Horror

I hear them snapping. Sometimes there’s a rustle as they brush against the grass. They snap more when the wind is strong. I don’t think they can smell. Maybe the wind, blowing through their skin, tickles the muscles in their jaws. They catch birds. A flock will come down. If they step too near the zombies’ mouths then snap! When the wind is strong, it’s like a sea of weeds and denim. 
Very few come to get gas, but I keep the shop open. You never know. I’ve got a nice collection of drivers’ licenses, too. Not everyone can pay for the stuff anymore. In money. It’s all about meat these days. Everybody wants it. 
Daisies grow around the side of the building. The plants get really tall. Some days you can’t see the zombies at all. Just a snapping and a rustling. 
They go quiet when it rains. Who’d have thought zombies were afraid of drowning? 
I’ve got a blue sky above me. As wide as the eye can see. Some days there’re clouds. One day I saw a Chevy. Just like one I used to own, too. On days when I get really bored, I go up to the roof. Take pot shots at the zombies. Only out the back of the building, of course. You don’t go shooting near a pump. 
There’s a trail of dust to my left. Someone coming. Customers. I make sure the gun is loaded. 
There are four of them squashed into a small Japanese car. Which means they let two out, half a mile up the road. Even if I hadn’t seen them through my binoculars, the snapping of zombie teeth would have given them away. I keep my zombie garden full.
‘Hey, mister!’ One of them shout through the window, the driver. He’s wearing a black leather jacket. It goes well with his curly orange hair. He’ll brighten up my garden. ‘Mister! You got any gas?’
I say nothing. Just because I live in Bumfuck, Nowhere, USA, doesn’t mean he can waste my time. They need me to open up. Then they rush me.
‘Looks like it’s gonna rain, guys’ I said.
Ginger looked up at the sky.
‘I need an umbrella. Wait right there.’ I climbed onto the roof. Took out the two guys behind the garage before they knew what was happening. Two shots. They dropped. Their buddies drove off. I watched the trail of dust. It rose into the sky. It looked like a face. As it rose, it turned towards me. But as it grew, it got fainter. 
Then it was just me on the roof by myself.

The full title of this one is Used, or Elevated Horror is Ruining It For Those Of Us Who Just Want To Read A Good Zombie Story and It’s Not Even Elevated Horror, You Just Don’t Know How It Ends.

To which I reply: Not elevated horror? No proper ending? Voilà!

*Tosses perfumed curls, points to page*

It’s got a rooftop climax, doesn’t it?

Hi all,

here’s this week’s fix for all you flash fiction junkies. This week I challenged myself to write a cosmic horror story about an astronomer at home (that’s it in the picture, above). Enjoy!

‘Into bed now.’ He tucked my blankets too tight around me. His eyes were unfocussed. He lived on the stars he observed. It was hard for him to come back home. 
‘Goodnight, Grandfather,’ I said. He looked quite mad.
That’s what everyone said when we drove into Noerdelstett in his ancient car. 
He had discovered comets and suns. Had planets named after him in the past. Now he smiled when people asked him what was out there.
It was the music that turned everyone against him. I could hear it now. Strange, but I could hear the melody in it. Different, otherworldly. I had heard whale-song. This was like that. But the sounds were high and bright, like shards of comet ice breaking off. Beautiful. It scared me: I knew he had no radio, no record player. It took all my resolve to get out of bed. 
They said he danced around naked at night, like a witch. The great man gone insane. I would show them his notebooks and re-claim his name. I wanted to be like him one day. He explored the depths of space where no man could go, where most men couldn’t understand the distances involved and they dared to call him mad? His mind was on higher things. 
The carpet felt sharp under my feet as I crept towards the staircase: The music heightened my senses. The draught from under his room sighed. The warm hallway felt claustrophobic, thick air resting on me, pushing me down where I stood. 
The music made my ears ring and I almost fell. Gravity shifted, and I clung to the bannisters, moved slowly. The second step from the bottom creaked. The music was louder even as it seemed the ground was upside down, the laws of physics being sucked out through my Grandfather’s telescope, spewed into the sun of a distant galaxy. I made it to his study and pushed the door open. 
He stood naked, holding his telescope in front of him. Plugging the small end with himself. Through the top, a stream of viscous juice flowed into the heavens and… he sang. My Grandfather, making love to his telescope and the stars leaning in close. The atmosphere was thin here and galloping along his sputtering rope of seed… something. A tiger? Its head was huge and tentacled. Its stripes were the suns and the vast wastes between them. It could see him. See us. My grandfather sang to it, called it, his buttocks quivering as he poured a path into the cosmos to guide it. He was quite mad. And as I watched it approach, tearing holes in space, so was I.

‘Delicious!’ I said. Everyone smiled and nodded.
Next was the green soup. Green: health and children. It tasted like grass with seaweed. Which is probably what it was. ‘Mmmh! I like this one, too.’ More smiling and nodding. And a pain in my stomach.
Another soup. There were ‘bits’ in it. Sesame seeds, perhaps, or slivers of snail shell. Five pieces, I counted them. The soup was orange. Was that long life or good hearing? I couldn’t remember. I got another round of smiles when I smacked my lips. The taste was harsh, there was a lot of spice in it. Too much turmeric. Cauliflower and turmeric.
The soups kept coming. I had a blue one. Interesting, but without any detectable taste. Perhaps a shot of cuttlefish ink? Then there was a red one and a purple one. There was no mistaking the meaning of the purple soup. Even if I had been too dense to get it, I would not have been able to ignore the grins of my hosts. It tasted meaty. Mushroom, I decided. Mushroom with beetroot colouring. There was one which was white with a swirl of pink: milk with rose petal. It eased hardship in old age. Brown soup with sparkles: Obedient grandchildren. Another orange. Strength. Carrots and lentils and enough chilli to burn my mouth. I couldn’t taste the next four, the yellow, the pink, the light blue. And the taupe: Thick, full hair or distinguished baldness, depending on gender.
The soups were getting thicker, and though the bowls were tiny, there had been a lot of them. By the time the black one arrived, I was mute in a food coma. I could move my spoon, but that was it. I had to dig into the black one with my spoon. It wobbled. I looked at it uncertainly. Some people like black food. I never have. Not since I saw The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. I sniffed. It smelled sweet, slightly fruity. Like an unripe orange, but without the acidity. I goggled at it. What did black mean? I was too full to fit the whole spoon into my mouth.
I nodded. Carefully so I wouldn’t spill. My hosts smiled at me. What a terrible job. They must be starving. I chewed my ‘soup’ and tried to think. Black. What could it be? It seemed like I’d eaten soups for everything from health to wealth to ingrowing toenails.
I swallowed and my hosts took out their spoons.
Black.
Of course. Payment.

The prompts were:

Soup
harsh
ignore
detect
mute
payment

The two worst sentences in this piece (in my opinion) are, in order:

1. Even if I had been too dense to get it, I would not have been able to ignore the grins of my hosts.
2. By the time the black one arrived, I was mute in a food coma.

I can’t see any way to save Sentence 1 in accordance with my writing prompt rules. Ideally it should be cut completely but then I’d lose my writing prompt word. I was able to perform some cosmetic surgery on Sentence 2 but in an ideal world the sentence would just read ‘…arrived, I was in a food coma.’

What do you think? Can you think of anything I could have done to improve these sentences, without losing the prompt words and in accordance with my writing prompt rules (no changes except for typos, punctuation and deleting)?

Hi all,

here’s another piece of writing prompt flash fiction for you. I’m trying out something a little different so keep reading and let me know if you prefer these ‘new’ stories or the ‘old’ ones Enjoy!

He should have turned back when the others had. Now he lay crushed under the weight of snow. It was so cold his eyes had frozen shut. His chest heaved as he screamed at himself to dig his way out. A wolf howled.

He needed to get out from under the snow. He’d never be found under all this ice. Especially if he waited until morning. The wolf howled again.

He tried. His head didn’t move. The ache of the cold localised around his chest. Pierced by an icicle. He was leaking blood, leaking heat. Or his heart was panicking, telling him it wanted to stop. His breath, already shallow and shaky, stopped. In panic he flailed, tried to. He passed out from exertion and fear.

He woke, terrified out of dreams by the lack of oxygen. The ice was heavier on his chest. Settling on him, burying him. He screamed, knowing there was no way his friends would hear him. The wolf howled again. It sounded close. He couldn’t be far from the surface if the sound came through so clearly. He forced his breathing to calm, concentrated his attention on his right arm. Use the strength of his shoulder to drag it a centimetre closer. Make that first bit of space he could use to dig himself out.
It moved! He started to cry with relief, thinking he was laughing.

Twisting and pulling, shoving and worming under the snow he was going to make it. He was groaning, swearing and shouting for help, not hearing what he was saying. Talking and shouting for company, to prove he was alive. His eyes were frozen shut, the tears had turned to ice, even under his lids. The breeze was what told him he had made it. Warm. Soft repetitive breezes.
Breath. He’d been found, thank God, thank God!

The wolf howled.

Short and sweet, no?

Hi all,

another piece of writing prompt fiction. Enjoy!

‘It’s just a game,’ she said. It didn’t feel like one. I waded deeper into the water, the sand melting away under my toes.
I was only about 2 metres from the buoy at this stage.
The thing about the buoy was that it was just a pocked white ball, more teeth-white than milk-white. Seaweed grew the length of the rope that kept it anchored. Strands floated over the buoy, the mass of it dark under the water.
It looked like a dead body. Face down until the sound of splashing woke it.
The water was shallow then dipped suddenly. So you needed to swim to reach it. I’d told Rebecca that it looked like a dead body. She insisted I go and touch it. She was going to toughen me up, she said. Make a man of me. Which was what I wanted to be. Especially if it meant spending time with Rebecca.
I leaned into the deeper water and pushed off the seabed. The seaweed waved from the rope. The thought of the cold slimy weed made me feel sick.
‘Come on, Pete!’ Rebecca was getting bored. I reached out and tapped the buoy.
‘Knock, knock,’ I said, turning to get back to the shore.
I was fast on the way back. The thought of the bleached white skull with its robe of weed pushed me, Rebecca on the beach, in her swimsuit, pulled me.
I splashed towards her, grinning. She was looking behind me in horror. I wasn’t going to fall for that.
Sometimes the waves slap against the rope. It just sounds like something splashing around.

The prompts were the photo and the random title prompt ‘joke quicksand,’ which I changed to Quick Sand for this post. The idea of the dead body/buoy came from a recent holiday*. Walking on the beach I saw a ball-shaped buoy covered in seaweed and it really did look like the skull of a dead body. I had to watch it until we went past to make sure it didn’t start moving…

*the same holiday that inspired Toe Suit