Flash Fic Challenge – Dark at Heart
This was the latest writing challenge, latest writing challenge, and I got Harry Potter meets True Detective. Well, I tried. ** Dark at Heart The letters burned green in the air, hovering over the charred corpse like a video advertisement. Her partner, Burdett, sighed, impatiently shifting his weight foot to foot. “So, is it?” Katya’s green eyes finally glanced away from the mystic sigils only she could see, the scar on her cheek tingling with residue magic. “No, Holt, people routinely burst into flames in meat freezers. Of course it was done by him. Or his people. The magic’s so similar it’s kind of hard to tell.” He groaned and turned away, heading for the open door crisscrossed by crime scene tape. They’d turned off the freezer, but there was...
Read MoreHolden, Part 3
3 – Krill Holden was in the shower, pondering whether he should use the fruity smelling conditioner or the one that smelled a bit like bad aftershave – for some stupid reason, all “men’s conditioner” was a variation of bad aftershave – when his phone hummed and jittered on the sink. Because of its proximity to the porcelain, it made much more noise than he anticipated, and was kind of startling. Still, he conditioned his hair, mixing both kinds together, because what was he, an animal? He wasn’t risking split ends due to a text. When he got out of the shower, he checked his phone, and saw that he was indeed texted an address from an unknown number. Towel around his waist and still dripping, he went to the living room so he could check the...
Read MoreHolden continues, Part 2
As a New Year’s treat, here’s part 2 of the Holden story. Mostly set up, but I hope it pays off … 2 – Part Man/Part Negative Space Holden headed home to take a shower and wash the blood and fear stink off of him. Other people’s fear stink was always the worst, as it seemed to cling to you like cigarette smoke. Still, he had this good peppermint goat’s milk soap that seemed to obliterate any scent, no matter how tenacious. Even hockey stink, which he knew was difficult to get rid of at the best of times. Afterward, he slipped into his velvet “lounging pants” (pyjama pants, but that seemed too immature), and poured himself a big tumbler full of gin, which he threw a lemon wedge in for vitamins. (He could just about hear...
Read MoreFlash fic – At The End Of The Tunnel
More Twitter fun: @FrogCroakley @aspeed Your standing challenge is now “the girl who could only see trains”. the story must also contain a tame bat. Here’s the result: It figured that the first day of his new job, his car wouldn’t start. On the bright side, it gave Jeremy the chance to worry about how he was going to get to work, rather than obsesses over whether or not he’d make a fool of himself in front of his new boss. He wasn’t too far from the train station, so he caught a lift with a grumpy neighbor. Something about the station looked run down, gone to seed. Then again, when was the last time he’d caught the train? University, probably. Seemed like a lifetime ago. He went up to the ticket booth, digging out his wallet, and said,...
Read MoreA little holiday treat – Merry Christmas, Roan
If you know anything about Roan, you probably know he’s not big on holidays. Which is probably why I’m putting together a collection of Infected shorts based around holidays. He may hate them, but he keeps running up against them again and again. This one concerns him and Dylan at Christmas, a holiday that neither particularly look forward to. But it’s good to have friends. ** Merry Christmas, Roan Roan was taking a long, hot bath, when he thought he heard voices downstairs. Now Dylan was up, he knew that simply because he could smell his heavenly huevos rancheros cooking, and also he wasn’t in bed when he woke up. But Roan assumed Dylan was alone. It was technically Christmas Eve, though. Had his sister Sheba come over? Dylan normally told...
Read MoreFlash fic – Crabby
This one came from a request on Twitter: @FrogCroakley – @aspeed will you do me a 200 one about a man with crab DNA struggling to make it as a con artist in future las vegas? Okay. It’s actually a bit over 200 words, and the bizarre thing? I could have kept going. ** Crabby Carver looked out at the heat waves rising from the asphalt, and wondered how anything human ever survived such heat. Even in the walkway suspended between Shell’s Tropicana Casino and the Hallburton Mayfair Hotel, you could feel just a bit of the heat bleeding in through the plasteel. The air conditioning was fighting a losing battle when the sun was out. A couple of pasty, overweight tourists trundled past him, and he pulled his baseball cap low over his eyes, even though he...
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