Friday Flash: Sucking Water

I made it! I got a #fridayflash and it’s still Friday where I am.

She lay back on the rough wood, smiling into his eyes. The wasteful expanse of miles of clear blue water around them was exhilarating.

The sun was warm. Fuzzy white clouds skated past above in the azure sky. A small one detached itself and wafted in their direction.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

He gently stroked down her shoulders. “Passed out. Poor bastard drank too much.” Smugness there, pride in his decision to drink slightly less. 

She smiled. “Excellent.”

She raised a fist, punched him in the throat. He flopped over to the deck, gasping. She followed up by banging his head against the wood several times. His eyes rolled up into his head.

She got to her feet, dusting off her hands. Work was tough, sometimes.

The craft hovered above the ship now and she lifted her arm, thumb up. A large pipe dropped into the water.

They were going to suck up all the clucking enemy’s water. Give them a taste of their own medicine.

Friday Flash: Fourth Birthday Parade

This fridayflash is for the fourth anniversary bloghop at the friday flash website. The idea is to write a story 400 words long about the 4th anniversary/birthday of something. After several false starts, I finally managed. I was inspired by this picture:

A few excerpts from the Annals of Dead or Lost Colonies:

Dear Julie,

The colony has just gotten the order for the hyperspace module. It’s taken a year, but we finally have it. This will be the first of many letters until you can come here.

I have a house. It’s small, but it has a garden. It’s ours, free and clear.

The hypo gardens are not doing well. Except for the lantern cherries. I don’t understand it. There is a group studying the problem.

Yours always,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

I miss you. Will you come soon? I’ve added two bedrooms to the house for the children. There is plenty of space. Hyperspace travel is very safe, don’t worry.

The colony celebrated our third birthday with a grand parade. I was in the lead float, as the directory of horticulture. It was quite wonderful.

The lantern cherry have become our biggest – our only! – export. They are in demand and tasty. I suppose it’s good they grow bigger here than anywhere else. They look more like giant melons than cherries. But I don’t quite understand why nothing else growing.

Yours always,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

I’ve been promoted, dear. I am now president of the horticulture department. The last president died quite unexpectedly in the Greenhouse A. Poor Jerry. At least he died at work. Greenhouse A is where we first started the lantern cherries. We have ten, now.

The colony’s fourth birthday is in a month and we are providing cherries for the decoration. The last of the flowers died months ago and we haven’t been successful in growing any others. Not even marigolds. It’s baffling.

I do wish you would come. I know the ships scare you, but hyperspace travel is so fast these days. You wouldn’t have to spend months on a ship in normal space. I dearly want to see the children, dear.

Love yours,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

Don’t come! Stay away! God, I am glad you never came.

The cherries destroyed the parade. It was mad. They exploded and attacked and will take over the planet shortly.

This will be the last message I send.

I am going to blow up the greenhouses and take as many of the cherries as I can.

This is why nothing else grew. They’ve been devouring them, the murderous, subtle lantern cherries.

I bet they killed poor Jerry.

Yours forever,

Ben

Friday Flash: Queen’s Quill

Trying to figure out a Friday Flash story whose title started with Q was a challenge, but I think I managed.

The queen’s quill lay on the desk, temptingly close. Its carved silver handle gleamed in the sunlight.

Qut wanted to touch the beautiful orange feather. So strange. What bird could have such iridescent orange and red feathers?

She stroked the smooth silver. It was warm to the touch. She glanced over her shoulder, listening. She heard only the slither of silk. The queen was still getting dressed.

She picked up the quill pen and caressed it softly, like a mother touched her baby’s head. Qut dipped the quill in the red ink and wrote a word on a blank sheet.

“Excellent choice, dear.”

Qut whirled. “My Lady, I was -”

“I know what you were doing.” The Queen smiled. “I am quite pleased. Quite pleased.”

“Oh – I, uh, thank you.”

“Go on.”

Qut turned back to her sheet and wrote another word. There was a sharp pain her left palm and when she looked, she saw her palm was spotted with blood.

“Quite beautiful, dear.” The Queen smiled, took the quill from her hand jabbed it into her heart. “You’ll make such perfect ink.”

Explosions of Color

This Friday flash was inspired by a photo I saw on 500 px. Here: http://500px.com/photo/28050051 The picture is called Color Explosion by Margaret Morgan. The link looks like it is not working and I think that’s because 500 px doesn’t have a link to the actual picture.

This flash is 700 words and a lot longer than my usual Friday Flashes.This is also my E post for the A to Z challenge. E is for Explosions of Color.

A child raised his gun and took aim at me from the balcony across the street. I turned, hurrying to the door. Too late! A wet splat hit my back and I looked back.

The child grinned at me, toothless and full of glee at having caught the foreigner so.

I scowled and marched inside. I would have to change. Again. This was the third time today.

Liquid blue blate dripped down the back of my shirt. The precious mineral the natives of this crazy planet considered good luck. Everyone splattered everyone with it today, the first official day of spring. It was supposed to bring a good harvest. I didn’t understand the how or why, but I didn’t need to.

All I knew was that I need a ton of pure, unadulterated blate if I was going to pay off the banks. The natives mixed it with water, with clay, with smoke and sold it on the streets for games. And for some reason they refused to sell it off-world. Why they should refuse those profits, I didn’t understand.

My brother eyed from the couch, laughing. “Leave it on,” he advised me.

I stared at him.

“They’ll take it as a challenge if you don’t,” he said.

Maybe. I still didn’t like the feel of my shirt, plastered to my skin and wet.

“Also, we don’t have time for you to change again. We leave in five minutes.”

My brother was a tech specialist on this benighted world. He had come here a decade ago and somehow survived. Most foreigners didn’t. Today, I was grateful.

“The dealer is an hour outside the city.”

He meant smuggler, but whatever word he liked. I wasn’t picky.

 

The trip out of the city was long and boring. Nothing but the same stone-and-wood buildings everywhere. Nothing but the same cobblestone roads, now liberally splashed with blate. They were colorful. Pretty, if you could overlook the weeds sprouting from between the stones.

The smuggler lived on a farm. White flowers grew in the fields. My brother led me to a barn. It was white and red. The roof sloped in that odd design most roofs here shared.

It was dark inside. The only light came from windows up high, near the roofline. The smuggler lounged on top of a wooden crate. I eyed it. Maybe it had the blate I needed. More crates lined the left wall, some open, some empty, some spilling over with the same white flowers growing in the fields.

He hopped down as I approached. “Greg. Good to see you. This your sister?”

“Yes. I told you what she needed.”

“Yes. Pure blate.” He studied me speculatively.

“I can pay,” I told him.

“Sure you can. But. Before I give what you need, you need to do something.”

He spoke my tongue very well. Better than I expected from a blate smuggler.  “What?”

He retrieved a dull metal plate from behind him. It held five pewter bowls, each filled with a different color substance. Red powder, blue liquid, yellow paste, green balls, beige grains.

“It’s a ritual,” my brother murmured behind me. “Harmless. Spread them on your face. Eyelids, nose, mouth, cheek, forehead. Right to left. Go on.”

I dipped my fingers in the cold, slimy mixture and did as my brother said.

But then the smuggler began to change. His skin looked like lizard scales. Pointy white teeth. Floppy ears.

I whirled to face my brother and gasped when he looked the same. “What did you give me?”

The smuggler moved to stand next to my brother. I saw now that a thick gnarled white rope wound around my brother’s throat and disappeared into the smuggler’s chest. “Blate, darling, exactly what you wanted.”

The room turned bright, light shining down from above where there was no light source. “You betrayed me,” I whispered.

“I had no choice, sister. I can’t . . . won’t let you take any blate off-world.”

There was so much light now I could hardly see anything, couldn’t even make out his face. “Bastard.”

“The most loyal man I’ve ever had,” the smuggler corrected. “Perhaps one day you’ll be like him. Close your eyes now, darling. Rest.”

Friday Flash: Reborn

This flash was inspired from an image on 500px. I cannot find it now, but it was gorgeous. It has 312 words.

A handful of children gathered around the storyteller. The children were sleepy from a rich dinner and the warmth of the fire, but still they clamored for one more story.

“Hush,” she said. “Very well. One last story.” And she began to speak.

Blood seeped across the sky like slow-moving clouds.

She watched and feared.

Around her the villagers paused to watch for only a few wing-beats before hurrying to their homes. They knew what it meant, too. They wanted to be gone before the thrice-cursed priests arrived.

She ignored the pitying glances. Ignored, too, the icy cold and red pellets that fell from the sky and froze in her hair.

She knew her beloved would come back to her; he had promised and he never broke a promise. No matter that the foreign priests turned him and the host he commanded into so much red mist.

The priests, grim in their bright red trousers and robes, did not see her. Fools. Perhaps they thought her a statue.

One pushed past her to the village square she guarded. But the moment his sleeve brushed her arm, he turned to ice. The other priests, seeing this, charged her with knives and scimitars. All of them disintegrated into the cold night.

“And that is why none dare attack us even today,” concluded the storyteller. She smiled and shook her head at the shouts for more. “Off to bed with you now. Go.”

When they were all safely asleep and the room rang with silence, she rose and went to look out the window. There, the same bit of land she had defended so many centuries before. Others had built a white marble statue of her there, but glorified the details of her face.

Still her beloved had not come. But she would abide until he was reborn as the man he was meant to be.

Friday Flash: Without Me

This Friday flash is inspired by this image from Wiki Commons:

A soft, warm wind stirred his hair and he looked around, grateful anew for his luck. Lush green growth provided fresh food all year around. He would not leave it.

His brother cleared his throat and he turned toward the canal. His brother, poor sod, wore a fine woolen tunic. The boy was too proud to wear more appropriate clothing.

“The first summer caravan leaves in the morning. You’ll go with it.”

“Father said -”

“I don’t care what Father says. If you want to live, you won’t either.”

The boy shook his long, blond hair. Northern men didn’t cut their hair. Another tradition he’d broken.

“I won’t leave without you.” Stubborn conviction rang in his voice, as hard the mountains buried under mounds of snow ever year.

“Father is murdering, conniving coward. He killed our mother. I won’t ever serve him, brother.”

“Not him. The village, the reason our mother sacrificed herself. The omens -”

“-are wrong.”

No belief in the boy’s eyes. He only stared like a wolf with his prey in sight.

Shivering at the image, he turned and walked to the house. “You leave tomorrow. Without me.”

Friday Flash: The Introduction

A new, odd sort of drabble. It is exactly 99 words. I don’t know what to make of it.

Strange mysterious items dropped through windows – magically, as if glass didn’t exist. They plunked onto the sleeping laps of car residents. Their oblong shapes made odd objects d’art on snow-covered lawns.

People everywhere woke to the sound of bells and the fleeting sense of something passing. They pored over their new property. Poked and prodded them with sticks, dogs and scanners.

Television personalities expressed puzzlement; experts spoke stern warnings.

Ultimately, when opened, they revealed pens that wrote equally well on paper and screen. Writers were overjoyed.

The event went down in history as the day the aliens introduced themselves.

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Friday Flash: Storm

This flash was inspired by memories of a recent storm. Wind, hail, rain. Watching it was pretty damn glorious.

A storm raged through the mountains, slashing at the lone peaks like a claws slashed at flesh.

The god was upset. She stood under the open skies, soaked to the bone, hair clinging to her skull and crowed.

She’d told him, hadn’t she? She’d told him.

Disobeying the god did no good. Even if the rules were wrong, unjust and hateful. Opposing him was like carrying water in cupped hands. Impossible.

Her brother was stupid stubborn. He wanted to protect his daughter. It wasn’t her fault the boy died, he said. She had to defend herself.

They’d both die now.

Friday Flash: Ivory Ring

 This story was inspired by a wiki commons picture.

This school field trip would be the very definition of tedium but for one thing. He scanned the ground, fingers clenched around his sister’s precious elephant bone ring. Poor thing. So sick, she couldn’t come down to view this planet’s marvelous flora.

The teacher droned on ahead of them. “Look. The fel flower devours flesh and bones.”

Enclosed by meter of wide mesh wiring, there was a bright red plant. It looked like his sister’s red-lipsticked mouth. He smiled at the memory of it.

“The gale here – ”

He ignored the teacher. Instead he slipped the ring through the exhibit’s mesh cage. It fell directly inside flower’s mouth. He watched it digest the ring.

The last trace of his sister. Gone.

He followed his class to the next exhibit with a spring in his step. Marvelous flora indeed.

Friday Flash: Trapped

A new friday flash! This one is 169 words. It was inspired by this photo at wiki commons.

Daybreak turned the sky a beautiful, harsh orange. The bright color hurt her eyes and she slipped the special dark goggles over her eyes.

Why had he come here? Even for a hunter such as her brother, survival would be difficult here. Too much sun. No red lakes to feed on. No decent winds to ride.

A sharp roar tore through the air. She whirled around, saw the all surface truck rise through the air. She ran; her bodyguard sprinted ahead and shot at it. But it rose too fast and was soon too far away to even see.

The truck left behind a small pile of dirt. A small furry animal poked its head out of the ground.

She raised her weapon and shot it. It was a neat shot; only a little bit of blood stained the ground. She picked it, put her mouth to the wound and sucked out its sweet red blood.

“We’ll find more,” she said to the guard. “We’ll rebuild and take revenge.”