Category: Flash Fiction

Feast Day

Women in long flowing white dresses dotted the gathering place. The fragrance of flowers filled the air from the orchards nearby and men of all ages set down blanket for the picnic. This year it was going to be a wonderful gathering. The morning sun warmed the air and birds sang out from the massive trees that offered their shade. Her mother had kissed her forehead and placed the wreath in her hands, then sent her out.

               She knew what this meant. She was the chosen this year. She wasn’t the prettiest, or the smartest, and she was far from being the most popular. But for some reason, which she didn’t quite understand, they had chosen her. She was quite sure of what she was supposed to do other than to pick someone. Her hands clutched the flowering wreath, and she hoped that no one would notice that her knuckles had turned white from her grip.  Who was she going to pick?

               She had to pick the right person; everyone was counting on it. Many people, both men and women flocked to her, as she wandered. They hoped that she would pick them. All she had to do was set the wreath upon someone’s head and it was done. Everyone would know who she picked and would gossip about it for forever. This is why she didn’t want to be the chosen, but they had picked her. Someone told her once that they drew the names out of a little hat. She wasn’t sure if it was true or not. No one knew for sure how they picked the chosen every year.

               Her mother had beamed with pride, and with tears in her eyes. She told her that she had to choose well, because whomever she picked, she would have to live with it for the rest of her life.

               “Please pick me.” Her sister whined. “You have to always pick family first.”

               “But” she replied. “I don’t want to. I don’t really want to pick anyone.”

               Her sister huffed and moved away. She could live with her sister’s disappointment.

               The day wore on. People were starting to get impatient. They wanted to know who she would give the wreath to. No one could start cooking the festive meal until she had chosen, it was a sacred tradition that no one was willing to break. In the years, before, someone had always been picked fast in the morning. It was just past noon and the sun had already climbed to its zenith. People were starting to wonder about why she hadn’t chosen anyone yet. She could hear their whispers.

               All eyes were now on her. Voices hushed whenever she walked by, and she knew without a doubt that they were talking about her. They didn’t think that she would choose anyone.

               “Why don’t you just choose me.” Daisy snarked at her. “I don’t know why you were made chosen anyways. I deserved it more than you do. You are just a useless skank.”

               “I don’t really want to choose anyone.” She replied. Daisy and the girls around her laughed. She hated their laughter. They had tormented her ever since she and her family came to this place.

               “I know you don’t.” Another of the girls sneered. “Who would want to be with you anyway?” Someone pushed her from behind. She turned and didn’t see who. Daisy covered her mouth and snickered.

               “You should let me choose for you.” Daisy laughed. “I will choose, and we will all get to eat tonight.”

               “Okay.”

               “What?” Daisy gaped. “Are you serious?”

               She nodded. “Point at who you want to me to pick and,” she held up the wreath. “I will crown them. I never wanted to be chosen.”

               Daisy laughed. “Damn right.  You are pathetic. A nobody. They should have picked me. In fact, I pick me. Hand it over.” Daisy held her hand out for the flowers.

               She smirked. “No. We will do this the old traditional way. Kneel.”

               Daisy rolled her eyes and kneed on the grass before her. She lifted the wreath high then slowly placed in on Daisy’s head. “There.” She said. “It’s done.

               She took Daisy’s hand and lead her away. The picnic always happened in this same field because it was the farthest from the kitchens. They didn’t want the smoke from the ovens to disturb the community. The elders said that it was symbolic, this journey away from everyone. They said that it was important to spend this time with one’s chosen and to appreciate them.

               She didn’t appreciate Daisy. Daisy snarked at her for the entire time of the walk. Why do you have to be so weird? Why don’t you dress better? You suck. The questions went on and on. Daisy never shut up. By the time they arrived at the steel doors of the kitchen, she had grown tired of listening. It was wrong of her to not totally appreciate Daisy. She knew that. Choosing Daisy was something that she could still live with, however.

               She waved at the door, like her mother had told her. She hadn’t been this close to the kitchens before. The entire building had been made from thick steel and no one knew how long it had been there.

               “So, what do we do now?”

               “We wait.”

               They didn’t wait long. The entire building shook. The doors didn’t slid open to the side as she had imagined that they would. She could hear the gears grinding deep with the structure. The doors lurched upward revealing a cavernous space filled with shadows.

               They stepped forward, a trio of elders. They moved silently over the dusty floor and their faces were hidden with the deep folds of their robes.

               “You have chosen.”

               She swallowed. “Yes.”

               Their robes swirled around them as they turned towards Daisy. She took a deep breath, raised her chin, and stubbornly held her ground. “You have chosen well. Very well.” One placed his hands on Daisy’s shoulders; the other pulled a long knife from beneath the grey cloth.

               “Wait!” Daisy tried to pull away. “What are you doing?”

               “You have been chosen for the feast.” One of the grey ones said in a low whispering voice. “She was chosen, but she chose another, and she chose well.”

               “No! Please! I don’t want to die.”

               “It’s okay.” The grey one said and raised the blade.

               “Wait.” She shouted. They turned towards her. She held out her hand. “I am the one who picked her. Please let me do it.”

               The elder nodded and held the knife out to her. She took the blade. It was heavy in her hand and it felt, not good, but right. Daisy started screaming and struggling against the elder’s grip.

               She smirked. She sliced open Daisy’s throat in one smooth motion. Blood turned the white dress red and splatted on the ground. Daisy’s bright blue eyes stared as her last breath guggled free.

               “You should have been nicer to me.” She said.

Day 1 : Do Brains Taste Like Chicken?

Write about a delighted zombie.

It is light, but it is cold. But I am always cold now. I don’t really understand why. I think that I died, but I didn’t really die. Oh, there is so much that I don’t understand, so very much. I should be worried about the state of things, but I just can’t bring myself to care. I think that I need to sleep, but I am too hungry to sleep. It just smells so good.

Everything seems so fast. Those dogs are lightening fast. How did they get so fast? I try to grab one, but it is just to fast. I want to cry. All I want to do is touch one. It is so cute and fluffy and it smells really good to, not as good as the other thing, but really good all the same. All I want is just a little taste. Come closer doggy. I won’t bite. I promise. I will just take a little nibble, if only you will let me pet you. Why do you have to run so fast.

I wish that I could run that fast.

I remember running fast. It was so long ago. I had two feet then. Yes, I remember, it was Bob. Bob ate my foot. Fuck you Bob. I liked that foot. It was my favorite. Now, my legs don’t work right. I want my foot back.

Someone is shouting. I think that they are shouting at me. I try to say something back but I can’t remember how to talk. The sounds coming out of my mouth don’t make any sense. They are just sounds. I sound like a ghost, like from one of those really old movies.

Others are there. There isn’t going be enough left if I go with them. There are too many. That is okay, because, I can still smell it. They can have the shouting people. It means that I can have the hiding ones all to myself. I am too hungry to share.

They are quiet, but I find them. They did a really good job at hiding. This is like playing hide and seek. Why is it that I am always the seeker? When is it going to be my turn to hid?

Ahh, there they are. They are fast, but not as fast as the dog. People, especially the little ones are so much better than dogs. They smell better, and taste better. Oh, I am so hungry. They can’t get away. One tries to push past me, but I grab him. I like hugs. You won’t mind if I take a nibble will you? I haven’t eaten since, forever.

This is so much better fresh. Leftovers are okay, they will do in a pinch, but nothing beats fresh. The texture is still somewhat mushy, and it smells soo good. It smells better than it tastes. Why do brains always taste like chicken?

Northren Lights

Again?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Alright. I will tell you again, from the beginning. I will warn you, though, you are not going to like or believe anything I say. You are not going to believe a single fucking word.

Why? Well, because, I don’t believe a single word that is about to come out of my mouth and I was there. I saw the whole thing. I know exactly how it sounds, but I swear to you. Everything I am about to tell you is the god awful truth. I am not crazy. I wish I were, but unfortunately for both of us, I am not.

I can’t tell you the exact day when I first saw him. Or, even where. I was hitching along the northern stretch of highway one going through northern Ontario. There is little that I can say about exactly why I was there. A ride went bad and I got out of the car, and yeah it was bloody cold. If you have lived all of your life within city limits, it would be hard for your to imagine just how fucking cold it gets up there in the middle of winter. When it is that cold, you don’t stop moving. It doesn’t matter how tired you get or how long you walk on that road, you keep the fuck moving, because, it you stop, if you rest, you won’t ever wake up again. It won’t matter how many layers of clothing you are wearing. If you stay still for long enough, that bitter cold will worm its way through to your bones and suck the life right out of you.

So, yeah, when the car stopped for me, I got in. It didn’t matter where he was going at that point, or if he was safe, or if he was drinking or if I smelled some good shit, I was getting in that car. I needed to at that point, because after a few nights of walking through bugger fuck no where, I knew that I wasn’t going to make it through one more night. What can I say? People like me don’t have anything to loose. Sure, he could have killed me, but if I stayed out there I was fucking dead anyway.

I got in the car first. Fred or whatever his name was stopped for that guy sometime after he picked me up. I climbed into the backseat with my pack and let him ride shotgun.

Right from when I first set eyes on him, I didn’t want him touching me or my stuff. Picking him up wasn’t my call, it wasn’t my car. I don’t even know how he was alive. You see, an experience traveller like me comes prepared. You don’t need to be a genius to know that 40 below zero is fucking cold and to put on the layers, but this dude, he was fucked in the head. There just isn’t any other way for me to explain it. All he had on was a windbreaker over a t-shirt. He didn’t even have a toque on. I don’t know how he got all the way out there without his ass getting frozen off.

“Where are you heading?” Fred asked the guy.

“Just up the road a bit. I will show you where to let me off.” He replied. “I have to meet someone up there. I just hope that they will wait for me.”

“Good friends of yours?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, you could say that.”

Fred turned his attention back to the road. “We will get you there. You just sit back and get your self warm there. Just be sure to”

Our new comer smiled weakly and settled in. I did to for that matter. It would literally be hours before we reached a town or something. Okay, I admit it. I dozed for a while. It’s not the safest thing to do while hitching, but sometimes you gotta catch a few winks while you can. It was sometime later when I woke. It wasn’t so much the car slowing down that woke me as much as it was Fred quietly arguing with the guy.

“But there is nothing here.” He was saying. “I don’t even see a car or anything parked here, and it is going to get bloody cold after dark.”

“This is the place.” The dude replied. “They are expecting me to be here. It doesn’t look like they are here yet, but I will be fine.”

“I am just not comfortable with just leaving you out here.” Fred sighed.

“I’m with Fred here.” I had to put my own two cents in. “You can die out here if you’re not careful. It won’t take long for your ass to wind up frozen solid, and no one will find you till spring, if ever.”

“I will be fine.” He insisted.

“Just be sure that you want me to drop you here.” Fed said. “This is like the middle of nowhere. There isn’t even so much as a telephone pole out here.”

“And you are going to freeze man.” I quipped. “Or get eaten by wolves or something. Come with us to Sudbury or what ever the next town is called.”

He shook his head and continued to bundle up. I passed my spare gloves to him and he pulled those on to.

“I am going to be late.” He said. “I wish that I could take you too, both of you, but you need an invitation. They don’t like strangers.”

Fred and I exchanged looks. It was pointless to argue with the man as that point. You can’t argue with fucked up in the head, crazy like that. You just never know when someone like that is going to turn on you.

“Alright then,” Fred said. “Alright, I will let you out. But we are going to wait.” Fred and I exchanged looks and I just nodded. Leaving a man out in the cold like that, in the middle of winter, that is like a death sentence. “If you get too cold, come on back and I will take you somewhere, where you won’t freeze your ass off.”

I don’t know what he was thinking and I am not sure if I really wanted to know, to be honest. That man, he didn’t hang out on the road, or start walking along the highway. He climbed over the snowbank and headed into the bush. He didn’t have the gear for that sort of thing and I knew then, or at least I thought I knew, that he was a goner. He got right to the edge of the trees and that is when everything got weird.

The world got bright, and even though, it was still daylight, the northern lights came out to play.

Those lights were the most beautiful this you could ever see. Look, I’ve been around. I’ve even been up north and by up north I mean far up north. So, I can tell you that I have seen the northern lights and they don’t even come fucking close to what I saw that night and I have never seen anything like that. Those lights, they came down from the north and jived. They blocked out the sun and jived. Those colours danced so bright that you couldn’t see anything else. We couldn’t help but loose site of the guy. We couldn’t see anything other than those lights man. It was all just dancing colours, I don’t even think that there are names for any of those colours. So, yeah, since we couldn’t see shit, no snow no trees, not even the hands in front of our faces, if we even cared to look.

Then just like that, is was gone. Nothing was there, and everything was back too normal. Except for that dude. He was just gone. I asked Fred to wait and he said that he would. That Fred, is a really good guy by the way. I got out of the car and went to see where he went. I am not a tracker or anything like that, not how hard can following tracks through three feet of snow can be?

They didn’t go far. I followed his trail maybe, I don’t know, fifty feet into the bush. It didn’t lead anywhere, it just stopped, in the middle of clearing. You might want to get some experts or something out there to take a look, cause, from where I was standing, there was no where he could have gone. Three feet of snow remember. I know that sounds fucked up, but, I would have seen where he went. It was still daylight and, okay, I just don’t what else to say.

We stayed there for quite a while. It was getting dark when Fred decided that it was time to get moving. We didn’t say a word. Neither one of us wanted to just leave him there in there in the middle of nowhere, but we had to get our asses moving if we were going to make it to the next town before a blizzard or something hit. I went and found myself a bottle, as soon as I climbed out of the car and got shit faced. I don’t know what happened to that dude, and I never saw Fred ever again. Never wanted to, if I am going to be honest. I just want to forget what I saw that night. I am not crazy, but that is what happened. I am not going to try to explain it.

Into the Wilds

They were close. She could hear the hounds baying as they caught her scent. She could smell the musk of the hunters who followed them. If they got too close, there would be no loosing them. They would catch her, then kill her.

She gathered all four feet beneath her and ran. She had no time for anything else. There would be no backtracking, no laying down of false trails, or for any of the other tricks that would throw them off her scent. She had no time.

Her world was nothing more than the pounding of her heart, the rhythm of her feet hitting the ground and the trees that rushed by.

Her only hope was to put as much forest between herself and them. She didn’t dare think about who they were, or what they had meant to her. She couldn’t afford to let the grief consume her. Her life depended on it.

It didn’t take long for her to for the hunters to fall behind. The same could not be said for the hounds. The dogs were almost nipping on her heels. No matter how hard she ran, they were still closing the distance between them. These dogs had been trained to relentlessly run down prey. They had been conditioned to do so from the day they were born. She has only had a few hours to learn how to be a wolf.

If only there was a creek or river that she could use to make them loose her scent. If only there was time for her to change back into a girl. If only she knew how.

Her only hope was to get as deep into the forest as she could and prey that there was a point where the hunters would not pass beyond.

From the time before she could walk, she had been told stories about the things in the forest. Those tales wound themselves inside her head. Her aunt had filled the evenings with yarns of the dark and unnatural things that lurked in the shadows of the trees. Things that always waited to pounce on the unwary.

Naughty children were particularly delicious, she had often been told.

She had no idea if any of it was true, and it didn’t matter. There might be something dreadful in the wilds, and then, there might be nothing. It might kill her, and then, maybe it wouldn’t. There was no way for her to know for sure. But she did know, those who hunted her, people whom she had known her entire life, most certainly would end her life.

Trees grew larger the deeper she went in. The undergrowth became more dense. Branches clawed at her fur and the ground became uneven beneath her feet. Having more legs meant only that there was more ways to trip.

She burst through the trees and skidded to a halt. A deep ravine split the earth open before her. It was too wide to jump and too deep to climb. She could go left or right, and she picked one.

She did her best to hurry, but the uneven stone forced her to walk. The granite edges were uneven and unstable for her to do anything other than to walk.

She came to a dead end before long. Looking up at the crumbling wall of stone before her, she sighed. It was over. There was no where else she could go.

Her tongue rolled out of her mouth as she panted to catch her breath. The baying of the hounds sounded on the air, and the hunters would not be far behind them. Every muscle in her body begged for rest, and she lay to rest, first on her belly, then on her side. She had nothing left to do but wait. They would find her soon enough and end it.

Even wolves can cry.

The cold seeped from the rock and into her fur. She didn’t notice that the cries of the dogs are her trail faded away and ceased. There was a part of herself that didn’t care. She didn’t even hear the sound of the person approaching her. Feet covered in leather boots appeared before her eyes and by then it was too late.

Gentle hands rubbed her ears and she whimpered at the touch.

“It’s okay, little sister.” A deep voice said. “You are safe here. Welcome home.”