Hookay, so here’s what happened this time… I started writing this kind of cool story with aliens in it and it turned out that, despite what it had claimed when it was inside my head, it wasn’t actually a flash fiction idea, but a story that could only possibly be told as a proper short story. So I didn’t have anything for last Friday. But I’m not giving up. So here’s another “not quite” entry and I will get back on schedule this Friday. BY CROM I SWEAR IT! Another idea inspired by the fff’s hyperspace suggestion.

ANOTHER FUNNY THING HAPPENED IN HYPERSPACE

“Captain, there are two Cholian battlecruiser decloaking aft,” Lieutenant Ch’aaan’s leftmost speaking tube announced in its thin, warbling voice. The lieutenant paused, rechecking their instruments. Then its central speaking tube boomed. “They’re powering up weapons systems.”

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Another catch up on the Friday Flash - this is something unusual for me, normally I stick to narrative, but this is what my subconscious dragged up this time. I apologise to those who are not parents (and many who are) for whom this will be sickly to the point of nausea. Bear with me, the next story will have aliens.

Some thoughts on watching my daughter sleep

My daughter’s sleep does not come gently, it is an enemy to be resisted, a great snake to be wrestled back and forth until its coils envelop her and she slips away with a final, knowing, smile.

My daughter sleeps with her arms raised high, as though she has surrendered to her foe but her fists remain clenched tight, proof that she has not yet given up this struggle.

My daughter’s sleep is seldom still, she gives her nemesis no respite. The duvet is vanquished and contemptuously cast aside, her pillow is battered and soft toys scattered. Even pyjamas are torn off and discarded.

My daughter sleeps with her jaw set firm, her eyebrows drawn in a gentle frown, sleeping is a serious matter and she is determined to get it right. Her long eyelashes flick away bothersome dreams.

My daughter’s sleep is deeper now, I lean closer to check for signs of breath or life, half afraid, half amazed by this unlikely stillness, then she rises with a shuddering gasp and turns away, back to the battle.

Okay pop-pickers, here’s the first of my flashes designed to catch up with those that I’ve missed over the last few weeks. This one is based on a theme suggested by my fellow Friday Flashers over on our facebook group. Given the relative brevity of the story, the infodump in the middle of all this might well be in line for some sort of record as the largest in relation to the story ever to see light of day. Anyway, enjoy!

A funny thing happpened in hyperspace

Alex sat in the departure lounge and tried to wipe the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, but a combination of the humidity and his own terror had slicked his whole body with perspiration and the movement achieved nothing.

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So, last week my daughter was sick and then so was I, so no posting for a while. But now I’m back. Here’s a new flash. Hope you like it.

Proper Little Soldier

Solomon heard them coming just before dawn. He shook me awake and then I woke the kid, putting my hand across his mouth, just in case he made a noise.

He didn’t.

He was becoming a proper little soldier.

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Oh this one is just stupid… I was working on something good, but it’s turning into a full length story. So here’s something daft.

.

THE MESSNGER

The alien thing – white and oblong like a small refrigerator – was still smouldering and popping as Brad slid down the loose soil into the great gouge it had cut into the earth. Suddenly isolated Brad felt his drunken bravado slither away.

He looked up to where the crowd had gathered on the crater’s lip. For a moment Brad considered scrambling back up the soft slope but the pressure of the crowd’s expectation kept him pressed into this hole in the earth.

He turned back to the alien thing.

“Hi!” Brad said, softly, acutely aware of all the eyes looking down at him. “I come in peace?”

 Suddenly the thing chittered and throbbed. Rob yelped and leapt backwards, stumbling, and sprawling into the warm dirt.

Dozens of whip-like tendrils morphed out of the alien thing’s body, seemed to sniff the air, then flicked in his direction.

Brad screamed.

Somebody up above laughed, but he could hear the rest of them gasp and feel them stepping back, leaving him alone.

The alien thing shivered and, silently, a seam split down one face. Fierce white light ripped the night. Brad raised a hand, blinded.

“Congratulations dear friend!” The voice crackled. “You have been chosen as the most fortuate, winner of a very grand prize in the Antarean lottery. To claim your uncountable winnings simply place thirty kilograms of – ”

Thud! Crack!                              

Brad started kicking the alien thing. From above, on the lip of the crater, the growling crowd surged forward as one.

Ahem!

It’s hard to know who reads this and how much attention they pay. My ISP says I’m getting over 200 unique visitors a day from actual web browsers (as opposed to robots who account for about the same number of hits again) - more when I actually post something! Is that good/bad/indifferent? I have no idea. But it’s far more than I imagined so, since I haven’t told my mum I’m doing this, there must be quite a few real people passing through.

And I realised I hadn’t done a proper round up on here of my fellow Friday flashers, so that any of my “loyal readers” (heh!) who aren’t au fait with the excellent work being done elsewhere can check it out.

First up: Paul Raven at Velcro City Tourist Board who, this week brings us Diplomacy. Proving that when it comes to just talking to each other men are from Mars err… no… Earth and aliens are from, well, somewhere else, obviously.

Then, there’s Shaun C Green, whoss title Softly, Softly, Catchee Monkey nearly says it all - although of course it doesn’t otherwise there’d be no point in reading the story.

We shuffle next to the Gareth L Powell’s neatly told, and powerful, Snowball. Gareth started all this so if you don’t like it you can blame him.

From there we skip lightly to the home of Gareth D Jones who offers you this apocalyptic take on a familiar story in The Last Adam.

Finally, but by no means least, Neil Benyon gets all apocalyptic on your arse too with a chatroom conversation that takes a nasty twist in SCL69. If I can manage to say this without sounding patronising, Neil’s making some great progress each week, his stories keep getting better and better.

So there you go, a full round up of the other known Friday flashers (perhaps I should rethink that sobriquet) - go, read my multitudinous minions, and enjoy.

Next week, I promise, magazine deadlines all met, this blog will feature some real content.

Eskragh

We buried Calum’s da today. We put him in the same patch of ground that we’d pretended to put Calum in. Eighteen months. I never thought the old man would last so long.

#

I remember the funeral. The other one. It rained hard, there was no wind and the water fell in heavy sheets across the graveyard. That place is on a hill and normally you can see for miles – from Lough Neagh in the east to the Sperrins in the west. That day, you couldn’t see as far as the grey stone wall that penned-in the dead.

The ground around the grave sucked at our feet and the wooden boards beneath our soles were swollen and soft, like decaying flesh.

Not that there was any of that in the coffin we were putting in the ground.

Calum’s dad turned to me after he threw a heavy clod of mud onto the empty box. He grabbed my arm, his fingers hard as bone and cold as death, and he fixed me with sunken grey eyes.

“No man should live longer than his children,” he said. I’d been Calum’s friend for twelve years and that was maybe the first time he ever spoke directly to me. He only spoke to me once more.

#

This is how we lost Calum.

The sky was the sharpest, fiercest blue with a single skiff of white cloud scraping the edge of space high above us. We were at Eskragh Lough, six of us. We’d dumped our bikes in the long grass that grew right to the edge of the lough, tossed our clothes behind us and dived into the water.

Eskragh’s not a big lough, but it’s deep and the water was still icy.

We roared at the shock of it and made for the big wooden raft that was tethered near the middle of the lough.

And then we lay, for an hour or two or more.

Sometimes we talked. Bullshit about girls or football or the Brits or music.

Sometimes we swam.

Sometimes we just lay and let our fingers and toes trail in the water.

Then, at some invisible signal like a flock of birds suddenly rising, we were up and off and swimming back towards the shore and our bikes.

But only five bikes were picked up.

We called and shouted. I swam back out to the raft. We swam deep into the lough.

We looked and looked. And then we went for help. And they looked and looked.

Eskragh isn’t big, but it is deep.

They never found Calum.

#

I was walking past Fallon’s, it’s an old man’s pub full of serious drinkers – men whose faces burn red with the tracery of veins spreading from their nose. The sacred heart lamps.

Calum’s da came stumbling out, hard drunk on a Thursday afternoon. I was walking home from school, still in my uniform, and almost walked into him.

He looked at me. Did he recognise me? I don’t know.

I opened my mouth to say something but found I didn’t have any words.

“Eskragh took my son,” he said. “It won’t give him back.”

#

It’s dark. Eskragh is black and slick and smooth and it laps stickily at my feet, spreading a sickly chill up my body.

I take off my shirt and stand naked and shivering before the lough.

I take a breath and then I wade in fast, knowing that I must move quickly before the cold takes away my will. Another breath, almost a gasp as the water grips my chest, and then I dive in.

Down.

Already my lungs are aching.

Down.

Eskragh isn’t a big lake, but it’s deep.

(for Connor)

Hitting and running. Unbelievably busy at the moment, finishing off the new Focus and putting to bed the magazine at work.

Afraid this is an oldie and not really a goldie.

Promise more effort next week, off to read my daughter her bedtime story.

Too late, spaceman

“Five…”

The astronaut scanned the console. All green. Good to go.

“…four…”

Far away engines roared, his helmet muffled the noises but vibrations still rattled his teeth.

“…three…”

He thought of the crowd, miles away, cheering. He imagined his parents and his wife and child. He smiled.

“…two…”

He would be a hero. The first man on Mars. Three years in space. His boy would be almost full grown when he returned. Three years without his wife. Three years and his father, already sick, might be dead.

“…one…”

Was it really worth it?

“Wait!”

“…blast off.”

Here we go. GLP reckons 80,000 words in a year’s time at this rate amongst those of us contributing to this little “project”. If we manage that, I say we pick the best of what we’ve done and indulge in a dose of vanity publishing…

Anyway, there’s lots of stuff I want to talk about it, but I don’t have time because of work (look, it’s nearly 3:00am and I’m only just finished) especially the debate about short fiction publishing. Maybe at the weekend.

Here’s the story. Another brand new one.

Dust to dust

I’ve got two old shirts wrapped around my mouth and nose but, even so, I can still feel the dust coating my teeth, prickling on my tongue, and the thought of breathing it in, of swallowing it, is making me feel sick, The world is gyrating insanely, like a child’s spinning top just before it tumbles over. I close my eyes but it only makes things worse. My gut churns and the little food that I had for breakfast leaps into my throat.

I fight back the urge to puke, swallowing hard, afraid that it will only mean gulping in more of the fucking dust. Forcing down the razor-sharp bile that’s slicing at my throat brings tears to my eyes.

I drop to one knee, causing another cloud of the dust to rise up around me, and cradle my head in my hands, praying for the nausea to end.

I feel a touch on my shoulder and look up into Areus’s solemn gaze. He is wearing his heavy rebreather mask, the one everyone covets but no one dares to touch. There’s something insectile about the way he looks with that mask on. It makes him even more intimidating.

“Are you okay?” He asks, his voice muffled by the rebreather.

I shake my head. “You?”

Areus stands up straight, looking out at the plain of dust that stretches to the horizon in every direction, broken only by scattered fragments of shattered buildings. He draws back his shoulders and raises his head against the slight flick of wind. He’s imperious. I can see why some of the younger ones practically worship him. With his long dark hair and heavily muscled torso, he has the look of a demi-god.

Then he swoops and kneels beside me, leaning close and never once breaking eye-contact. There’s something in the way he looks at me that is chilling. I have been assessed and I have failed to meet his standards.

“It’s only dust,” he says. “Get back to work.”

Another drabble this time.

Unusually gothic for me.

Nothing more to add, except that I hope who ever is out there (if anyone is) enjoys it.

.

She kissed me

She kissed me once and I was lost.

“Come,” she said.

Like a lamb, I went.

The hotel was dying. Drab wallpaper sagged on damp walls. Lights flickered oddly, as if underwater. The carpets danced with Rorschach splatters, black as dried blood. Those visions of writhing monsters and torn flesh were old friends.

“Please me,” she said.

I tried, weeping gratefully. She just laughed.

“Please me.” She gave me a blade, bone-handled and fine.

I opened myself from neck to belly and watched my blood, steaming, soak the floor.

“Please,” I said.

She kissed me again.

“Thank you,” I smiled.