Posts Tagged ‘#Fridayflash’

Theology

Friday, September 17th, 2010

Amanda and Eydis walked down the hall of the Aletheia Building on the way to their next class. They’d been roommates since freshman year and even though they had different majors, they tried to take at least one elective together every semester. They watched in amusement as new students scrambled to find their classrooms without looking lost. One boy in particular caught Amanda’s eye.

“Check out that fresh meat,” she said. “Rawr.”

Eydis followed her friend’s gaze and stifled a grin. “He’s a little buff for you, isn’t he?”

“Please. He’s got tall, dark and handsome on lockdown and you think I’m going to complain about his muscles?”

“You do usually prefer them thin and brooding…”

Ligossa popped up out of nowhere, as she often did, her wings brushing against Amanda’s arm. “I hear he’s a transfer,” she said. “Scholarship boy. From community college.” Her tone put that on the same level as someone with a horrible, disfiguring disease.

“Smart, too, eh?” Eydis patted her friend on the back. “Guess you’d better pick the wedding venue.”

Amanda rolled her eyes.  “What’s his name, Oss?”

“I think someone said it was Joe.” She ruffled her feathers and sneered. “Have fun slumming it, Mandy.”

“Don’t worry, I will.” She hated snobs who cared more about genealogy than ability. Squeezing Eydis’ arm, she sauntered off toward the boy and flashed him a smile that nearly made him stagger.

“Need help finding your class?” she asked, tucking a strand of curly auburn hair behind her ear. “I’m Amanda.”

“Kojo,” he said with a polite bow. “My friends call me Joe. I believe I have found the room, but I thank you for the kind offer.”

Amanda looked up at the number over the door. “Oh, you’re taking Basic Shapeshifting? So am I! What’s your major?”

She sensed his blush even though his coffee-black skin barely showed it. “Finance. I would have preferred to take something else but my parents are rather old-fashioned.”

“Don’t worry, it will be fun.” Batting her eyelashes, she leaned closer. “You’d be surprised how invigorating it can be to… fully experience different forms.”

Eydis arrived then and Amanda introduced her. “Eydis is majoring in hydrology with a minor in luck. She’s taking the class, too.”

As tall as Joe was, Eydis could almost look him right in his big brown eyes. She decided after a handful of seconds that she liked what she saw and held out an arm for him to grasp.

“Come on, we don’t want to be late.” Amanda tucked her arm into Joe’s and steered him toward the door.

“And what are you majoring in?” Joe asked.

Joe smelled absolutely divine, like a mix of coffee, lemon and cayenne pepper. “I’m still undeclared,” she lied. For some reason, these young sweet things always tensed up when they found out she was studying to be a love goddess. And did she ever love to study.

The Third Half

Friday, September 10th, 2010

The teacher gestured and the next question in the lesson hovered in front of the white board. The dark letters were as clear as if they’d been printed on the air.

“What is the capital of New New York?” she asked.

A dozen holodesk lights flashed in response.

“Yes, Amily?”

The little girl grinned and lisped, “New New York City.”

“Correct, thank you.” Another gesture, another question. “In what year did Google establish the first colony on G-Earth? Marius.”

“2247,” the boy replied.

“Very good.” Her gaze fell on another boy in the back of the room, slouched in his chair. His eyes fluttered open periodically as he struggled to stay awake. She pursed her lips.

“Danel, what are the principal exports of Neu Deutschland?”

He sat bolt upright. “The principal exports are coffee and tea making facilities and a large number of people who have been in the business of the company and—”

“Enough,” the teacher interrupted. “Please, turn off your autocomplete function and pay attention.”

Danel blushed. “Sorry.”

Outside In

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Monica didn’t notice the problem with the window over her couch until she looked through it and saw herself walking down the street. The other her was carrying a bag of groceries and looked tired, as if she’d just come from work. Inside her new apartment, Monica stopped dusting the blinds and stared, confusion melting into denial and then fear.

Before she knew it, her doppelganger had passed beyond her vision and was gone. She slid the window open and peered outside, but the street was empty except for a light breeze teasing the edges of her short hair. In the distance, a dog howled, starting a chain reaction of barking in the neighborhood, and the sun slipped low enough behind the horizon that the street lamps winked on.

With nothing to see, Monica closed the window and backed away, her brow furrowed. She finished cleaning and had started to boil water for pasta when movement outside the window caught her eye.

There she was again, jogging away from the building in a sweat suit. Monica’s neck tingled as she watched herself move; she had bought those clothes yesterday, swore she’d start exercising again to lose the nagging five pounds everyone seems to have. What was going on?

She raised the blinds and tried to open the window, but it wouldn’t budge. Across the street from the other Monica’s receding form, she saw a slouched man lean against a lamp post. From above, his face was hidden in the hood of his jacket, but he turned to watch the jogging Monica, hands buried in his pockets. Then, he looked up at her window. His face was still obscured, but she could see the glint of teeth as he smiled at her.

Monica grabbed her keys and rushed downstairs, throwing open the door of the apartment building. A kid rode his bike past her on the sidewalk and an older woman hobbled to the curb to dump her garbage, but there was no man anywhere in sight. Was she hallucinating? Was it some kind of trick? She covered her mouth with her hand and clenched her eyes shut. When she opened them, nothing had changed.

Back inside, she heard the hiss of water on hot metal; the pot was boiling over. Cursing under her breath, she tore open the box of pasta and dumped half of it in the water, glancing at the window as she did. The blinds were still up, and she could see the man standing where she had last seen him. Watching. Waiting. She set the timer for the food and knelt on her couch to keep her own vigil.

At last she saw the strange other Monica return. She was walking, now, with one arm raised and the other clutching what must have been a stitch in her side. The yellow light of the lamps turned the sheen of sweat on her skin into a sickly glow. As she passed the man on the other side of the street, he slowly crossed and tailed her, his steps slightly faster than hers.

“Behind you!” Monica shouted, trying once again in vain to tug the window open. In a few steps, the man would be on her.

Monica banged on the glass with closed fists, harder and harder until she thought for sure it would shatter. But it held, and she watched in horror as the man reached out to grab her counterpart by the shoulder and spin her around. There was a brief struggle, then the glint of a knife.

She screamed. The knife plunged into her chest, her belly, slashed across her face and arms in a spray of blood. Fat red drops littered the sidewalk like confetti after a parade. The man gave a little push and the other Monica fell to the floor and was still.

Frantic, Monica scanned her apartment, her eyes falling on the solid metal statue of a laughing Buddha that she’d bought in college. She grabbed it and threw it at the window as hard as she could. The window exploded in a cloud of sharp glass.

Instead of crashing outward, the shards flew inward. Too late, she reflexively threw her hands up to guard her face. Jagged chunks of the window embedded themselves in her torso and sliced open her exposed skin. Tiny worlds of pain blossomed around every wound even as her system went into shock. Outside, there was no body, but she saw the man look up at her and laugh, baring row after impossible row of tiny sharp teeth.

Monica never made it to the phone. Her consciousness slipped away into the fragmented world of the glass inside her as she sprawled in a spreading pool of her own blood.

Murder by Chat

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Abby had heard about the new random video chat site but had been too embarrassed to try it until now. Her friend Marcia swore that it was way fun except for all the penis shots, and told her to stop being such a prude, and anyway Darren was using it so she might accidentally stumble across him, and wouldn’t that be awesome?

Yes, it would, and now that there was a localized version to pair up people in the same state, the odds of that happening weren’t totally ridiculous. Abby picked a rainy night to up the likelihood of Darren being at home, alone with his computer. That meant her mom was home, too, but they had this mutual respect thing where if she locked the door, her mom wouldn’t bug her, so that was that. She spent an hour beforehand ransacking her closet for a really cute top, then fixing her hair and carefully applying makeup so her eyes would look wide, her mouth full and kissable. With bated breath, she opened up the site and clicked “Next.”

After fifteen minutes of brief conversations with rude boys, nonexistent conversations with other girls, and more male genitalia than she had ever hoped to see in her life, Abby was ready to give up. At one point someone had offered to draw her, and it had ended up as a picture of a monster with penis eyes. If this was all the site had to offer, she was over it, and she would tell Marcia as much. Maybe she could go downstairs and watch the end of some TV show with her mom before bedtime.

One more for the road, she thought, and clicked. The window showed a blank white space, like the other person’s camera was pointed at an empty screen. The slow blink of a cursor in the top left corner attracted her attention. Rolling her eyes, Abby moved her mouse to close the browser window.

Letters appeared as if typed, forming a word.

HELLO.

Did she feel like typing back? Not really. Bo-ring. There was no sound, just the word and the blinking cursor, which started to move again.

HELLO ABBY.

Oh my god, it was someone she knew. “Who is this?” she replied. No answer. Could it be Darren? Marcia? Someone else from school? “Come on,” she typed, “who are you?”

I AM.

Let it be Darren, she thought.

I AM GOING.

Abby held her breath.

I AM GOING TO KILL YOU.

At first, Abby froze. A tense heat began at the base of her neck and spread to her back. Then, she laughed.

“Very funny,” she typed. “Seriously, who is this?”

I AM GOING TO KILL YOU TONIGHT.

“Fine, whatever, don’t tell me,” she wrote. “Dick.” Before she could close the window, thunder crashed outside and the power went out. Grumbling, Abby carefully stepped over to her bed to get the flashlight her mother insisted she keep in her nightstand drawer. A dim glow appeared over her shoulder.

Her computer screen was on, back to the blank white page. Her breath stuck in her throat so that the only sound was the rain that tapped at her window. The screen flickered and now, instead of being empty, it contained the image of a gun.

“Mom!” She tried to shout, but could only manage a croak. The gun was a revolver. As she watched, the cylinder popped out and a single bullet floated into view. The round slid into a chamber so softly she wasn’t sure she’d really heard it. The cylinder spun like a roulette wheel and clicked loudly into place. The hammer eased back and the gun turned so that she stared down its pixelated metal barrel.

From the front, she couldn’t see the trigger being pulled, but she saw the cylinder rotate and heard when the hammer struck an empty chamber. Lightning flashed in the window behind her, on the other side of the bed, illuminating her room for a split second. Thunder boomed hard on its heels.

Abby clambered backward onto her bed, the gun following her every movement. Again, the cylinder turned and the hammer fell on nothing. Again, and again, and again. Now she did scream, over and over with pauses to gasp for breath. Footsteps thumped up the stairs but her attention was intently focused on the gun, each muted click like the second hand on a clock ticking its way to the stroke of midnight.

Lightning flashed. A heavy knock struck the door in a staccato rhythm fast as the beating of her heart.

The gun fired.

Thunder shook the house. Then, silence.

One by one, Abby unclenched her eyes. On the screen, the gun was gone, replaced by words.

HA HA HA. GOT YOU.

The icy fear in the pit of her stomach sublimated into white hot rage in an instant. “You dick!” she shrieked, throwing a pillow at the monitor. She remembered the battery backup then, the one that kept her computer from turning off when the power went out. How could she have been so stupid? And screaming like that! Her mom must be freaking out.

Abby slid across the bed and stepped toward the door. The power flickered back on in time for her to realize that someone had been knocking before, and that she had just stepped in a pool of blood slowly soaking into her carpet from the hallway outside.

Warhammer 50,000

Friday, August 20th, 2010

“Who are we facing, captain?” Nelson, a fresh recruit to the Raven Guard, struggled to remain professional, but Captain Danvers could see his genetically-enhanced muscles trembling with excitement. The rest of the squad sat around the hold of the ship, checking their gear one last time before the engagement.

“We’re up against Orks today,” Danvers answered. A collective groan from the others was silenced by a glance from the captain.

“Orks are strong but stupid, aren’t they?” Nelson asked. “We’re going to slaughter them.”

“Is his omophagea busted? Stick him in the front,” one of the squad members said, eliciting laughs. “I’d prefer Tyranids, even with the hive mind and the clicky noises,” another muttered. “As long as it isn’t those banshee Eldar types,” a third chimed in. “Damn psychic shrieks gave me migraines for a week.”

“The next man to complain gets front row,” Danvers snapped. Silence fell as heavily as a Warlord Titan’s footstep. “We use standard strategy,” he continued. “When the Orks charge in a group, we send one man over their heads to the back of the field while the rest of you scatter to flank them.”

“And when they have possession?” Nelson asked.

“We do what we can to keep the players apart, but if they’re already grouped, we don’t waste time trying to break their ranks because they’ll just trample us into the ground.”

Nelson frowned. “What, we’re just going to let them score? That’s absurd.”

Captain Danvers’ eyes narrowed, then widened again as he bared his teeth in a shark-like grin. “Looks like we have a volunteer to be the hooker, boys.”

Later, after Private Nelson had been revived from the suspended animation brought on by the reaction of his Sus-an membrane to extreme trauma, he would look back somewhat fondly on the day he learned the true meaning of the “WAAAGH!” But he would always be one of the worst space rugby players in the Legion.