Morgan Delaney

Dark, strange and fantastic fiction

Flash fiction

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!

Own

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Photo by Simran Sood on Unsplash

This week’s flash fiction is great. The bee’s knees, in fact. Or at least the wasp’s work. Enjoy!

Eve collected wasps in an old five-liter water bottle. It hung on the tree next to the fence in their front garden, and she wouldn’t take it down though her parents begged her to. They had to go next door to pick up their post, as the postman, unnerved rather than scared by the trapped wasps, refused delivery.

If you held your hand against the warm plastic on your way past, it felt like the bottle shivered. The hollow buzz was the excited gossip of a distant crowd, punctuated by the *tock* of a wasp bouncing off the surface.

Don’t let Eve catch you touching it, though. She swears better than anyone else in town.

The only time she ever took the bottle down, was to remove the corpse when a wasp died. She’d take the bottle into the house, then hang it straight back up again, afterwards.

She met Alan by catching him touching the bottle, but he didn’t mind her swearing at him.

She told him he’d never get his post delivered again, and he said he hated getting bills anyway.

They moved into a flat with nowhere outside for her to hang the wasp bottle, but we could still hear it thrumming all through town.

Sometimes, you could hear a *tock* like a wasp hitting the side of a plastic bottle. 

The curtains in the windows were white with cartoon daisies, though the flowers had alternating black and yellow petals.

One day, the wasp bottle hung in the kitchen window in front of the curtains. That’s when we knew Alan had grown tired of not getting his post delivered.

If it was me, I’d have been scared of Eve getting pregnant, then presenting me with hundreds of tiny, stinging wasp babies.

She never got any bigger, though, so that couldn’t have been it.

You can’t touch the bottle any more, but Eve doesn’t mind people watching when she fishes the dead wasps out. The swarm clambers like crazy over her skin when she sticks her arm in, but they don’t ever sting.

In other news, there’s a great “buzz” around the latest double issue of Black Static! And for this week only, the ebook version is half-price on Weightless Books. Get it here, now!

Outrageous

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A tiny white alarm clock
Photo by Lukas Blazek on Unsplash

The TV studio lights were too hot. After the interview, there was almost enough sweat on my forehead for it to breach the thickly-caked make-up I was plastered in.

An old man in a brown suit, with huge eyebrows ringing his eyes like glasses stood in the audience to ask the first question.

A girl in a short skirt and blonde hair fanned across her back handed him the microphone and he cleared his throat for a long time into it.

“How did you get this idea?” he asked.

I gave him my usual answer about finding inspiration for my books everywhere.

“No,” he said. He held up a wretched, dog-eared notebook held shut with a black ribbon. “How did you get the idea from here? I haven’t shown it to anyone.”

The audience murmured, and laughed nervously. The old man turned to them for support. “He should at least admit he stole it,” he said, and they started nodding.

“Is this a joke?” I asked The Book Show’s host. The producers had promised me the audience would all be fans, and there would be no difficult questions, but the host stared expectantly for my answer.

“This is outrageous. Have any of you even read my book?” I was ready to storm off, but the crowd’s murmuring grew angry when I stood up. The movement had raised my shirt to uncover my genitals, so I quickly sat down again, pulling at my shirt to cover as much of my lap and pale bare legs as possible.

The crowd didn’t wait for the microphone, but pelted their questions from where they sat.

How come you got to be on the show? Why did yo had  let that woman’s dog be put down? Hadn’t I realised that Mr Powell (my old maths teacher) was close to a nervous breakdown? How could you, how could you, how could you?

In the morning I wrote it all down and pretended it was my story.

And if you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ll be living the dream this Saturday, when the latest edition drops, with your exclusive short story, “Last Chance To See”, and a picture of Manchee the Dog in Kazakhstan!

Late

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A sepia photograph of a regiment of perhaps World War 1 era soldiers.
Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Here’s another one of those bittersweet stories you all love so much. Enjoy!

He’d ridden to the village to read out the names of those fallen in the war. He hated himself for reading the list, for being the one who had survived.

The mothers, sisters, and daughters gathered around while he read the list in a stumbling monotone. It took him more than an hour to confirm what they already knew.

A woman with mouse-brown hair under a scarf and a face that grief had stripped of age, put her hand on his arm, before he could climb back on his horse.

“Stay,” she said.

He needed to ride to the next village, but the weight of their loss had him in its gravity, and they sat him in front of bread and apples and ale before he could decide.

There was no hurry to ride to the next village to tell them what they already felt in their hearts, and he spent the evening at the inn, sitting opposite one of the few remaining old men.

They fed him too much food for breakfast the next day, and he accepted a glass of schnapps to ease the pressure in his guts, and then he was too tired to find his horse. His commanding officer had not given him a schedule or a specific date when he needed to return, and there was a girl in his bed that night. She was pretty through the tears dripping down her cheeks as they made love.

The villagers surrounded him whenever he went out until he couldn’t bear to be alone. The women took it in turns to keep him company at night, and on the nights when they were busy, one of the old men would sit up with him in front of the fire.

They watched him eat, but touched no food themselves. They had turned the mirrors to face the walls, after hearing his list of names, so he relied on them to do his hair the way it was supposed to be, and tell him when he was too fat, or not fat enough.

The old men insisted that gin had always been his favourite drink, or brandy. Or that he had never drunk anything other than sweet wine.

The villagers grew fat, and the man slept poorly through nightmares that he did not live there, but had ridden in on a horse, which they had eaten to prevent him from leaving. Once its meat was all gone, they would eat him, too.

One after the other, though, the women’s bellies popped, and they smiled in relief at having got him out of their systems. They strolled the streets with tiny new people. He did not recognise them, and yet he knew exactly who they were.

It was time to go home. As soon as he had read out the list of names that he carried around to tell the children who they were.

And speaking of coping with the past: I don’t recommend much hip-hop, so when I do, you know it’s the bees’ businizzle. Experimental hip-hop pioneers Dälek have just announced the release of their raw new album, Precipice. Check out the first song right here!