Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

Flash fiction

Across

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A dark shelf full of identical dolls
Photo by takahiro taguchi on Unsplash

Hi all, here’s another little fiction gem, which I’m going to have trouble categorising. Write in with your suggestions (or, naturally, your complaints!) if you have any. Let’s go with humour. Enjoy!

Betty was nice, but it was Cathy he married. She knew what was best for him and insisted she could take better care of him. Betty moved in across the road, so they were neighbours anyway.

They all visited each other regularly. Sometimes he’d visit Betty, or Betty would visit Cathy, or Cathy would visit him, and so on. They had plenty of time for visits. One Sunday, the doorbell rang while he was with Betty. Unless he was with Cathy? There were two young men outside, each with identical smiles on their faces that reminded him of someone. “Hello, Father,” they said. His sons, of course. That’s why they looked familiar. And they were naked, and small, and bald. Possibly they had only this minute been born.

He was delighted, of course, but it did mean he was kept busy for a while. They didn’t look like Betty or Cathy, so he kept them secret. He named one Kentucky and one Tennessee, and paid a woman from town to come and be their wet nurse.

“Wouldn’t you like two strapping sons?” He’d ask Cathy, and she’d say she would, but she already had him, and he was all the cuteness she could handle.

“How about it, two fine young lads?” he’d say to Betty, and she’d squeal and tell him he was a very naughty man.

So he raised them both himself. It wouldn’t be fair to ask Cathy to look after Betty’s children, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask Betty to look after Cathy’s children. Once they were properly grown up, they looked just like him. One visited Cathy and one visited Betty, and he was free to move in with the woman from town who had been their wet nurse.

Second

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A pigeon standing to attention
Photo by Fuad Obasesan on Unsplash

Hi all, here’s a little story about someone who thinks they’re it. Don’t worry, they’ll get a chance to learn something. Enjoy!

Pop.

Another one bagged. I lay my feet on the tiger-skin upholstered foot rest and sip at my gin and tonic. I love summer.

I wait for the starlings to settle, then strain my ears for the sounds of the servants rustling through the trees.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy shooting the servants. But it’s a tradition. Survival of the fittest, and all that. That’s an expression I rather like.

Of course, you have to be a sport about it. That’s why I’m upset to find my eyesight getting dark, and the gun slipping from my fingers. Poison in the gin, of course. Hardly fair. But underlines my point, I think? Give an inch, and they’ll take a mile, and all that.

Who’s shooting at me? How can a butler be such a bloody good shot? I dive further back into the trees, running for my life.

It’s not fair!

Pockets

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Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Hi all,

it’s grey and cold outside (although only about -9 degrees at the moment so not bad for January). I fancy a cup of coffee. You coming? Good, let’s go in here. I like this place, there are always interesting people around.

Let’s ask the waiter what we’ve missed.

“Could I get a spoon, please?”
The customer looked respectable in a suit, with soft, fuzzy hair. An economics professor perhaps, or the owner of his own small business. But I’d already brought him two spoons. On top of the one that had been on the table already, when he sat down.
I brought a spoon, but I made a big thing of it. Everyone in the café watched surreptitiously to see what would happen.
He stirred his coffee with it, put it down on the table, and looked out the window onto Bridge Street. Nothing happened. Then a hand reached out of the bag he’d brought with him and sneaked the spoon away. He was stealing the spoons! Or at least aiding and abetting their theft.
“Can I have another cup of coffee?” He asked when I went to clear away the cup. “And a spoon?”
The cheek! “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t have any more spoons.” Just then my colleague came past with a coffee and Bircher muesli for table eight.
“That man is getting a spoon!” he said.
“That’s the last one.”
“Ah? Well… maybe a fork,” he said after looking into his open bag.
“I’m sorry, sir, we don’t have forks either. There is another café just down the road. Or a Starbucks in the other direction.”
“I see.” He threw some money on the table, hoisted his bag – still open, but I couldn’t see what was inside – and left.
I’m glad he didn’t make a scene. I hate it when they do that.
It was only after he’d gone that I noticed the little pile of silver coins under where the bag had been. Disgusting!

Birth

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A woman stirring a cup of tea
Photo by loli Clement on Unsplash

Hi all,

it’s cold outside, isn’t it? How about a nice cup of tea? But not from that cup, never drink from that cup! Why? Well, sit down, and let me tell you a little story.

Brent waved farewell to the American tourist who had just bought a set of six English teacups. They’d probably be smashed in the man’s suitcase on the flight home.
Good riddance, thought Brent. The cups were haunted, of course. He had advised the man most urgently to use them as decoration only, not to drink from them.

“And I got these for little Alice,” said Wilbur, unpacking the six dainty cups. “The guy said they shouldn’t be drunk from, but I’m sure it’s okay for doll’s tea parties!”
“Well, aren’t you just the sweetest man on earth!”
“…and the most handsome?” He teased.
“I guess!” She snuggled up to him. “Alice, honey! Look what daddy brought you.”

Alice wished that Wilbur wasn’t her real daddy, so it would be okay that she hated him so much. She particularly hated him when he made Mom laugh and did nice things, like bring her presents. It made her blood boil! But the cups really were cute. And her dolls loved them, even Samantha, who was a bitch most of the time.

For her birthday, they invited her classmates, but Alice slipped away to have a tea party with her real friends. Except for Samantha, who was dangerous since she had started drinking from the tea cups. She was in the attic, Alice could hear her moving around sometimes. The other dolls kept Alice safe, and were under strict instructions to look after Mom too. As for Wilbur. Well, he had bought Samantha, and the cups, so good riddance!

Now. How about a biscuit? Wait, not that biscuit, never that biscuit? Why? I’ll tell you next week!

Replace

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Photo by Camellia on Unsplash

Here’s the first post of the new year. A weird little something which I whipped up while having a cup of tea. It might help if you imagine that the interviewer looks a bit like Terry Wogan. On the other hand it might not. Feel free to pretend that YOU are the interviewer. Enjoy!

“Room for a little one?” he said.
Talking to himself while doing cocaine was one of his more irritating habits, she thought.
He snorted, then massaged his nose wetly with his fingertips. She led him to his seat in front of the cameras. That was what she resented most: he didn’t need to be led to a chair he sat in five evenings a week. How was that even a job?

Opposite him was the unoccupied chair. The guest was always a surprise. She melted into the crew on the other side of the camera.

And then: the interviewer’s mother. Everyone laughed. They hadn’t been expecting that. She started talking, and the room went silent. Across the country, the living rooms all went silent. She was so wise – they could see where he had got it from.

There was no need for coke in the dressing room anymore. She made him warm milk, then picked him up and carried him to the chair in front of the cameras. He curled up in her lap. Sometimes he let his eyes close as he lay against her bosom, while she chatted to the guests.

Heart

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A potted plant on a wooden stool
Photo by Adrien King on Unsplash

Hi all, last post of the new year, so here’s a little story about how great it is to get a second chance to start again. Happy New Year to you all, and enjoy!

Fosdick sprayed money. Came up the hard way, but when he found oil in his back garden that was all behind him. A crowd of hangers-on followed him everywhere. They were lucky he was a nice guy, he could have made them do anything to stay within the rain of his wealth.

The first time he died there was a panic among his hangers-on. And pretty much everywhere else too, let’s be honest: he had controlled enough oil to bring continents to a stop (he never did).

His son wasn’t as nice. So they brought Fosdick back to life. The newspapers wanted to know where the “parts” had come from. Not from any of Fosdick’s friends, that was for sure. Some people got real rich, real quick.

Mind you, Fosdick wasn’t as good as he used to be. He was still kind and looked after his people. But his smile was off, and he seemed tired. Even his hangers-on found it draining to be around him. He’d been through a lot, though. It was only to be expected.

I met him in Fosdick 111, his tower block. He had a Texas drawl, and he was charming, but he made me tired, Like everyone had said. A man stood beside him the whole time, and I swear his lips never moved. Maybe on words with “B’s.”

I recorded the interview, and it sounds like Fosdick says he is a “gillionaire.”

He didn’t want to talk about his resurrections. Experimental therapy was all he’d say (sounded like “egskerimental theragy”). And it still rains wealth all around Fosdick. But it pours on his friends and not much splashes elsewhere these days.

That’s it from me for 2020, see you in the ’21!