraction, fiction, flash fiction, frustration, miscalculation, plan, prompts Leave a commentRochester’s gamble looked like it was going to pay off; the girl was walking toward the alley where she would, with any luck, meet her doom. He peered at the screen intently, waiting on the edge of his seat, without the slightest tinge of remorse to mar his heartless soul.
The girl stopped, and so did Rochester’s heart. She cocked her head to the side, as though listening to someone who wasn’t there. He ground his teeth in frustration as he watched her kneel to pluck a daisy from a crack in the sidewalk. That’s just so like her, he thought. Never keeping on task when there’s a bit of fuzz to distract her.
Rochester breath whistled in and out between the heavy hairs lining his nostrils as he played the waiting game. Will she or won’t she? Come on already!
He lashed out, kicking a filing cabinet into the wall as she stood back up and turned around. Rochester’s sweaty hamfists pummeled the desk, and the slip of a girl went on about her day, thoughts of butterflies and flowers babbling through her brain, never knowing how close she had come to dismemberment.