The forest

(100-word flash fiction)

“Where’re we going?” she asks. After picking her from the airport he’s driven into an unknown area. A shiver of fear shoots up her spine. The week spent at the conference had been fear-free. She’d dreaded returning to his violent jealousy.

“You’ll like it…” he says enigmatically.

‘It’ is a dense forest. Some distance in, she steps on leaves. Suddenly, the ground gives way. She free-falls, lands painfully. High above her, he’s now covering the trap opening with leaves. Her phone’s in the car. She smiles. Hidden in her bracelet is a tracking device. She can escape him after all.

***

Had a bit of a struggle with this one. Moody muse. Many thanks to Rochelle who, in contrast, is very prompt with the prompt every week for Friday Fictioneers. 😊

PHOTO PROMPT © Lisa Fox

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The golden doll

(100-word flash fiction)

“Your skin’s as silver, your hair as gold,

Only you’re wealthy, the rest paupers…”

He sings to her tunelessly a popular Hindi song, as he lolls on the crumpled bed. She covers her nakedness, slowly, listlessly, with clothes. Which fails to cover or erase the shrieking shame in her soul.

“………..your petal-soft footsteps bring great fortune,

your touch turns stones into diamonds,

whoever gets you becomes a millionaire……”

Indeed, she thinks, am I not the most popular prostitute in your harem, who brings you the most money, who you kidnapped on my way to school when I was just 12.

***

Human trafficking is such a blot on humanity, it’s a shame it still exists. Each year, internationally, 3.8 million adults are trafficked for forced sexual exploitation, and 1.0 million children are trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation.

Rochelle’s photo prompt for this week’s Friday Fictioneers is so innocent, I don’t know where the heart-breaking story came from. Although the song (the original is romantic in nature) landed first and then the story followed. Been thinking too much about the injustices of human society nowadays ☹

PHOTO PROMPT © Ted Strutz

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The yakshi

(100-word flash fiction)

Her throat’s scratchy with thirst. No foolhardy traveller has crossed the forest for many nights. Tonight, the moon’s being eaten. *

A twig breaks underfoot. A soft footfall. A gasp muffled. This moonless night could be her break-the-fast night. Turning into a beautiful woman, she slithers down the tree onto the path of the shadowy figure.

Her eyes sparkle, her skin glows, she places her petal soft hands on his neck. Out of nowhere, a hand appears with a nail. The traveller pierces her forehead with it, drives it into the tree trunk.

People say, she’s still captive in the tree.

***

*  In the old days, a lunar eclipse was viewed as such.

** The story is about a yakshi. They are said to be malevolent blood-drinking female spirits. They had the ability to shape-shift. Sorcerers would use their powers of magic to trap these spirits. One of the methods used was to nail them to a tree trunk. Yakshi-lore was mostly prevalent in South India.

*** For more reading – In South Indian popular culture, Yakshis are depicted as bloodthirsty female ghosts who often have had a tragic human past. The actual origins of Yakshis are obscure and antiquated as they predate Vedic times. Aside from the ghoulish characterization, Yakshis were believed to be nature deities signifying trees, rivers, and hills. They were later incorporated into Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism during Vedic times and known to be secondary tutelary/guardian type deities to the Gods and Goddesses of the upper echelons in Hinduism. Their new servitude status is the result of widespread Brahmanization which led to appropriation and assimilation of indigenous culture into the dominant Hinduism fold. Thus began the devolvement of Yakshis, much like the fate of the Valkyries, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Djinns, which were also usurped by dominating religions. The misogynistic and casteist downfall of Yakshis into demonic and evil female spirits was then popularized in Kerala literature starting from Kottarathil Sankunni’s ‘Aithihymala’ to Malayatoor Ramakrishnan’s ‘Yakshi’. Source – https://brownhistory.substack.com/p/tale-of-yakshis-merging-myth-and

***

It’s Friday Fictioneers time again and lovely Rochelle has given us another prompt to tickle our muse with 🙂

PHOTO PROMPT © Fleur Lind

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The boat

(100-word flash fiction)

At the edge of her mind is a sea, a calm sea, a beguiling sea, a bottomless sea. The sea of oblivion.

She looks down at the pill nestled in the palm of her hand. A brown boat in the beige sand. A boat she’s been longing for months to take to ferry her across dazzling psychedelic waters into the depths of the sea. To lose herself. To find her free of pain self.

The kick is sudden, sharp and incisive. She lurches forward. Her hands instinctively cradle, then caress her bulging stomach. The pill has disappeared down the sink.

***

I came across this prompt from last month (that I had missed) from Rochelle’s Friday Fictioneers and a story just came along 🙂

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

Stars and Stripes

(100-word flash fiction)

Back when I was a kid, I was a star student. Stars for math, manners, drama, dependability, science, smiling-silent-suffering.

Sadly, they didn’t give stars for over-the-top dramatics, gaslighting, raging hysteria…that my mother so well deserved. Add a jumbo star for ‘crushing-a-child’s-spirit’.

A-student, goody-girl, highly-paid me was the prize he won by proposing with a humungous star-shaped diamond ring. I hadn’t learned to say No.

Now, to my plush office I wear long-sleeved blouses and floaty pants. In all weathers. How else can I hide the stripes on my back and legs?

Which is why I hate the stars and stripes.

***

No offense to the people of the USA. I saw the stars and stripes and the story came along. I wasn’t thinking of your flag, in particular. Although, if you’re offended, can I please ask you to take a moment, do some soul-searching and tell me why. I’ve been doing a deep dive into the subject of identity in this increasingly polarised world.

Many thanks to Rochelle, our gracious host of Friday Fictioneers 🙂

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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The Bibliophile

(100-word flash fiction)

“He was such an incurable bibliophile.” Mum says sadly, as we empty Dad’s library. “’Mary’, he would say excitedly, coming home with numerous tomes in his arms, ‘look at the treasures I found.’”

I go over and hug her. “Have a lie-down Mum, I’ll put these into boxes.” She’s taken losing her husband of 50 years hard.

I pull out several notebooks that were hidden behind the now-exposed bottom row and start reading.

Written in Dad’s beautiful cursive, each one is filled with paeans to undying love, poems of pining, long letters of heartbreak, all addressed to someone called Paula.

***

I like how Wednesday nights are meant for flash-fictioning at the Friday Fictioneers so ably helmed by Rochelle, where we write a story of not more than 100 words based on a photo prompt 🙂

PHOTO PROMPT © Susan Rouchard

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The prisoner – Part 7

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

The cold is deadening, eviscerating. But how do I feel it? Am I not dead already? How do I hear voices?

“…heartbeat….“ “—shocking…” “…..mix-up” “chemicals ….wrong combination” “ ….tell them?” ….truth…. fired…” “…. inject again…” “..won’t do it …” Voices that seem to come from afar, rising and receding.

The rest of my body is solidly unmoving, except for my stubborn heart thunderously thudding in my rising and falling chest. The long, cold, unmoving silence is broken by clear voices.

“We have two choices – inject him again with the right chemical combination this time or hand him over….” A strong, authoritative voice.

“I say, inject, save our jobs.” A weak, nasal voice.

“Thank God I saw the faint beat on his chest just before I dug in with the scalpel.” A gruff, abrasive voice. “The coroner who declared him dead is the one who should be sacked.”

“I wonder why he survived.” A clear, curious, female voice.

I realise I am naked. My body starts to shake as the cold air presses down on it even as the cold from the metal table bites into it. Slight shivers turn into violent trembling. I hear footsteps hurry towards me. I pry my eyes open to see four blobs hovering around me, three on one side and a solitary one on the other.

“Hurry,” says the strong voice, “we need to get him warmed up ….he’s gone into hypothermia.” They draw something light over me but the trembling continues. “This sheet isn’t enough, we need a blanket or something warm.”

“In an autopsy room?” the gruff voice is sardonic. “The sheet we put over corpses is not to keep them warm.”

“A coat, does no one have a coat?” the strong voice is anxious.

“Doctor, we cut open corpses here, not revive them.” Feet hurry away and hurry back. Something thick lands over the top half of my body and another on my legs.

Someone extracts my hand and starts rubbing it. Soon, my other hand is being rubbed, then my feet.

“I guess we’re not injecting him then…” says the nasal voice.

“This is a miracle,” says the female voice. “Maybe he’s innocent.”

***

( …. to be continued)

The prisoner – Part 6

(continuing the whodunit saga of The Prisoner from 2 weeks ago. The preceding parts can be read here Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5)

(100-word flash fiction)

I’m back under the bridge I left 25 years ago.

I watch as 15-year-old me sticks his head out of his sleeping bag, rubbing bewilderment from his eyes. He wriggles out of the bag, looks around, his gaze a searchlight. Even in the dead of night there’s traffic on the bridge, the light from their headlights glinting off the water casting on him a flashing, ghostly light.

His mouth opens in a call. Danny does not answer on that life-altering night of THE DISAPPEARANCE.

Danny surfaces 20 years later, on these same waters, body swollen, a bullet through his head.

***

Part 7

***

Thank you Rochelle for kindly hosting the weekly writers meetup of Friday Fictioneers 🙂

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

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The prisoner – Part 5

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

I’m stuck inside the mirror of a hotel room. Laura and the flesh-and-blood me are unpacking suitcases, while 6-year old Annie gazes out of the large picture window at biscuit-crumb sand being serenaded by a jewelled emerald sea. She turns around, her lips move. Flesh-and-blood me stops unpacking and holds out his hand. She hastens towards him and the two of them walk out the door. Laura and the mirror-stuck me gaze at them through the window as Annie, joyously skips over powdery sand towards the placid waters.

Laura shuts her empty suitcase, punches at her phone, walks to the mirror. If it was possible for me to feel shock, I would have cracked the glass. Instead, I gaze at her beautiful face she’s now primping with lipstick, hair brush and an incandescent smile. She turns suddenly, hurries to the door and falls into the arms of a smartly dressed man with dark hair and a dark moustache. Who even as a detached entity-in-limbo I cannot forget – Christopher, my law-firm partner.

He detaches himself, leads her inside and sits on the bed. Pulling her to him, he caresses her little baby bump, kisses it, lays his head over it, his eyes closed in an ecstasy I hadn’t though he was capable of. She’s bending over him, thick hair curtaining her face, caressing his dark locks and so does not see the flesh-and-blood me enter catlike through the door, come up from behind, raise a syringe and inject something into her neck. She sags against the confused Christopher, whose vision blocked by her body and hair does not see the hand with the syringe neatly piercing his neck.

The mirror would definitely have cracked at what happens next. This me walks to the mirror, my own grey eyes looking back at me and yet when I look past this incongruous me out the window, I see another me swooping Annie up and throwing her into the air, a heart-wrenching look of terrified exhilaration on her face as she descends into my outstretched arms. And the me in the room checking the necks of the now-slumped Christopher and Annie with black-gloved hands. Gloves I never had. The exit just as dead-quiet as the entry.

All I can now do is look out the window and wonder. Why had I not thought it odd that bachelor Christopher had left work most days on time while had I worked to balance the workload? Also, why had I never held him to account? Had fear boarded up my spine too together with my heart?

Whatever happened to the blond, blue-eyed Reverand Jonanthan Aster?

***

……to be continued

The traveller

(100-word flash fiction)

There’s a barrier between the two worlds that most people find to be rock-solid but to me is porous. I sieve through it most nights happily time travelling, galaxy travelling, alternate universe travelling, a glowing silver cord anchoring me to my sleeping body.

When I return, everything seems heavy, burdensome. A dense sea of tightly packed molecules. Gravity like manacles. Except when I am drinking in my child’s laughter, the glinting innocence of her eyes, her petal softness.

Until, dreaming while driving I crash into a rock-solid wall.

Now, I yearn, pine to hold my inconsolable child in my arms.

***

Thank you, Rochelle, for hosting yet another round of Friday Fictioneers 🙂

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

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