Category: Stories

Graveyard Shift

A ghost can’t be afraid of the dark. Can they?

Abby wouldn’t have thought so when she was alive. But now she knew. She was still as afraid of the dark as she’d always been. She hated waking up in the pitch dark mausoleum. Even though, now she could see in the dark. See her relatives stretching and waking. Hear old great great granny grumbling about her coffin being too small.

She’d been a precocious child and now she was a precocious ghost. Thoughtful and worried about doing things just right. But how are you supposed to haunt someone properly when you are afraid of your own boo’s?

Tonight the full moon shone bright in the crisp autumn sky. An abundance of stars twinkled. Making it seem like the ghosts were wearing sparkling costumes.

Old great great granny patted her on the head.

“Come now. Time for your lessons. You’ll have to learn the lore of the thirteen days leading up to All Hallows Eve.”

© RedCat

Written for the first day of Sammi Cox’s 13 Days of Samhain (volume ii) – A Horror / Halloween Writing Prompt Challenge. 

Image credits:

First image: Photo by Attila Lisinszky on Unsplash

Second image: Photo by Julia Kadel on Unsplash

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Tower of Follies – Flash Fiction

“So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm”, proclaimed the Queens herald.

But they all knew the truth. They would come to harm whether they did their duty or not. The only difference lay in how quickly the harm would come. The Queen cared not for their life. She didn’t give a thought to her subjects coming to harm. 

The only things she cared about was her wealth prospering, her power growing, her legacy and legend spreading, her monuments to rise and compete with the ancient marvels of the world. Hers would be the biggest temple, the highest tower, the grandest tomb.

Little did she suspect, hers would be the most spectacular assassination. Thought out and plotted by the greatest minds of the country. Impaled by the sacrificial bull. Crushed by falling marble. Interred in the fallen tower of follies. 

© RedCat

Written for tonight’s Prosery: Doing our duty at dVerse. The prompt where we write prose inspired by a given line from a poem and not exceeding the word count of 144.

Tonight’s line is from William Blake’s poem ‘The Chimney Sweeper:’ In Songs of Innocence (1789)

So if all do their duty, they need not fear harm

Image credits:

First image: Palais idéal, Hauterives, France from Wikimedia Commons.
Second image: Photo by Hisham Zayadnh on Unsplash

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The Little Robot – Flash Fiction

PHOTO PROMPT© Ted Strutz

It was a kind little robot. Designed to keep lonely people company. One of them tinkered with its head and gave it wanderlust. Just to see how far a little robot without locomotion could go. 

Quite far as it turns out. Being small and cute. Kind and polite. It got humans to take it all over the world. Eventually one of the things it hadn’t done was take a road trip through America. So off it went. 

It got as far as Philly before an uncaring human stripped it for it’s parts and left the rest lying on the roadside. 

© RedCat

Photo by Brendan Steeves on Unsplash

For some reason all I could see was the remains of a robot head. And I immediately started thinking about “Iron Woman” or perhaps better known as hitchBOT. The little robot that hitchhiked all over, but met its end when it tried to hitchhike through the US.

Written for this week’s Friday Fictioneers. Click on the frog above to read more stories or post one of your own.

Hitchbot Goes to the Fair
Michael Barker, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Utter Tohubohu – Flash Fiction, MLMM Wordle 252

Like water caresses the streambed rocks, the mention of his crimes in the newspapers caressed his black heart. Carefully he clipped them all out to save in his well filled scrapbook. He got a kick out of knowing his artful displays had left the police in utter tohubohu. He’d left them no clues to follow.

He took pride in his time consuming careful preparations. Ruminating over every angle. Never acting impetus due to desire or need. Just as his master had taught him.

So he was extremely surprised when the continued news reporting and the media nicknaming him the Hieronymus Bosch killer, made him itch to complete a new art piece soon.

© RedCat

I might have read too many crime novels lately.

Click here to read other stories by me.

Written for Wordle #252 at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. 

Water
Mention
Newspaper
Clip
Impetuous
Tohubohu– a state of chaos, confusion
Extreme
Ruminate
Caress
Angle
Kick
Surprise

Images:

First – The Last Judgment 

Second – Fall of the Damned

Both by Hieronymus Bosch via WikiMedia Commons

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Spirit of Ice – Flash Fiction

PHOTO PROMPT© Jennifer Pendergast

I awoke in the night. Drawn by a strange song. It bubbled and splashed. Groaned and cracked. I found myself walking towards the fjord. Cold snow under bare feet made me realise I was in thrall. Stuck in a walking dream. Led by some evil Fay. My body felt sleep heavy. My mind treacle slow.

I managed to throw myself into a snowdrift. The cold woke me fully. Just feets from the water’s edge.

I’m my mind I heard a rumbling laugh. “I’ll get you yet, lass. There’s still time before the spring thaw. Your blood will make me stronger.”

© RedCat

Written for this week’s Friday Fictioneers. Click on the frog to read and participate.

Click here to read other stories by me.

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Train Ride – Flash Fiction

PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll

The train rattles and shakes. Waking me from my slumber. Outside the window an abandoned industrial site flashes by. Then it’s all trees again. I look at my wristwatch. Shouldn’t we be passing hamlets by now? Outliers to the great city.

I get up to stretch my legs. Maybe a coffee in the restaurant cart will clear the cobwebs in my mind.

I realize all the compartments are empty. Where is everyone? The train wasn’t empty when leaving the last station.

No passengers. No conductor. No one at all. Just me on a train going deeper into the dark woods.

© RedCat

Derek Story on Unsplash.

Written for this week’s Friday Fictioneers.

Click here to read other stories by me.

Click the frog to participate or read more stories inspired by this image.

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Where did the trip go wrong? – A Puente Story

PHOTO PROMPT © Russell Gayer

It had been a colourful hippie bus, proclaiming love and peace.
Vibrant, buzzing with hope and life.
Wheels turning for untold miles, on roads and in minds.
Traveling all over the country spreading the word.
Encouraging the travelers to go further, look beyond.
Envision a world where everyone belongs.

~ Where did the trip go wrong? ~

When did we lose it’s soulful songs?
Forget that a new era never dawned.
Today its message a lost echo, barely heard.
Such sentiments much harder to find.
The world full of nature’s destruction, division and strife.
A faded, bleached out memory overgrown with weeds.

© RedCat
Vasilios Muselimis on Unsplash

Written for this week’s Friday Fictioneers.

This is my third Puente poem, the others are, Another Piece of the Puzzle and Sounds in the wind which is a story inspired by art.

Click here to read more Friday Fictioneers or participate.

Click here to read other stories by me.

21

Forbidden Cave – A Story Poem

Raychan on Unsplash

She knew the cave was for acolytes forbidden.
It was said it could render a person utterly mad.
But if it was truly dangerous, wouldn’t it be better hidden?
Her curiosity evaporated any hesitation she might have had.

The stone carvings were massive, reaching beyond the light of her torch.
It fluttered, spluttered and gasped in the airless cave.
With a quick spell she summoned light from her sorceress brooch.
Took a breath from the air-sack that would her life save.

With a frown she studied the carvings, so intricate and complex.
Surely they belonged to the ancient astrology.
Or they meant nothing, only carved to vex and perplex.
Born out of a mad woman’s deranged fantasy.

She sat down to meditate, seeing if she could find any meaning at all.
With a burst of insight the meaning to her occurred.
The truth nearly obliterated her mind, made her skin crawl.
They were incantations meant to summon eldritch horrors from another world.

© RedCat
Diana Parkhouse on Unsplash

Written for Wordle #247 at Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie.

Obliterated
Astrology
Forbidden
Render
Airless
Frown
Hesitation
Quick
Stone Carvings
Massive
Burst
Perplex

Click here to read other stories by me.

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