Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

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Ginger

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An overripe rosehip berry
Photo by Mihai Moisa on Unsplash

Hi all, I’m back (one day late, sorry!) with a brand new piece of flash fiction for you. Enjoy!

Anything could happen. That was the fun. Alex put the itching powder into the spice rack. Maybe people would make funny faces as their mouths itched, maybe they wouldn’t notice. Or maybe it would taste great, and he could go on TV! One of those cooking shows that his mother liked.

The butterflies in his stomach, which had been fluttering all day, panicked as they sat down to dinner. He’d been in and out of the kitchen “getting underfoot” as mother called it, to see what she’d put the itching powder into, and it only occurred to him now, that if “anything” could happen, something bad might happen. His teachers often pointed that out on his report cards. “Needs to concentrate more,” “unable to think of the consequences of his actions,” “… lucky things didn’t turn out a lot worse.”

What if someone got sick? What if they got hurt? (These were two distinct things.)

It was bell peppers stuffed with minced meat, beans and feta cheese. And plenty of chili. They all liked spicy food, and the itching powder looked like chili flakes. So that’s where he’d dumped it all. And it was only now that he realised that he’d be eating it too. “Unable to think of the consequences of his actions.” Now he knew what that meant!

“I don’t feel well,” he said. It was a shame. If he got sent to his room, he’d miss all the fun.

“Well, eat half and you can be excused,” said his mum.

“I feel bad.” Was that his imagination, or could he smell the bitter itching powder mingled with roasted paprika and gravy? He pushed the red (potential) bomb around on his plate. His mom sighed. She didn’t want to say anything. The psychologist had suggested that he acted up to justify the bad reputation, a perfectly natural defence mechanism which he would grow out of. But still…

“Alex, did you…?”

He pinched his lips together and his cheeks flushed.

#

The itching powder didn’t work, maybe the cheese had gummed up the hairs (the powder looked like the seeds of rosehips). But she had blamed him. For nothing!

One day he’d be on TV. Maybe not a cooking show, but for something. She’d be sorry then. He jabbed at the bell pepper again, so hard that the plate cracked.

My next book The Phoenix is being released within the next few weeks. It features possibly the world’s most gorgeous book cover of all time. Want to find out more? Sign up for my newsletter right here for the cover reveal!

Gold

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Sepia coloured photo of an old-fashioned kitchen
Photo by Jim DiGritz on Unsplash

This week’s flash fiction is something I don’t write too much of: a kitchen-sink drama. Let me know what you think!

It’s a blizzard outside, the whole world has disappeared. Except, I think it means the whole world is there, except me. I’m in the static between television channels, waiting for the cathode-ray tubes to warm up and send me back to one channel or another.

There’s a knock at the door, in the middle of the blizzard. It’s nothing, really. All that talk about TVs and static is me being dramatic.

It’s a man outside. He’s not a neighbour, you understand. I don’t know him from Adam. But, when I opened my door he was backlit by the white blizzard, and it was only right to let him out of the storm.
He tells me it was like being stuck between TV channels out there, and that was my thought. I don’t like that a bit. It bothers me as we sit, each of us with a cup of tea that I made.

The storm has been going on for a long time, and I still have tea in front of me, even though I’m drinking it. Both of us sit side-on to the kitchen table, looking out the window for the world to appear.

He’s familiar, like someone who’s been on a show that you can’t quite recall the name of.

This feels like a dream. We sit in comfortable silence though we don’t know each other.

I’m waiting for the cathode-ray tubes to warm up. I think he is, too.

I see the grown-up versions of Tweedledum and Tweedledee thirty years after Alice forgot them and the magic of Wonderland drained away. What about you?

Stood

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An empty old-fashioned lecture hall
Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

Hi all, this week’s piece of flash fiction hearkens back to the good old days of cheesy 80s horror. Enjoy!

“Time to take the bandages off,” said Dr Stood. In the excited air of the lecture hall, the patient had his cocoon unwrapped, one soft layer at a time. When the last piece of gauze had been removed, there was a gasp, for nothing remained underneath.

Dr Stood’s wolf’s teeth grinned out of his thick black beard. ”The patient’s wounds were too serious, his body could not sustain such grave injuries. He has been absorbed. Now, see that you don’t let him escape.”

The pile of bandages no longer gleamed from the stage, though Dr Stood had certainly not tidied them away.

In the front row a student, Hawkins, grunted and flailed at something, like he was shaking off an attacking dog. The boy next to him did the same, and the next. Creeping into view, a piece of white fabric wound its way around their bodies, tightening its grip on their necks.

“You see? He has his strength back.”

The entire row was being pulled sideways after the bandage, which tightened further to cut into soft living flesh, turning red. How could such a thing live at all?

“The patient was weak,” said Dr Stood. “I merged him with my own genetic material.”

It had reached my row. The hideous thing was no more than a millimetre thick, but strong. At its front, rendered by the blood, red lips, flushed cheeks, covered by Dr Stood’s beard of wolfish black fur.

If you liked that, you might like some of the short stories I’m putting together to be released later this year. Want to find out more? Sign up to my newsletter for updates, free fiction and personal recommendations. Click here to join!

Spins

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Sunset in a red sky
Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash

This week’s piece of flash fiction is a little bit darker. Enjoy!

We’d head half a mile out of town and watch the sun go down in the old red Toyota. The windshield glowed, then reddened. And the girl would appear in the field in front of us and we let her in the back. Every night.

I don’t feel bad, and Rich didn’t either, I guess. I don’t know about the girls, they never said anything.

No, Sir. Not a girl. Girls. A new one every night, come down out of the sun. I told you.

Well, where else are we gonna put ‘em afterwards but in the earth? That’s where the sun goes every night. Comes back up the next morning.

No sir, I never hurt no one, just helped put the sun to bed.

Well, maybe the sun is her soul, so she has to die for it to come back the next day.

We never did anything like that to them. We just drove around until they cooled down enough to touch, then made them get out of the car and turn away so we could kill ‘em without them seeing.

If you only found one body, that proves my point, because we’ve been doing this for months. That hole should be full.

Like most of these stories, this is an edited version of a writing prompt exercise. The idea is just to keep writing and see what happens. As soon as I had written the first sentence I immediately noticed the mistake, which suggests that the sun is setting in the Toyota. So I wrote the rest of it trying to find out what that would be like, if it was true.

Building

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A skyscraper building
Photo by Simone Hutsch on Unsplash

I recently had a conversation with someone who insisted on telling me something that WE BOTH KNEW FOR A FACT was not true. So that’s where this story comes from. Enjoy!

They kept referring to it as Central City’s tallest building, even as the spire and top ten stories had to come off, because the weight was cracking the foundations.

It was still pretty big.

Then, one morning, it looked shorter. It was sinking into the ground.

By the time everyone assembled, it was midnight. The Great and Gracious Sultan of the country did not like to be summoned. But he was willing to be present when the architect and the construction manager insisted that, only he, the Great and Gracious Sultan could help them figure out what to do. If the ground was as solid as the Sultan’s Grand Engineer (and son-in-law) had told them, then it was inexplicable that the building should sink. The Great and Gracious Sultan clapped the Grand Engineer around the ear-hole, then went to see what he could do.

The answer, of course, was simple. No mistake had been made. The building was too beautiful to be seen by common people, some of whom had said mean things about it, and even meaner things about the Great Engineer, when he had – admittedly quite late in the project – suddenly decided to have the top 10 stories and the spire removed, after deciding that he preferred the old-fashioned style of uncracked foundations. The building could take no more and was retreating into the ground.

But this was a wonderful opportunity! For each storey the building sank, they could add another storey above ground. And who said that the only way to build a tall building was to have it sticking out of the ground?

Well, from now on the Sultan would show that a building could start anywhere, even underground. All the architect and construction manager needed to do was to ensure that each storey had its own entrance in the ceiling, so that the people who were supposed to be working there could continue to access the building.

What?

Certainly they should continue to work there!

And the Great and Gracious Sultan clapped his hands and when he got home, he smirked at the Great Engineer and his daughter hugged him and whispered in the Sultan’s ear, and they both looked at the Great Engineer and laughed.

And the building work continues to this day!

One day, perhaps, the foundations will pop out through the Earth’s crust on the other side of the planet, and if they keep building, then it will be two of the world’s tallest buildings, the Great and Gracious Sultan be praised!

The latest edition of my monthly newsletter comes out this Saturday, featuring the winner of last month’s competition, an extra-long short story, as well as my usual tips and updates. If you’re not already signed up, then click here to avoid missing out!

Forgotten

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Rusted sheets of corrugated iron
Photo by Wilhelm Gunkel on Unsplash

We’re going home for this week’s piece of flash fiction. Or at least to school. Enjoy!

We always took the tanyard shortcut to school after lunch. We only had half an hour and spent a lot of that time queueing for a go on the chip shop’s arcade machines. The school’s principal hated it and used to lie in wait where you came out of the trees that surrounded the school grounds. No one at the tanyard minded us traipsing through, except for Paddy Short and his dog. The tanyard was what nowadays would be called a Business District, or maybe an Incubator. In those days, it was just the tanyard, where businesses went to struggle, shrivel and die. Converted old sheds with battered trucks with telephone numbers on the side.

A dog might scare off intruders, but it was a magnet to schoolkids. Nothing made sneaking into school via the forbidden tanyard more exciting, than first kicking on the gnawed door of the shed where Paddy kept the animal locked up to make it bark, then running off before Paddy came out with his walking stick over his head, his jaws working in rage.

#

I hadn’t thought about it in years, but when I went back to the town to take care of matters after my mother died, I found myself down at the tanyard. Ireland was in the middle of a property frenzy, and the rundown sheds had bloomed into large outlet-style “bathroom paradise” businesses. Still right at the back was Paddy Short’s shed.

And then, maybe out of habit, I thought I’d kick at the door where the dog had lived.

“I wouldn’t do that,” said a voice. The principal. I recognised him immediately, though it was thirty years since I had last seen him.

“I suppose he’s no longer there anyway, is he?”

“Paddy? Oh, he’s there, all right.”

“But he must be 100 by now.”

“Something like that.” He had come up to me and I had my back to the shed. “You prick. I was never able to catch you. But I have you now.”

The venom in his voice! Then he kicked the door and ran off. Before I could move, a hand snaked out and grabbed me.

See you next Thursday!

Morgan