Carry On

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers11 Comments45 views

Luz stood in the foyer with her eyes closed, breathing the old smells, corn and beans and singed chiles, beer and smoke and sweat.

She smiled, remembering how Oscar had kept it a secret while he lined up the loans, how he’d led her in blindfolded.

It had been an empty room then, not much more than four walls with a stove in the corner, a few tables, some wire chairs.

Thirty-five years they’d been open, not counting the food stall at the market. They’d raised six children with  two grandchildren so far.

Luz busied herself getting ready for lunch.

Friday Fictioneers

The Swimmer

Fiction Prompts, What Pegman Saw14 Comments36 views

Jammy Doggs stepped into sea and waded out, the pull of the waves sweet against his legs.

He bent to feel the water between his fingers, test the temperature against the eighty years of sea wisdom he held in his heart.

The gentle fog rolled across the waves, cool and lovely.

The white sand shone below the clear water, a school of minnows darting this way and that, moving as one.

He walked on, his feet raising clouds of sand smoke trailing behind him.

The cool water lapped against his waist and started the three shocks: first to the groin, second to the chest, and finally to the head.

Then he was swimming, free as any fish or dolphin, though not as skilled.

He drifted down to the bottom, turned to look up through the water at the moment the sun burned through the fog.

This beauty caused his soul to sing as it always had.

What Pegman Saw: Florida

inlinkz frog

God’s Will Be

Fiction Prompts, Friday Fictioneers17 Comments48 views

And just as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone.

Dwight raised his head and looked around.

Everything was broken and splintered as far as the eye could see.

Tufts of insulation hung in the still air like so much snow.

The church had vanished, the bare foundation and its few reaching fingers of twisted rebar the only reminder of what had been.

But no, that wasn’t all.

The altar stood, the Cross of Gold and Miraculous Praying Hands undisturbed.

Even Deacon Rodd’s Holy Bible sat atop it, turned to the very page Deacon had been reading when it hit.

Friday Fictioneers

Dog of a Mutineer

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Historical Fiction, What Pegman Saw8 Comments54 views

Pricket sat in his cabin and stared again at his chart. Clearly there was no Northwest Passage and never had been.

They’d been embayed in ice these last six months, starving and riddled with scurvy and flux. With the slow coming of spring they had a chance to take leave of this damnable wasteland, sail away and perhaps even make it back to England.

A knock at his door. “Green and Juet to see you, Mr. Pricket,” said the seaman.

They came in, wan and thin as ghosts.

“Well?” said Pricket.

“Captain Lord Henry wants to try again,” said Juet. “He believes the uppermost estuary has promise.”

“The one we explored last summer? Nonsense. It’s another horsehoe inlet.”

“We agree with you, Mr. Pricket. But the captain…”

“Has clearly taken leave of his senses. Do you agree?”

They stared the deck, saying nothing.

“If we do this thing,” said Pricket softly, “we must do it entirely.”

What Pegman Saw: Manitoba

Historical Note:
After spending the winter of 1611 trapped by ice in the present-day Hudson Bay, the starving crew of the Discovery mutinied against its captain, Henry Hudson and allegedly set him, his teenage son, and seven supporters adrift in an open boat. They were never seen again.

Descriptions of the mutiny are one-sided because the only survivors were the mutineers themselves. Navigator Abacuk Pricket kept a journal that was the primary source for the narrative of the mutiny.

According to Pricket, the leaders of the mutiny were Henry Greene and Robert Juet, neither of whom survived the voyage home.

Latter-day historians belive that the story of the boat was a fabrication, and that Hudson and his supporters were in fact murdered in cold blood and dumped into the bay that bears his name.

That’s It

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers15 Comments49 views

Some kind of Buick, left in a stream. It used to be somebody’s dream.
-Adrian Belew

Chandury walked from the office to the his aged Honda and propped the broken hatch with his shoulder while he set the box beside the others.

He let the hatch drop and stretched his sore back.

The motel looked about the same from the outside, but he knew it was an illusion. The long decay that came from amassed  deferred maintenance, guest complaints, refunds, vacancies.

The maids had been dismissed five years ago, the threadbare towels never replaced.

Bedbugs had been the final straw.

Friday Fictioneers

Cash Only

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, What Pegman Saw16 Comments61 views

The woman smiled up from the table, her mouth a wonder of dentistry. “Welcome,” she said. “Remember, cash only.”

The house was modest, yet overfull. Every item bore a small yellow tag with its price. I stood in the living room in front of an empty china cabinet, its contents arrayed on the table behind me. I picked up a plate bordered with green and decorated with a Christmas tree.

A group of old ladies shouldered in. I set the plate down. A lady picked it up and flipped it over. “Spode,” she said to her friend. The friend came over to look.

I went down a flight of wooden stairs into a basement workshop. Shelves lined the walls, each stacked with tools of every description. A box on the floor contained calendars. I picked one up from 1956. Each month was adorned with a leggy girl.

Everything was for sale.

 

What Pegman Saw: Rapid City, SD

Hart’s Cove

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers21 Comments62 views

The drone of the airplane seeped into my dream. I bolted awake and smacked my head on the branches of my makeshift lean-to. The pain in my leg roared through me, a blinding streak of red that fogged my vision for a second.

But the plane was real.

I gritted my teeth and started to crawl out of the shelter, my heart racing with panic. The pilot could probably see my beached canoe, the remains of the campfire.

Maybe they found Drew’s body downstream, or pieces of the other canoe.

I waved. The plane dipped its wings and circled down.

Friday Fictioneers

Mule

Poetry3 Comments22 views

The mule, he takes it, the stick

-to him

is but part of the hand

he will not fight it,

nor understand

His panniers sag from many stops

-a cruel master puts in river rocks

what use, a man might ask

but not the mule.

the reasons are sound,

plain for all to see why the man beats

the mule about his tired back

as he

looks calmly at the ground.

He hits all the harder

-the animal’s indifference

offends

the man believes the tree that breaks

is one that cannot bend

 

Shangri-La

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, What Pegman Saw9 Comments33 views

“You’ve had an accident.”

The voice was soft, with an accent Lloyds couln’t place.  He tried to open his eyes and saw nothing.

“We bandaged your head,” the voice said. “I’m afraid it leaves your eyes covered. It’s temporary.”

Lloyds opened his mouth to speak, but this too proved impossible.

“Oh, so sorry,” said the voice. “You broke your jaw so the doctor wired it closed. You also fractured your right arm and leg and probably a few ribs. All of us here think it’s a miracle you survived. The mountain seldom gives up those it claims.”

Lloyds wanted to ask where he was, how he got here. The last thing he remembered was the morning brew-up. Somebody made a rude joke. What was his name? He could see the blue eyes and sunburned face, the white grin splitting the red skipper’s beard. The face but not the name.

What Pegman Saw: Bhutan

Euston Station, September 1940

Fiction Prompts, Flash Fiction, Friday Fictioneers, Historical Fiction16 Comments51 views

“It will only be for a few weeks,” she told them, raising her voice over the wails of the other children. “Be brave for Mummy.”

“And Daddy too,” said Christiana.

Maude looked at her daughter as though for the first time, the blue coat buttoned up as though it was already winter, the way she held her little brother’s hand. So adult.

“Where did Daddy go?” asked Michael.

“You know that, silly,” said his sister.  “Gone to fight Hitler. We’re going to the country because of the bombings. We’ll be safe as houses.”

At this, Maude burst into tears.

Friday Fictioneers

Fear that German bombing would cause civilian deaths prompted the government to evacuate children from British towns and cities during the Second World War. Evacuation took place in several waves. The first came on 1 September 1939 – the day Germany invaded Poland and two days before the British declaration of war. Over the course of three days 1.5 million evacuees were sent to rural locations