Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

Flash fiction

Strap

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A woman looks into an ornate mirror, a man looks back out at her.
Image generated by OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

In this week’s unsettling flash fiction, we go back to the “good old days” to take a good hard look at ourselves. Join me?

Strap could never be sure she was real, but spent his life looking for her.

Strap was Lord Heaney’s eldest, a black-haired, thick-bodied bully. His father wouldn’t have him in the house, leaving Strap to pretend he managed the estate. He prowled the boundaries of his father’s land with his riding whip in hand. It twitched at every rustling leaf, any animal that didn’t move out of his way fast enough.

He was looking for her.

He had first seen her when he was 14 and decided he wanted her. She had white skin, green eyes, red hair, and the smile she had given him had promised cruelty. Whether it would be gladly given or gladly taken, he did not know.

Despite his family’s wealth, he had not a single friend in the village. The villagers kept their womenfolk, and their livestock, away from him. Even the priest had referred to him as “the unholy Strap” after finding his favourite horse blinded and bleeding from cuts to its face.

He was finally betrothed to a girl from the next county. In return for marrying the aging spinster, her family would give him control of the estate. It was a shame for the girl, but no one said a word so they could be free of him.

Strap wondered what his love would make of the marriage. She would know all about it by now. He could feel her wherever he went, even if he couldn’t see her.

Several times, she had come close enough for him to think he had caught her, but it had been a trick. She liked to lend her face to poor animals to suffer for his love.

She came to his wedding and wore his wife’s face for the ceremony, while witnesses surrounded them.

Their house too was never at peace, for they engaged a battery of nurses to look after the children, for she took turns to wear their faces, too.

He was happiest away from all of them. In the bathroom, she looked out at him from the mirror.

The most beautiful woman he had ever seen, trapped in his brutal, lumbering body.

If you liked that, you might like the exclusive short story coming in the July edition of my newsletter. It also involves a lot of staring, and someone’s very unusual… talent. There’s still time to sign up right here!

(If you didn’t enjoy this story, you might enjoy the exclusive short story coming in the July edition of my newsletter anyway. It involves someone’s very unusual… talent, and some staring. Sign up here to check it out! )

Otherwise, you might like to check out and buy this amazing cardboard gorilla puzzle.

Past

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A watercolour of two skulls kissing
Image generated by OpenAI‘s DALL-E 2 AI system. Prompt by Morgan Delaney

I finished reading Ryan North’s How to Take Over the World: Practical Schemes and Scientific Solutions for the Aspiring Supervillain this week, so there’s a good chance you’ll be seeing me on the news wearing tights and battling my supervillain frenemy Elon Musk shortly.

In the meantime, check out my Goodreads review of that book, or stay on this page for some romantic horror flash fiction!

Enjoy!

Why not me, instead? Or both of us together?

I don’t leave the flat we shared. Let others put flowers on your grave.

The doorbell rings and rings. I only answer to make the noise stop, and there you are, dead.

The cold grave has not been kind to you. (You always hated the cold.) I strip you of your clothes and take you to bed to warm you up.

You feel different—not just cold—but you were an organ donor.

I have most of you back.

#

It happens naturally.

You hold me, and I hold you, and our mouths meet. I miss your breath pushing past mine as we kiss, but the chill of your tongue in my mouth is exciting.

It’s perfect. It’s you, but different.

Like starting over again with someone new, but already knowing them.

You’re hungry, too, not just cold. I feed you.

I’m happy to be buried inside you, so nothing can tear us apart again.

Research for the third Alumière sisters’ adventure (The Squared Circle, coming soon!) revealed this week that evergreen hit “Yes! We Have No Bananas” entered the public domain in the US in 2019.

So now anyone can sing it!

Acceptable

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A woman in the bath, superimposed faces beside her.
Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

Hello!

Summer’s here, so we’re all hot and sweaty. Time for a bath in this week’s dark flash fiction.

Bring your rubber ducky.

You don’t want to be alone.

No matter how I scrubbed my flesh, I couldn’t get the smell off. The steam from the hot water still pouring into the bath saturated my lungs. My red skin glowed in it.

The roar of the water almost hid the sound of someone knocking on the bathroom door.

It was a soft knock, when it came again, like a timid house guest who wanted to know if they could brush their teeth after their host seemed to have forgotten they were there.

That had happened to me once. Years ago, when there were still people I could visit.

But there wasn’t—wasn’t ever—anyone else in my house.

I lived alone. That was the problem.

When the knock came again, it sounded so familiar that I was tempted to answer. I knew that knock, and it would have been a relief to pretend I had company.

But who would want my company?

I said nothing, but turned off the water to better hear what they might do next.

Leather shoes squeaked in the hallway as they shifted their weight. This must be what it was like to have someone. You recognised them by the sound of their shoes.

But it only sounded familiar to me, because my own shoes squeaked. I had never worked out how to buy shoes which would carry me quietly and confidently down the busy streets, like you see in the ads. My shoes squeaked like mice, drawing attention to the fact that I hurried along alone.

They knocked again. Exactly the way I knocked whenever I came to a closed door, hopeful but knowing I wasn’t welcome.

I had been a lonely child, but it wasn’t until my parents died that I realised how bad it had become. Loneliness had seeped into my pores and marked me out. No matter how hard I scrubbed, I could never get its stink off my skin.

All those skin cells over the years. All the loneliness. Washed down the drain to… where?

The knock came again, needy, the knuckles almost caressing the door in an attempt to ingratiate themselves. Familiar. Because only one person would come back to me for company.

Also this week, after two great EPs, Orochen have released their debut album! If you haven’t heard them before then now is the time to jump onboard the post-something/something-folk/metal bandwagon. It’s packed full of gloomy, moody bangers. Perfect for your next bath.

Get it here!

Boast

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Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

This week’s flash fiction takes us into the master bedroom of the haunted Davis Hall. Enjoy!

“You wouldn’t make it through a single night. You hate sleeping alone.” John’s gentle teasing had degenerated into blunt “home truths” over the evening, and he laughed off my claim that I could survive on my own if I had to.

“I could if I had to. I could get through a night at Davis Hall, if I had to.”

“Alone?” he scoffed.

“I wouldn’t be alone at Davis Hall, would I?” I batted my eyelids suggestively to turn the argument back into a game.

He held me to it, though. He wanted me to back down as usual.

When I wouldn’t, he argued with me all the way to the preserved hulk of Davis Hall the following evening, listing reasons I couldn’t possibly go through with it.

Nobody ever stayed the night.

We had planned on going to brunch the next morning, I wouldn’t be in the mood after a bad night’s sleep.

I’d only scare myself.

What if the ghost really was real?

I didn’t need to prove anything.

But I did. And I’d had butterflies all the way over, until I realised that he was scared, too.

All I had to worry about was getting through one night with a ghost lurking behind the curtains of the master bedroom at Davis Hall. But John would have to deal with the fact that if I could do this, I might be able to do a lot more without him, too.

John offered to come to the door with me, but I refused and pushed my way through the bushes that overgrew the gap in the fence and made my way to the door. I waited for John’s car to roar as he sped home. Instead, he sat in the car, his quiet presence pulling insidiously at me as the damp wooden front door pushed silently open and I entered the hallway, which smelled of green moss and damp plaster.

I had my purple sleeping bag under my arm, with a rucksack full of extra blankets and clothes, a book, a camping light, a flashlight, and a tin of pepper spray still pinned between its cardboard backing and plastic bubble.

In my Thermos was green tea, and there were lettuce, and egg sandwiches in a night-sky blue Tupperware box, and packets of new biscuits.

I staked my claim to the master bedroom with them, deciding that a space near the door, with a good view of the curtains, was mine for the night, and arranged my items like totems around me.

It was a late summer evening, and the light was fading, blurring the shadow of tree branches as they beckoned me to come out to the garden to play. The curtains were tied back to either side of the window, and I had wedged the door open to make sure I had a clear run to the front door in case I needed it.

I took a lonely tour of Davis Hall, wondering how many people had been here over the years to explain the piles of bitter-smelling dry leaves in the centre of the empty rooms. I took my shoes off when I arrived back at camp, which is when I heard a car driving away.

My original idea had been to take energy drinks and caffeine tablets to stay awake until I realised it would be better to sleep. Let the ghost appear behind his shroud of curtain while I slept until the alarm woke me at seven the next morning.

It was supposedly one of Mrs Davis’ lovers who hid all night behind the curtains of the Hall, having been driven to suicide when she stayed with her husband. But he did nothing other than lurk behind the drawn curtains, holding his vigil over the deserted room.

When I woke in the submarine blue of my camping light during the night, the curtains were closed. I woke confused from my surroundings by the pain in my back from sleeping on the floor. Between the sag of the drawn curtains and the floor, two neat black leather shoes pointed at me. The ghost had not pulled the curtains tight and a black gap about an inch wide promised to reveal the ghost if I cared to look deep enough, close enough, into it. I stayed where I was, listening to my harsh panicked breathing, hoping the illusion would reverse itself, or that I’d fall asleep.

It felt like ages.

When I tried holding my breath, I realised the sound was coming from behind the curtains, a strained breathing sound, regularly uneven, impatient.

I kept my eye on the dark gap. Whatever had happened—whatever he’d done to himself—he didn’t want to be seen, and the room was empty with nothing else for him to hide behind if I kept him in view.

I pinched the mound of flesh at the base of my thumb to avoid falling asleep again.

Several times, though, the sly squeak of leather woke me as he tensed to move.

A chill woke me as the dawn lightened the darkness in the room. Though the curtains were still drawn, the shoes were gone and the gap between was empty, simply a grey gap.

I groped around for my sleeping bag, wondering at the cold. I couldn’t see the sleeping bag in the murk and pushed myself up on my elbows, to see where it had got to..

In the corner behind me, some odd rectangle shape moved.

Even as I turned towards it, the leather shoes poking out from the mouth of my upside down sleeping bag squeaked as the ghost closed the distance between us in a rush.

Riddle

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Photo by Randy Jacob on Unsplash

We’re still in Berlin, but I’ve been thinking about a walk I took a couple of weeks ago while I was in Ireland. An odd thing happened.

Let me tell you about it in this week’s flash fiction.

I did a double take when I walked through the rainbow. They’re always far away, aren’t they?

Turns out, they’re not, they’re just a lot smaller than everyone thinks.

This one was barely 6 foot high at its zenith, meaning my head passed through the violet and indigo bands.

Pretty amazing.

But rainbow or not, it was pissing rain, so I left my phone in my pocket, rather than risking a selfie and drowning the poor thing.

That must be why you don’t see pictures of small rainbows. It all makes sense when you think about it.

Things were different on the other side of it, though.

I didn’t notice at first because of all the rain everywhere, but I realised that someone—something—was following me in the field beside the road.

When I moved, it moved. When I stopped, it stopped. My first thought was leprechauns because I couldn’t see what it was, so it had to be small (and, you know, the rainbow).

I waited where I was for a while, then started walking again, keeping my eyes on where I had thought I’d seen something. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, because other than the rain twitching the grass, all I could see was spots of grass being flattened as if the invisible man were strolling through the field beside me.

The next thing was that I realised I wasn’t getting wet, despite the rain. I was freezing and getting colder with every step, but apparently untouched by the rain.

It had to have something to do with the rainbow, so I turned around to make sure it was still there and wasn’t also following me.

It was still where I’d passed through it, but there was something else, too.

On the ground, equally distant from it in the other direction, was a shadow.

I looked at my feet to confirm my suspicion. It was my shadow.

That’s when it made sense to me. I hadn’t passed into some other world where leprechauns were stalking me. There was no otherworldly nonsense. I’d been reflected and refracted, that was all. Split into my component parts and spat out again.

I felt cold because one part of me was gaining altitude as the rainbow reflected some of me upwards. I was dry because another part was travelling further down into the ground with every step I took.

There was no invisible man in the field. It was the weight of my own footsteps, which had been displaced from my actual body, which was flattening the grass.

The shadow was refracted to travel in the opposite direction. I just needed to go back through the rainbow to be whole again.

I started running towards it, hoping to crash into my shadow as it, in turn, raced towards me.

The rain was stopping, and the rainbow was getting small and fainter.

I ran faster, accompanied by the sound of my footsteps from the empty field.

In other news this week, German punk-post-punks, Joseph Boys, have announced their new album will be out in August. The first single will be released tomorrow. Check it out!

Trucks

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Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash

This week’s flash fiction is pretty grim. Well, it’s art reflecting life, isn’t it?

The grey trucks used to transport dead bodies quickly became ubiquitous as the sickness spread. The living formed a morbid honour guard safe behind their windows each morning to watch the trucks roll past.

As supplies started to run out, it became more important not to miss the parade to check out whose windows were empty and make sure your own didn’t. Any house that looked empty could count on being broken into as people searched for dwindling supplies.

Despite the sickness, and the protests that followed, the government had managed to keep the power on. The news told me that there were still plenty of crops in the countryside if we could hold out until the harvest.

My dog had run away from the siren on the first day of the new curfew and hadn’t returned yet. If things got really bad, and she didn’t come back, I’d be able to survive a little longer on the tinned dog food, though I told myself it wouldn’t come to that.
Two men had set up on the next street corner with an open fire in a metal drum, offering chunks of meat in exchange for a ring, or a video recorder, or whatever else they could spare.
In the evenings the street was grimy with the stink of burnt flesh. The news told me the world was watching, and would send help as soon as they could.

Gangs had divided up the streets into territories. Not that there was anything left to plunder. The news still insisted help was on the way. It helped to pass the time until the grey trucks full of dead bodies rolled past again.

My mouth drooled at the smell of meat when I opened the tin of dog food. My stomach had twisted into a knot when the jellyish chunk had slithered into it, but it was because it was the first solid food I had eaten in a long time.
If only I had more I could hold out until help finally arrived. The only other option was the meat that the men roasted on the fire below me, and there was only one source of meat readily available here.

Once my boots were gone, I joined the parade of grey people following the trucks, calling for them to stop.

I’ve been let off my chain, so will be returning next week with a special “field notes” edition. Find out where I’ve been, next week!