Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

Flash fiction

Return

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Graffiti of a man with a skull face staring dejectedly.
Photo by Doun Rain AKA Tomas Gaspar on Unsplash

The slogan for this week’s flash fiction is MAGA: “Make Anyone Great Again,” (I’m going to copyright that, so don’t steal it).

But first, let me tell you about this self-help group I came across. Self-help is all the rage these days, and everyone’s doing it. Even people you wouldn’t expect…

Barry always stared at the speaker’s chin. It made it hard for me to gather my thoughts, when it was my turn. Like I was being burdened with the wieght of his attention. But we didn’t judge each other here. Or weren’t supposed to, anyway. We were all equal on the folding chairs arranged in a circle in community centre’s basement.

“My name is Alice, and I’m a serial killer,” said the newcomer to my right. We gave her an encouraging round of applause. It almost felt like we were applauding ourselves: Now, we had two female killers, which made us properly progressive. I’d never been to a group where there was more than one before. “I’ve been killing for over 12 years, and… are you staring at my tits?”

Barry jerked back as if he been given a jolt of electricity, then shook his head.

“I was just listening,” he said.

I could have said something, explained about his chin thing, but we had to learn to live with each other.

Alice killed other women (which felt somehow less progressive.) She was now a headmistress, having started as a substitute teacher.

“My name is Barry,” he said, when it was his turn. He kept his gaze on the ground. “And I’ve been killing for four years.”

“Four years?” scoffed Alice. She wanted to make her mark on the group, but it wasn’t acceptable to judge the other killers. We were all doing our best.

Alice hung around afterwards until Barry left. I hung around to clean away the coffee thermos and chairs, interested to see what she might do. She clearly still believed he had been ogling her, and I could tell what she was thinking.

I’d love to kill you.

But he just wasn’t her type.

If you liked this, I can recommend horror comedy Vicious Fun, which has a similar premise and very enjoyable. Or, if you prefer arty/highbrow films and don’t require entertainment, then check out the fantastic The Hours Of The Day, which I thought was fantastic.

Voice

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A woman lying on the ground with hair covering her face. Yes, her hair.
Photo by Oscar Keys on Unsplash

Dialling up the flash fiction madness for my last March post! Enjoy!

Some people call them ghosts. I just call them voices, but then, I’ve never had much imagination. There’s no haunting, just scratchings and whisperings carried through the house to my ear as draughts. I know better than to pay attention to them.

Although there was this one thing they said which I’m still thinking about.

One day, while I was in the cupboard under the stairs, the voices told me I should get rid of the mice. They explained how to do it. How to do it and not get caught.

It was so easy. I wonder that I’d never thought of it before.

Yes, I normally avoid going into the cupboard under the stairs, but the mice had been making so much noise, and I needed to get away from it. (And yes, mice is just what I call them.)

I prepared the cheese and left it out. First on the table and the kitchen counter, then on the floor, then I ripped the yellow blocks apart and stuffed every gap, nook, and hole with cheese until my fingers glowed yellow from its fat.

The mice ate and went quiet. The cheese went blue from mould, but the house was free of their scratching and whispering. But the voices were gone, too.

I hope that doesn’t mean I’ve done a bad thing. What if the mice are having nightmares from all the cheese?

I should try some myself to check.

Tomorrow is Bandcamp Friday, and I’ll be getting the new Huntsmen E.P. The Dying Pines. What will you be getting?

Majestic

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A black and white photo of a smiling bearded man.
Photo by Kawaljit Singh on Unsplash

Did you know that fairy tales are sometimes allegories?

Well, did you know that sometimes they’re just straight up lies?

Welcome to this week’s fantasy flash fiction!

“Yeah, that’s one hell of a beanstalk,” said Grandpa Jack, as we took him on a tour of the garden before dinner. “But it’s nothing like the one I climbed.”

We groaned. We all knew the story. Grandpa told it whenever he came to visit.

The weather was mild, and it looked like he was just going to tell it again, right here, with the sound of a distant lawnmower floating in the air, but the words caught in his throat and his frame jerked as coughs wracked his body. His hand was bloody when he took it away from his mouth.

“Time to tell you what really happened up there,” he said, after we’d made him comfortable in the big armchair, and soothed his throat with a glass of milk.

“Most of the story is true and you know it,“ he said. “I never understood how I got away with the bit I lied about. We were poor in those days. Everybody was. That’s how I had nothing to lose. Not in this life.” He coughed. “As for what happens next, well, we’ll see.”

“Stealing’s not so bad,” I said. “Not when you have to, to survive.” That was something my family all believed, having profited from Jack’s adventures as a young man.

“No,” he said. “But there’s stealing, and there’s stealing. That’s why I said I stole from a giant, so it wouldn’t seem so bad. And it didn’t. I was even a kind of hero for a while. Got in the papers, and everything.”

He let us think about that while he drained the milk. The wash of white milk had traces of pink as it flowed back down the sides of his glass.

“So who did you steal from, if it wasn’t a giant?” I asked.

“You’re sure you don’t know?” Grandpa looked at each of us in turn.

I shook my head.

“Big fellow? Lives high above the clouds, watching everything we do? Angry when you cross him, but doesn’t otherwise get involved?”

I kept shaking my head, but it was because I didn’t want it to be true.

If he’d stolen from Him, there’d be Hell to pay for all of us.

I didn’t hear it until the lawnmower’s engine shut off outside, but then the scratching under our house was impossible to miss and getting louder all the time.

Something was climbing towards us to steal Grandpa, and anything else it could get its hands on.

Tonight is “Stand Up for Ukraine,” a two and a half hour show with ten top comedians, including Delaney favourites James Acaster and Sara Pascoe, to raise money for the Ukraine. Tickets are 10 pounds each and the link is good for a week, so if you miss it today, you still have time to watch it. Get your tickets here!

(I call it “Putin” your money towards a good cause… yeah, well, I’m not a comedian, am I?)

Steady

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A black and white photo of a mannequin looking out of the photo
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

For this week’s piece of horror flash fiction, I get behind the wheel of my car. Don’t think that’s horrifying? You haven’t seen me drive!

Because I got the angry driving examiner.

Just my filthy, bloody luck.

Frank, my driving instructor, had told me to cancel the test if Mrs Rathbone was assigned as my examiner for the practical. Her fail rate was through the roof, so I’d have little chance of passing anyway, and the drivers were trying to “boycott” her, until she either changed her approach or got fired.

As if I wasn’t nervous enough already

I didn’t mind so much about the waste of money (no refunds on booked tests!), but I’d just changed jobs, and promised my new boss I had a driver’s licence.

Frank took me on the “usual” routes that the examiners went, so we could practise them, but Mrs Rathbone made up her own routes on the spot. And one time, she didn’t leave the mall’s parking lot at all, just had the guy go around and around for an hour, backing in and out of parking spaces.

He failed because the parking lot has a speed limit of 10 mph. “You know how hard it is to stay under 10mph for an hour?” said Frank.

I said yes, because Frank is half-Italian and gets excited.

The test centre has four spots on the top of the mall, and when Mrs Rathbone pointed me down the ramp to get onto the street, I thought, well, at least I’ll fail the test properly.

And I knew about the first trap.

There’s an extra “do not cross” line before the stop sign at the bottom of the ramp. It’s faded, so it’s easy to overlook, and even when you see it, it’s natural to associate it with the stop sign. So, that’s a fail if you don’t stop twice at the bottom of the ramp. And the stop sign announces the pedestrian crossing, and then you have to stop again after that before driving onto the actual road. Three stops before you even make it to the road.

Frank had prepared me for it, however, and although I ground the gears at all three stops, the car shuddered instead of stalling. Mrs Rathbone groaned as if it pained her, but I couldn’t fail for that. She shook a finger towards King Street, instead of Marrickville, which was a surprise, but I practised on King Street, so things were going my way. It’s a lot of stop-and-go traffic, but otherwise easy.

She said nothing else, and I just kept going straight ahead.

Should have been easy.

The thing is, though, King Street is easy until the University. That’s where I normally turn left towards the hospital. Turn around in the parking lot there, and head back home.

Go any further and you’re suddenly on City Street, which takes you to Broadway, which leads you onto Pitt Street. Then you’re in the city centre and God help you.

I cracked.

As we came up to my usual turn, I put on the indicators and made my way to the hospital. Mrs Rathbone said nothing.

She was dead.

So, that, kids, is why I’m such a nervous driver.

I should have listened to Frank about not doing the test with Mrs Rathbone.

And I should have listened to his advice to use the test centre’s car.

I hadn’t wanted to spend the time learning the feel of an unfamiliar car, though, so I used my own.

And now I can’t get rid of Mrs Rathbone out of the passenger seat.

She never says anything, but she’s always watching.

Didn’t I say?

She hadn’t been scowling at the road.

When she’d died at the bottom of the ramp, she’d been scowling at me.

This one is for Frank, my actual driving instructor, who played Gary Numan on the way home, after I passed my test!

Outrageous

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A paper journal with an old man's face superimposed on the pages
Made with photos from Mike Tinnion and Nathan Gonthier on Unsplash

We get up close and personal in this week’s piece of flash fiction. Sorry!

The TV studio lights were too hot. After 20 minutes, the sweat on my forehead was ready to breach the make-up caked on my skin.

Finally, they allowed the audience to ask their questions, after which I could escape to the dark backstage.

A man in a loose, brown suit, one which no longer fit, accepted the microphone from a girl in a short skirt and blonde hair which fanned down her back.

When he cleared his throat, I knew I was in trouble.

“How did you get the idea for your book?” he asked.

I gave him the usual answer about finding inspiration everywhere.

“No,” he said. “It’s my idea. How did you get it? I never showed it to anyone.”

The audience laughed uncomfortably. The man held up a scuffed, dog-eared notebook with its pages bound by a black elastic ribbon. “It’s right here. At least admit you stole it.”

“Is this a joke?” I demanded of the show’s host. They’d promised me simple questions, that all the guests would be fans.

He gestured for me to give an answer, a circling motion with his hand that told me I was wasting time. The cameras were still rolling.

The audience whispered amongst themselves.

“This is outrageous,” I said. “How dare you? Have any of you even read my book?” I stood to storm out of the interview, and the whispering turned to disgusted cries.

I wasn’t wearing trousers, and dropped back onto the chair, covering my lap with the tails of my shirt, while the audience asked their questions.

How come I got to be on the show?

Why had the dog been put down?

Hadn’t I realised that Mr Powell, the maths teacher, was close to a nervous breakdown?

How could you, how could you, how could you?

In the morning, I wrote the questions down in my notebook with the loose brown cover so they couldn’t get out.

We watched The Greasy Strangler on Amazon Prime this week. It said, “Free with ads,” but there were no ads. We enjoyed it: when you make a film that’s too tasteless for even marketing executives, then you’re really onto something!

Altogether now: Hootie Tootie, Disco Cutie! Hootie Tootie, Disco Cutie! Hootie Tootie, Disco Cutie!

Eager

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A black and white picture of a cross on a grave
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash

This week’s flash fiction is all about love.

Or money?

Or a love of money?

Or both?

Read on to find out which!

It was the perfect night for digging up a corpse. Not too cold, but with a low mist adding oodles of atmosphere.

“We’ll be rich,” said Mike. “Together.” We were already in the hole, standing on the coffin. Uncle Chester’s metal box of treasure (bearer bonds, family heirloom gemstones) had been sewn into the velvet pillow he rested his greedy, peeling skull on.

Uncle Chester had always been so greedy that he insisted he would “take it all with him.” That was the story.

I bent to give Mike the box, and his eyes hardened as soon as I touched it. Even in the dark, the way the muscles in his face went rigid to hide his anger was noticeable. I let him take it instead, and he hoisted himself out of the grave with it.

The pause before he reappeared to help me out was the longest I have ever experienced. I was so sure that a shovelful of cemetery dirt would hit me in the face that I held my breath not to inhale it.

“Come on, Kara!” Mike called, however, and his powerful arms pulled me out of the hole. He was smiling at me, his good mood returned.

I had the key to the box after all, having followed the clues to its hiding place, tucked into a slot carved into the back of an old mirror frame in the attic.

He waited eagerly for me to open the box, forcing me to admit that I must have left the key behind. His face went rigid. It made him briefly old and ugly, before it passed. 

Mist swirled in our headlights as we raced through the night, back to the penthouse to find the key. Mike loved me again.

As he drove, he made plans for Chester’s money, then tacked on, “wouldn’t you like that?” for my sake. As much as I loved him, he had never thought highly of my intelligence.

When we had got married, he had told me I was the only woman he had ever loved, even though he’d been divorced three times already, and the contact list on his phone only contained women’s names, none of whom I had ever met.

I liked to think it could be true. The marriages were unhappy, and the contacts were just friends. He was handsome. Why wouldn’t women like him?

He was possibly too handsome. And I did love him, despite the fact that I knew he mostly liked me for my money. That was the problem.

Not that he needed it after divorcing three incredibly rich women.

The cutest thing I ever saw was the look of disappointment when I told him my lawyer insisted on a prenuptial agreement before we married. 

Not that I planned on divorcing him. I had more money than I could ever spend (though not enough to keep Mike happy, if I simply gave it to him). And he made life exciting for me. 

So, I had a discreet arrangement with the local undertaker and his nephew who created puzzles for one of those “escape rooms” to help me source a constant supply of eccentric “relatives” and their various treasure maps, challenges, and other adventures to keep Mike on the hook.

If you liked this story, you might like to sign up for my newsletter! This month I’ll be writing about Edgar Allan Poe, writer, poet… psychic?

Wikipedia will tell you the cause of his death remains a mystery.

But I reveal all, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up free here!