At the fair, Friday night
I’ve been battling with motivation, so I decided to mix it up a bit. So I wrote a 10 minute short story with prompts from Debbie:
A person who hates their boss
A fairground/amusement park
Hot and humid
Friday night
Only problem is that I think this is the start of something bigger, something awesome. Something with Stephen King and teen romance influences. Something that is growing into a much longer story in my head….so here’s what I wrote in the minutes between 3pm and 3.10. Now I’m off to keep writing it and see where it takes me.
Enjoy!
At the fair, Friday night
Friday night and it was the last Friday night of the school holidays. Rain didn’t want to think about that, about the two short days until she had to put on that horrible uniform again and start carrying a bag around school. No, tonight she was amazing. Tonight she was Rain: boy attracting super star.
She was wearing a new top and earrings stolen from her sister’s jewelery box. She had spent a full two hours on her hair and make up and she knew she looked amazing. Her jeans were her Christmas jeans, finally broken in to the perfect fit after longs weeks of discomfort.
She met her friends at 7, just as the humidity began to break. The evening was hot still, but Rain thought she looked more grown up in jeans so she’d worn them instead of a dress.
Jacky and Rachel exclaimed over her makeup job and she grinned back at them.
‘Tonight’s the night,’ she said, her eyes straying, as they always did, into the fairground, towards the ferris wheel.
‘Eeeeeeee!’ Jacky said, clutching Rain’s hand and jumping up and down.
‘I don’t believe it. You’ve said the same thing every time we’ve come here. All summer, and you still haven’t said a word to him, what makes tonight different?’ Rachel was always like that, always sarcastic and sensible. Bringing reality into it. Rain, boy attracting super model had no patience for Rachel tonight.
‘Because tonight I’m really gonna do it, that’s what’s different. OK?’ Rain stared hard at Rachel until the shorter girl looked away. Rain smiled in satisfaction.
They paid their entry fee and walked into the fair clutching a string of tickets. They went the way they always did, up one alley of side shows and then cut between the tombola and the clown’s heads to the snack alley. There they bought carnival food: toffee apple for Jacky, candy floss for Rain and sugar crusted nuts for Rachel. Rain’s eyes kept slipping to the ferris wheel. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she thought of hundreds of reasons to back out.
‘Tonight’s the night,’ she said under her breath, and she struck out towards the ferris wheel. Rain, boy attracting supergirl was unstoppable tonight. The line was short.
If you would like to see more 10 minute stories, please feel free to comment with prompts. It’s easy, just choose one each of the following if you don’t have any ideas: Person, Place, Weather, Time
Exquisite Corpse
This entry is part of an on-line exquisite corpse – a short story told in 10 installments by 10 different authors. My 250 word installment is below; if you’re interested in writing the next part, scroll down to the bottom of this post for details on how this all works…
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5.
and down. But she didn’t fall, the grip that the insect or whatever it was had on her back was strong, it lifted her.
Peter lunged forward and grabbed Dianne’s wrist.
‘It’s alright,’ he said. ‘I’ve got you.’
Dianne bit her lip to stop herself from crying out in fear. The last thing either of them needed was for her to lose it altogether. She grasped his arm with both of her hands. He heaved and the thing on her back let go and they fell in a heap on the muddy ground. They lay like that for a moment, breathing heavily.
‘It might come back.’ Dianne mumbled into the collar of Peter’s jacket. Then lifted herself gingerly up and looked around. ‘Should we keep looking?’
Peter looked as if he wanted to run home, now, as fast as he could, but he nodded. ‘If they’re in the gully we should be able to hear them soon right?’ Dianne nodded. Wondered if the night and the mist would ever clear away.
‘Let’s get going now then. Fast. OK? I am not keen to find out if that-’ she paused, she wasn’t sure what to call it. There was no way something that could lift her up could possibly be an insect. But what else could it possibly be? She didn’t want to think too hard about that so she said ‘-thing has friends.’
The helicopter buzzing started again, but there wasn’t just one this time. This time the flying thing
— — —
This is part 5 of 10. You can find the other installments here (but DON’T DO THIS YET if you want to join in):
1. www.sleep-dep.blogspot.com (26 June 2009)
2. www.multi-dimensional.blogspot.com (27 June 2009)
3. www.deb-onair.blogspot.com (29 June 2009)
4. www.additiverich.com/morgue/ (1 July 2009)
5. www.jennitalula.wordpress.com (1 July 2009)
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
WANT TO READ IT? Jump back to the previous entries using the links above.
WANT TO JOIN IN? This exquisite corpse operates on a first-come, first-served basis. If you want to write the next installment, FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS:
1.IMPORTANT – Don’t read any of the previous entries! Read only the one you see here.
2.ALSO IMPORTANT – Post a comment here, saying “I claim the next entry”, followed by the URL/web address of your blog. If you don’t do this, we’ll never know where to find you.
3.Copy the text of this blog entry into a new post on your blog, but DELETE THE CHAPTER and write your own as the next installment. Start with the chapter number as I’ve done here, and start exactly where the last chapter left off (in mid-sentence if necessary).
4.Your entry should be EXACTLY 250 words long, unless you are writing chapter 10, in which case you must bring the story to a conclusion in 250 words or less.
5.At the end of the chapter, where the text reads: “This is part X of 10″, change this to the number of your chapter.
6.Add the URL/web address of your blog and today’s date onto the list below that, so people reading later entries can jump back to your chapter.
7.Finish your chapter and post it within 24 hours of claiming your place. There – it’s freaking easy! You can go back and read the rest of the story now.
8.IF YOU’VE JUST FINISHED ENTRY #10 and finished the story, DELETE THESE INSTRUCTIONS from the bottom of your post – they’ll just confuse people. ALSO, let CG know by posting a comment on the first entry (on www.sleep-dep.blogspot.com), or sending him an email on squid.mohawk@gmail.com. CG will assemble a full version and send it round to all of the contributors.
Late one evening
10 minute story, prompts from Matt. You must include at least two of the following things in your story:
Fog
Suspicion
The sound of distant laughter
Surprise
5.30
The fog was very dense. You couldn’t see more than a foot in front of you, which made walking the wharves something of a dangerous affair. If I’d had any say in the matter I’d be at home, sitting in front of the TV with my feet up and a hot cup of Joe. Unfortunately I was out in the mist, trying not to fall into the filthy harbour and trying to find a criminal.
That’s what you get when you’re the best cop in the city and the heiress to a major fortune has been missing for more than 48 hours. The plods didn’t have any leads, they never do. Of all the detectives on duty the commissioner had picked me. I guess he remembered that time twenty years back when I got those two boys back. I’d had my picture in the paper then, my Mother had been so proud. She was dead now. As dead as the wife I’d had twenty years ago as well. She was shot, a personal vengeance act from one of the guys I got stuck in jail.
My foot hit something hard. I looked down, peering in the fog. I pointed my flashlight and saw it was just one of those bollard things that they rope boats to. I stood still for a moment, listening, inhaling the night air. The fog made everything muffled, like it was coming from another world. I just made out the sounds of people laughing, a woman, maybe two, a couple of men. There was a new apartment building nearby, it could be a party on the balcony there. It was worth checking anyway.
I turned my flashlight off and stumped towards the laughter, the end of my nose was damp and I wiped it off on my sleeve. The apartment building suddenly loomed above me, lit up like a cruise ship in the Bahamas. I looked up and saw right into some guy’s bedroom. He was changing, his back to the window. I circled the building, looking for a balcony full of party goers. I saw them at the back of the building, just two floors up and illuminated from behind by fairy lights.
I dropped my flashlight. My wife was up there. Laughing with the heiress. Passing them drinks were the commissioner and the head of the local mob.
5.40.
If you would like to see more 10 minute stories, please feel free to comment with prompts. It’s easy, just choose one each of the following if you don’t have any ideas: Person, Place, Weather, Time
PoF: Batgirl
CO: Coldplay
Blind Date
Ok, this is a little clunky, but I like it all the same. Written using Debbie’s prompts from Wednesday…
A shaved head
Night-time rendezvous
Coffee
A pair of gloves
Comments/feedback welcome, or you can write your own in the comments if you like! You only get 10 minutes though, remember.
12.50
I sat in the café window so I’d be obvious, easily spotted. I held the coffee cup in both hands, curling my fingers around the cup for warmth. My gloves meant I couldn’t hold it with one hand, woolen fingerless gloves are tricky that way, but I liked the hotness on my hands anyway. The night was bitter and rainy and I was pleased to be inside.
My stomach turned over when the door opened, I hadn’t thought I would be this nervous but then I didn’t go on a lot of blind dates. I had this image in my head of what it would be like when he finally turned up, our eyes would meet from across the room and he’d come over, sit down and just start talking. We’d have so much in common, we’d be able to talk about everything. I love classic novels and in my mind he would be carrying a copy of Dracula. Corny, I know, and actually totally inappropriate but in my head it was super romantic that he had it. We’d talk for hours, he’d order cake for us to share, we’d laugh about stuff. He would be so attractive, pale skin like so pale he was almost translucent. He would have an edge of danger about him, a mystique. He’d be so sexy, talking in a low gravelly voice, a voice that betrayed his years of dark experiences.
We would talk about blood, of course. It was inevitable that the talk would eventually turn to blood, his, mine. Drinking it. His handle on the website had been ‘O-positivelover’ after all.
I put my coffee down as the door opened again and he walked in. He was wearing a black suit jacket with a white camellia in the pocket – the signal. It was really him. He wasn’t pale, his cheeks were rosy from the cold and his eyes were normal, just brown. He sat down opposite me, looking nervous rather than self assured. He didn’t have a copy of Dracula. I could smell the fear, he was sweating with it.
I smiled to put him at ease, I let my fangs show between my lips. He wasn’t the dream man I’d imagined, but his blood would taste sweet all the same.
1.00
Evolution (Short fiction)
It happened fast. Much faster than anyone thought evolution should to make a difference. And it wasn’t just happening to babies like you’d expect it to either. It was something that happened to all of us, even grown adults. I suppose that the situation was pretty extreme since civilisation as we’d known it had fallen apart. The zombies had overrun the cities, they wandered the country roads. If the zombies saw a house that was still standing they would target it. No idea how they did it but more and more dead bodies would just appear. Like moths to a lightbulb. They were very determined when it came to getting inside where people were.
Those of us who had survived, who had managed to not just give in to the fear or the zombies themselves had learned the value of high places. Treehouses were easy to hide and the zombies weren’t so clever that they could learn how to climb up the rope ladders. Plus, it’s easy to pick them off from above, a dropped rock will do it.
There was this whole village starting out up a mountain, the climb to it was only manageable with a hardy four wheel drive and the snow stopped the few zombies that made it that far up. The snow was deadly to them. They had no circulatory system left so no way to keep themselves warm.
The thing that happened, it happened to me first when I thought I was going to die. I was walking along a ridgeway, a lush green field with weeping willow trees. I was surprised by a wandering mob of zombies. They surrounded me. I don’t know what it was that had attracted them to that spot, it’s possible that they could smell me I guess, like a fox tracks a rabbit. They appeared and I had no weapons. I’m not a fighter, I’ve survived as long as I have by running away. I’ve left my family, my husband, my friends. The random people I met on the road who tried to help me. Every time the zombies have got too close I’ve run. This time I couldn’t see anywhere to run to. The zombies were every way I looked, shambling closer each second. I panicked. I whipped my head around but there was no way out. I started crying I think, from the fear.
I decided to try running anyway, insomuch as I could decide anything. It was probably more like a flight response. I aimed at a gap between two of the zombies. The gap couldn’t have been more than a metre wide and it was a slim chance at best, but when I took those first steps something shifted inside of me and I felt myself rising instead of running. Instinct took over, I relaxed, stopped running altogether. My body lifted into the air sweetly and easily, like a ghost. Like a silk scarf.
I sailed up into the air, my body getting blown about a bit. I rose quickly, out of reach of the monsters who looked up at me, uncomprehending.
The sky is open. There is so much space up here and no one to share it with but the birds and the bats. Now I live in a settlement in an old ski lodge just on the borders of the village. There are about five of us living together, trying to make a life in this new world. Everyone’s lost all the people they cared about, we’re just muddling along, trying to be there for each other. I room with Matt, he and I bonded because we both miss MTV.
The lodge is much too high for the zombies to walk to, if they even know we’re here. We do flyovers and check out the cities, find quiet spots where we can grab food. Some of the others have started vegetable crops. They don’t need to stay to tend them because the zombies aren’t interested food that grows in the ground. They’re just interested in us. We can water the fields from above with buckets filled with snow melt. Harvest time will be a bit harder to manage but I think it will be alright. The ground is mostly theirs now, but there’s plenty we can do from the air. The most important of course, is running away.
Matt pointed out that it’s only a matter of time though, before one of them catches one of us. Then we don’t know what will happen. Will the zombie be able to fly? I don’t like to think about it.
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[By the way, feel free to comment with feedback, constructive criticism or joyful gushing 
]
Short fiction – The Other Side – Sam’s curse
We moved into the other world because my father was offered a job there. The existence of a Medieval fantasy world alongside our own had been discovered about 5 years earlier. Well, discovered is a nice word for it when the portal just freaking opened up in the middle of a road in Chicago. Hard to deny really. It had been long enough since official portals had been regulated (read: guards added) that there was an Earth embassy over there. The UN and some particularly enterprising, or as I like to call them, stingy corporations had moved in. The companies out sourced call centres to The Other Side, because India had got too expensive. Why bother employing humans at all when orcs and elves were dying to fin dout what it was like to answer a telephone and get paid minimum wage.
There’s your vague world view. Hope you liked it. The story I’m trying to tell is about how I had to start a whole new school. I had been against the move from the start. I had friends at my high school, my sister was settled in some sort of Barbie doll haze with a bunch of other 8 year old girls. We had a house with a double garage and wireless broadband. We were happy.
Mom and Dad were sketchy about exactly what Dad would be doing on The Other Side and I can’t say I was that interested. I just protested every way I knew how against moving at all. And I thought up a lot of ways. It didn’t work. Since when do 16 year olds get a say in their own lives? Since never. The retarded thing about it all is that they came to this new world and we had this house with a white picket fence and a yard with a rock garden and Dad planted a lawn out the front so that he could still go out and mow it on the weekend.
Like, let’s move to this whole new environment where there are actually dragons flying around and elves and shit and just change nothing about how we live our own lives. So there we are with a new two car garage and two storeys and lace curtains in the kitchen and outside people are being beheaded if they look at the King the wrong way.
Kelly and I had to go to the same school. It was an Earth style school so it was like super popular with all the non-humans. That was good because it meant it was big enough to have classes for each year level and we weren’t stuffed in the same class with the 5 year olds like some back water country school. Mom and Dad took us in when they enrolled us and the school principal was a fucking centaur. Like yeah, sure, we’ve just transferred from another dimension. I can’t get MTV here and if I misbehave in class I’m going to be sent to half a horse. Whatever. (more…)
What’s The Worst That Could Happen?
Sneak preview! This is just a wee excerpt of one of my main character Shelley’s tangents. The book is written from her perspective, so this happens a lot, and she worries, a lot.*
Shelley is a superhero and in this scene, well, her superteam ain’t doing so hot.
So there we were: trapped and in deadly peril. I hoped Jordan’s back up would arrive soon. I wondered if I’d put on clean underwear under my costume. I actually couldn’t remember, I might have just left yesterday’s on from last night. Which would mean that I had been wearing the same undies for like, 48 hours. Gross.
My Mum would be so disappointed in me if I died in old knickers.
What was it about that anyway? Why does it matter if you have clean underwear on when you die? You still end up dead. Okay so the Emergency Services people might, maybe think you were a slob if they were stripping your body and somehow realised that the underwear you had on wasn’t freshly laundered that day, but so what? You were, by that stage, kind of past caring about it. I mean, I don’t know what happens when you die, maybe you move on to your final reward or maybe you just stop altogether but I highly doubt that you are hanging around in spectral form worrying about what the paramedics think of the state of your undergarments.
This is what I was thinking as I was threatened with death by vampire bite. There really is something wrong with me.
So, hope you liked it!
*Note to self, EFT tap on ‘Even though I have a worst case scenario brain….’! OMG do it now.
ETA: I just wrote another 11 pages of new stuff and am keen to keep going. Go the EFT! I also spread the EFT mania to my extended family. (Mother in law and sister in law)
