Let’s look at the facts, shall we?
It’s officially dark out. All of the gates are closed, chained up and too high to scale. The makeshift parking lot in the distance is empty. Empty aside from the horde of strangers that charge the fences whenever you get close. Your group of seven is now down to one. Their group of dozens is armed and out for blood. The fact of the matter is, you’re dead meat.
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There weren’t always dragons in The Valley.
They arrived much later, like phantoms from the shadows. Once the reeds had grown tall, the mountains had been carved down, and the trees had tangled themselves up like lovers. The dragons came with the last wave of changes. The Valley needed impact. Guardians to lure in adventurers with their jewel colored scales and legends of riches. So, the dragons came into existence. On June 18th, National Flash Fiction Day (a group based in the UK) posted 24 prompts - one for each hour of the day - and tasked writers to craft 250 words or less flash fiction pieces. Since this was their 11th year, the themes of the prompts were focused around the number 11.
Below are my pieces, which were first published on The Write-In.
Severe Thunderstorm Warning in effect until 12:00am
Warning: Battery life - 5%
Kayla:
Are you almost here? I’m hungry and tired of waiting on you
Me:
Almost, I got stuck in the storm. I couldn’t see so I had to park. Waiting for it to let up.
Jax:
Where are you?
Me:
Under the covered bridge by the grain silo.
Kayla:
You know what they say about those bridges when it storms like this RiGhT?
Me:
I swear if this is another one of your stupid internet legends I’m gonna lose it.
The storm outside was brutal. The small town’s roads were hardly cared for this time of year, even though it was inevitable that snow would roll in ‘bout now. Cassie couldn’t see the street outside the window, the single working lightbulb above the two gas pumps flickered from the cold snap that had swept over the day. A morning fog had turned to sleet which turned to powder. She was bored. All of her friends had headed into the city for a concert, they were probably in cute outfits, drinking draft beer, swaying to the slow strum of a guitar. And here she was, snowed in overnight in the station with her hardback novel and barely two bars of signal. At least the pay was decent.
The jack-o-lantern in the window was growing moldy this late into the season. The owner, Mr. McMillan, was unable to throw it out. His daughter would throw a hissy fit every time he touched it. There it remained, turning black and shriveled. It looked out of place next to the large Santa who waved to the patrons with a hitch in his elbow.
It’s cold.
Bitter. The kind of cold that, no matter how many cigarettes you smoke, shots of whiskey you down, or logs you burn on the fire, everything still hurts. It's always cold. My fingertips lost all feeling a long while ago. I’m well acquainted with how my breath looks before my nose, how it escapes my lungs when I step outside like a punch to the gut. I don’t know how long it’s been like this, how long the winds have carried the snow. How long ago the world simply stopped. When the sun went away. You lose sense of time after the sun stops showing up. The clouds are too thick. I pretend every day is Saturday. Just to keep a smile on my face. One. Two. Dot-dot. Zero. Four. A.M.
The moon was bright and perfectly round. Like a brand new nickel. Shiny, silver, that untouched-by-messy-human-hands kind of new. Young Lily Pikeman kept her eyes glued to the vivid green numbers on the oven display. She was in her long nightgown of pink and lace, eagerly anticipating the moment her eyes would see it change to one two dot-dot zero six A.M. That was when her birthday really began according to her mother, who told her the cupcakes were off limits until the actual moment she entered the world. When the clock had a one then a two, with two tiny dots, then a zero and a six on it - 12:06 - she would truly be older. Thus deserving of the coveted prize. She was eyeing the cupcake on the counter, just barely out of reach of her tiny, soon-to-be four year old hands. If she was careful enough she could slide a kitchen chair across the pure white tiles and get one of the shiny pink treats without waking her mother and father down the hall. One. Two. Dot-dot. Zero. Five. A.M. Lily smiled. Unaware of the dark eyes looking at her from the shadows. There stands a house on Marlow Lane. In this house lives a deafening sense of silence. It’s tucked away so tightly amongst the great oaken trees it was built within that no sound, nor wind, nor creature of earth or sky dare to trespass. The wind chimes on the porch no longer sing, the wooden floors no longer creak, and the grandfather clock on the second floor landing sits quietly alone. Forever frozen at 3:03pm. The house has never seen a murder, nor was it born on sacred ground. No curse was ever laid on the clay below, no ritual ever desecrated its heart. Opposite of this fact, no children have ever laughed in its homely halls, no Christmas gatherings were ever made into memory in its grand living room. For you see, the house died long ago, breathing life no more and never again.
It was a warm morning in August, an uneventful Friday that was going to be hot and sticky. The kind of late summer day cursed with a humidity that left the outside of the basement windows peering into the morgue covered in condensation. A soft dew obscuring curious eyes from taking a gander at the new addition. If one were to have dared to sneak a peek inside, they would have seen what one would expect. The cold slab, the freezers, the tray with blood soaked autopsy tools, the body of Mrs. Mortensen covered by a white sheet. Not a thing out of the ordinary. When it came to small towns like this, where everybody knew everybody, the news of the old widow having died the night before had turned to quick gossip. It wasn’t a surprise to see her there, it was to be expected that an autopsy would need to be conducted before she would be put to rest next to her long-dead husband in the small town cemetery just a mile down the road.
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AuthorA collection of short stories and flash fiction pieces. These original tales are the property of Alycia Davidson 2017-2023. This section of my site is rarely used now as I tend to post more short stories on my Patreon. Archives
July 2023
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