Category: Short Stories

Andrew reached across the workbench and took the axe down from where it hung on the pegboard. He peeled the protective sleeve off its head and regarded the blade, took in how the light glinted on the steel.
This would make a great story.
Except…
He had nowhere to write. He didn’t have a place to call his own, in which to summon the muse. He knew she was there, waiting to descend upon him with the inspiration and the words he craved, but it wasn’t going to happen at a place as mundane and distraction-filled as the kitchen table, was it?

Continue reading “Flash Fiction: “No Excuses Now””

Jesus.
They were coming back.
Hadn’t they had enough?
Didn’t they get tired?
I was exhausted, physically and mentally. The last few weeks had left me spent. And yet here they were back to wring the last of my reserves.
Their feral eyes glinted in the orange evening light reflected in the fresh puddles. I’d hoped, prayed, the afternoon rain would have driven them away for the day. But as soon as it stopped and the sun tore a hole in the cloud overhead, they tore a hole in the silence, howling, squealing, growling and nipping at each other as they returned to dish out more of their onslaught, the very thought of more of this torment a torment all of its own

Continue reading “Flash Fiction: “The End””

Monday morning.
There’s nowhere I need to be.
And nothing I have to do.
Once, this was the dream. But seeing as I never got round to putting something by for the proverbial rainy day, it’s the farthest thing from.
No matter how much I might have hated the day job, at least it gave me purpose. I’m not going to find much of that strolling along on this actual, non-proverbial rainy day in these depressing, gray woods, but maybe the fresh air will do me some good.
Yeah, right.
It’s not fresh air I need; it’s a job. And quick. The shitty severance I got isn’t going to last pissing time.
I’m laying the ground work for another sleepless night or ten, doing the mental arithmetic of just how much time pissing time amounts to, when I step ankle-deep into a mud-filled puddle.
Well, of course I do.
Cake, have some icing.
I squelch-limp over to a long-fallen tree and take a seat on one of its broken boughs. I don’t bother taking the shoe off. What’s the point? It’s forty degrees outside. Not like waving my sock around is going to help it dry any. I sit there long enough for it not to matter anymore. Long enough to drift off into my own little world of opaque pointlessness, a world so sealed off from this one I do not see or hear the little boy in the brightly colored raincoat until he’s standing right in front of me.

Continue reading “Flash Fiction: “Martin””

You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. That’s what my mom used to say. No idea where the hell it comes from, but I know what the hell it means, believe that. So when Flash Harry glides up alongside me in his two hundred thousand dollar ride, the right-hand side of his S-Class overstepping rudely into the bicycle lane, the gleaming black bodywork so close all I have to do is move my knee a bit to the left for it to touch me, I know what I gotta do: tumble to the ground screaming and crying like a soccer player in front of the opposing team’s goal. I tangle my legs up in the frame of the bike as I roll, for optics you understand, as I hear his brakes apply. The car stops on a dime, right the way you’d expect, and Mr. Mercedes climbs out, jogging up to me in his nice blue suit.

Continue reading “Flash Fiction: “Mr. Mercedes””