Short Stories Thread.

[Wolfnox]

Write original short stories. Fiction or non fiction.

 

[Bikutoso]

Don't know how long a short story needs to be. But wrote this at last week when I was bored at work. Don't know how well it is written, as it is my first story in Japanese that is longer than a single sentence.

猫が私の家に来ました。
私の牛乳を見て、飲みました。
猫は私のベッドで寝ています。

A cat came to my home.
It saw my milk and drank it.
A cat is sleeping in my bed.

 

[Aspychata]

There was a female. She had a glass. This glass held her emotion.
But you ask questions. You ask why?
She held this glass tight. This emotion was under glass but she couldn't feel it. She couldn't see it. But this emotion was still there. One day, she dropped the glass. She had swallowed her emotions.
When she was buried, there was two boxes.
But you ask questions. You ask why? Two boxes -why?
Simply scrawled, in a tiny feminine handwriting, you barely read *Emotions* on the small plaque located on top.

 

[Fino]

"There are general guidelines for each literary category: Short stories range anywhere from 1,500 to 30,000 words; Novellas run from 30,000 to 50,000; Novels range from 55,000 to 300,000 words."

 

[clg114]

A long, long time ago I learned how to cast a spell. It really is not very hard, as long as the procedure is followed exactly. First you need a hair from the eyelash of a white goat. One hair, no more. Seal the hair in a new earthen pot and bury it in a dung pile for 15 days. After exactly 15 days, dig up the pot and break it open. You will find a serpent inside. Kill the serpent with a knife that has never been used before. Dry the serpent in the sun for one week. After the week is up, grind the dried serpent in to a fine powder. To cast a spell, you simply sprinkle the powder on the object or person you want to cast a spell on, at the stroke of midnight. After the powder is dispersed, say the words "Dring, Drang" out loud. The spell is cast.

You may very well wonder how I learned to do this. Well, it is because of my love for motorcycles. When I was in my early twenties, I was really into building model motorcycles. But I wanted something really unique. I heard of a shop in the old part of town that sold very unusual kits. It was a creepy looking place, but went in anyway. There was a very old man in there and I explained exactly what I wanted. Without saying a word, he went into the back room and was gone for a long time. I was about to leave when he came back. He hade a box with a picture of a 1953 AJS motocross bike that Lenny Smith rode in the 1953 British Gran Prix. The model even came with a rider that looked exactly like Smith. It was very detailed, everything was just like the original. It even came with a little packet of dust to sprinkle on it so it looked like it had just raced a moto. It was very expensive, but I had to have it. It was just what I was looking for. I took it home and went right to work on it. I finished it right around midnight. All that was left to do was sprinkle on the powder. I did not want to do that on the kitchen table, so turned the porch light on and took it out to the driveway. I tore the packet open and sprinkled the dust on the motorcycle. I noticed that something was printed on the packet but could not read it in the dark. I turned around so I could read it in the light from the porch light. I read it out loud. It said" Dring, Drang." Then I heard what sounded like a tiny motorcycle engine start up. I turned around just in time to see the model motorcycle wheeling down the drive way into the darkness, never to be seen again.

 

[tree]

"Flash fiction is a fictional work of extreme brevity that still offers character and plot development. Identified varieties, many of them defined by word count, include the six-word story; the 280-character story (also known as "twitterature"); the "dribble" (also known as the "minisaga," 50 words); the "drabble" (also known as "microfiction," 100 words);"sudden fiction" (750 words); flash fiction (1,000 words); and "micro-story".

Some commentators have suggested that flash fiction possesses
a unique literary quality in its ability to hint at or imply a larger story."

Flash fiction - Wikipedia

 

[Misery]

I'll try my hand at a super-short.... something.

Here we go:


Shutting the door to my apartment, I breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a tough day... time to relax, finally, in my fortress of solitude. Putting my coat on the hanger, I headed into my little office to stretch out in my crappy little swivel-chair. Watch some funny videos online. That sort of thing. Sat down, turned on the machine. A bit of frustration as I waited for the electronic dinosaur to finally boot up, but I can be patient sometimes. At least I dont have to deal with my boss ranting at me when I'm here. This place isnt much... but at least it's mine.

The lights in the apartment flickered for a moment. I could hear the air conditioner choke, and the computer flashed as well. Ugh. I swear, this place... stuff just seems to go wrong alot. This is the fourth time this week that it's happened... the power thing, I mean. God only knows what's wrong with it. Maybe I should ask the landlord tomorrow. Well, it didnt stop the computer from booting, so that's good. I waited for a moment to see if it'd happen again, but nope. All clear. Sitting back, I opened up Youtube and started browsing.

A clicking, padding noise coming towards me, and then a light pressure against my leg. Without looking, I reach down and stoke the dog's furry head. The lights flickered again. Really? Is it going to keep doing that?

A minute passes by, and the power nearly goes out AGAIN. This time it was enough to knock the computer out. As if I hadnt had enough stress today! Still patting the dog, I reach across the desk to hit the power button, get the horrid thing going again. As I wait for the machine to boot up, the lights still flickering slightly, I realize that the dog is pressing his head against me harder.

I also realized something else.

I dont have a dog.

The lights went out. This time, they didnt come back.

 

[rubicks52]

The air smelled like a hurricane. I hadn’t checked the weather yet, but I knew—a storm was coming. There was that sepia tinge to the sky that made everything dull, and a humid wind that promised to become so much more. Already, a ball of dread was growing in my stomach, more vicious and terrible because of my memories from the hurricane two years ago. Surely, I was wrong. There couldn’t be two hurricanes in two years, right? But I checked my phone and had to hold in a cry, because the hurricane was forecast to make landfall that afternoon.

Was I really so out of touch with the world that I’d missed something of this magnitude? Apparently not—nobody else knew, either. Not until the rain started, and by then it was too late to move your car, so you had to hope you chose a good spot that morning. Mine was in a large, expansive parking lot, so I wasn’t worried. Then someone reminded me that the parking lot had flooded two years ago, and any cars left in it were totaled from water damage. That was about the time that I got a text from my mom: did you know there’s a hurricane? I was surprised she didn’t call. She probably didn’t think it was that serious—nobody did. Not until the roads started flooding and suddenly you were trapped and nothing short of a literal boat would get you anywhere else.

I sat at my desk and watched the rain through my window. I tried to estimate the amount of water on the road from the splashes of cars doggedly making their way through it—a foot? Two? You couldn’t see the sidewalk anymore. Each time a car drove by, it sent a ripple through the water that lapped at the grass. Some of the smaller cars had to turn around, and I desperately hoped they were able to make it home. I couldn’t watch the cars during the last hurricane. Then, I’d boarded the windows with plywood, but this morning there hadn’t been time. At least the apartment was brighter, even if the light was dull and gray.

During the hurricane, I spent hour after hour staring out the window and watching the water inch ever closer. Except for when there was a tornado warning, and then I had to go to the bathroom and wait for the all clear. I hated that awful siren—I’d heard it in my dreams at least once a week since the last hurricane. I wished I had some candy, or any sort of snack really, but tomorrow was grocery day and I was running low on food. It’s not like I was actually hungry, though. I just needed a distraction.

I tried to stay up, I really did. But the human body can only take so much constant adrenaline before crashing. I dreamed of monsters lurking in the filthy floodwater and sirens howling above me. But then, when I woke up, I almost couldn’t open my eyes because the light was so bright. It took a countdown to force myself to look out the window. The water was gone, leaving only a dirty line mere inches from my apartment door. A car drove past me, and I’d never been so happy to see a random vehicle before.

We’d survived the worst of the storm.

 

[Mia]

Anna had planned it out for months, when she and Peter began making trips into town to buy boxes of dehydrated foods that they stored in the root cellar in the basement. Word was that when things had quieted down survivors would begin to drift from the cities, so they had stockpiled gas and ammunition and wood enough to last several years. In their house in the woods, they had replaced the water taps with a hand pump for water from the well. The wood stove was adequate to cook with, and it also heated the house. They had brought all the wood inside to keep the house warm, it lined more than two foot deep stacked up to the ceiling. They seemed to have adequate food to eat and fuel to stay warm for the winter, they hoped, because they never had done this before.

Peter had built a bed for them in the kitchen, close to the woodstove. And they slept there after the computers, phones and television and electricity that ran them stopped. They heard no cars or trucks on the dirt back roads and no float planes landed on the lake. They began canning, pickling and drying food for the winter. Anna went out into the woods most days after that, gathering edible plants and fall crab apples and nuts and mushrooms. The garden still held some root vegetables. Peter fished from the canoe and brought in catfish, rainbow trout and sunfish on different days. Most of which they ate and any leftovers were dried on top on the stove and mixed with the chicken food.

They had four chickens living in what was originally the summer kitchen. They had insulated it, and made it comfy for them. At night they would open the inner door to warm it, and the chickens seemed healthy and content. The chickens foraged outside during the day for seeds, insects, worms and grubs. Next spring they would have to plant more grain, and peas for the chickens.

They had caged the entry and back door and windows with metal lattice when they originally heard the news about the illness. Inside every window had metal shutters. They watched the news back then, people's pet dogs in the cities passed the cold like symptoms to their owners. Scientists traced it back to contaminated beef meal in dry dog food. It was a new viral pathogen relatively unknown to science. A combination of viral and fungal pathogens that had infected the dogs and was quickly passed on to humans by the dog's saliva. At first the virus seemed like the common cold, then the symptoms accelerated, within ten days the infected had died. It was highly communicable, a sneeze, a cough, a touch would infect the people around you, before they stopped broadcasting the news and the electricity went out, they had estimated that one quarter of the world's population had died. With another eighth of the population already infected.

Except for the trips into town, two months ago, Anna and Peter had not seen or heard any people on the lake or in the surrounding area. Anna was foraging for bullrushes when she heard the sound of a boat scraping on a rock. She assumed it was Peter going out for a paddle, but the sound had echoed from the far side of the lake. She ran back to the house and barricaded the door, checking to see if Peter was in the kitchen. And there he was, eating an egg and drinking tea. "Peter, I heard a canoe on the far side of the lake." Peter stood up and drank the last bit of tea, put on his boots and went outside with his glock and a pair of binoculars. Anna took out the 9mm beretta, which was already loaded. She changed into boots and gloves, and a black watchcap. They knew this day would probably come, she locked the front and back doors as she left the house.

Anna went down to join Peter on the shore of the lake as they quietly hid the canoe and oars in the reeds nearby. They knew the surrounding forest well, as Anna walked off to the left and Peter began walking right, keeping cover between themselves and the lake. They had practiced this many times. She began walking, keeping close to the lake, with a screen of fir trees to stay behind. The undergrowth was minimal so there was little noise from her boots. She peered out onto the lake, and saw a canoe on the far side keeping near to the edge of the lake. There were two people in it, and it looked like they were trolling for fish. She walked around to the area they were near and hid upwind as close as she could to the shoreline. Lying on her belly she could hear them talking:

'We'll camp here and make a fire and cook any fish we catch. Tomorrow, we'll see if there are any cabins on this lake.' What if there are people already here? "We'll take what they have, like that group did to us, and forced us out with nothing, were lucky to be alive."

Anna had heard enough and she knew Peter would be further along on the same side of the lake. She slipped out of her hiding place, crawling on her belly and headed into the forest. She met up with Peter a half hour later. They whispered to one another in the dense forest. "Should we just let them be?" "What if they find the house?" "What if they're sick?" Anna used the binoculars and watched them for awhile, they seemed to know how to use a canoe and fish. "Let's go back to the house." As they returned and went inside, they loaded the weatherby and the garand with the scope.

They didn't want to make noise and they didn't want to be found. So they settled down to wait, doing their usual things. Periodically, one of them would go outside and check for the strangers in the canoe. When it got dark, Anna saw a small cooking fire on the far side of the lake right near the rock cliff. Neither of them could sleep. She told Peter about the conversation she heard. And they talked throughout the night. At dawn with fog still rising from the lake, they decided to warn the strangers off. They couldn't share what they had, there simply wasn't enough. And they wouldn't allow anyone to take their supplies from them.

Peter took the canoe and began paddling across the lake. Anna walked for about thirty minutes and climbed onto the rock cliff slipping on the scree as she lay down using the rifle's scope to find the fire and campsite. She had brought the garand and her handgun. Peter had decided to carry the glock where the strangers could see it from the shore, glinting in the shoulder holster. Anna settled down on the cliff and used the scope to find the strangers sleeping by the guttering fire.

Ten minutes later Peter was near their campsite, forty or so feet away in the canoe. He shouted to them, "Hey, strangers ahoy" There was no answer, or movement. He called again, no answer. Peter moved in closer in with the canoe. Using the binoculars he could see two people in sleeping bags. He waved at Anna to come down as he beached the canoe near the rock cliff. They both walked upwind near the sleeping strangers, using a long stick they prodded the sleeping bags. There was no sound or movement. Anna could then see their faces and the blood coagulated around their mouth and ears. They must have died in the night from the dog virus.

They piled branches and wood and leaves on the bodies and set them on fire. They threw their own clothes in as well and bathed in the frigid lake water. Then headed home in their canoe, exhausted. Hoping that they had not exposed themselves to the virus. Later that day they went back to the campsite, and shoveled dirt and sand over the remains. It was over for now.

 

[Wolfnox]

I was alone among sand. Crawling forward on two arms. My eyes blinded a deep wound in my side. I forgot where i had received my wound and how i had become blind. But i not open them. Something warm and red had crusted over them. I felt that same warmth flow down my wounded side. But, i thought little of these things. My only thoughts were on crawling threw the warm sands. Little by little i pulled myself forward. The only sound aside from this was the wind. I found myself strangely happy. It was simple this life i had now. Dragging myself across the sands. No thinking was required. Just the willingness to keep pulling yourself forward. A simple process in a life that had been anything but simple. I knew not the passage of time. Only the passing of the day. When the sun set the sands grew cold and the air chilled. My body knew no hunger and i never grew thirsty. My purpose was and is the crawl. Countless days later i at last collapsed from exhaustion. The next time i awoke. It was in a bed. My wounds had been tended. The crust on my eyes wiped away. A woman walked into the room and took my hand. I knew not how. But it felt like i knew her. Lije an old friend who had been away many years. She never spoke as i healed. Even when she changed my bandages. But her touch conveyed more then words ever could. Threw it i could tell when she was sad, happy, afaird, worried, or hopeful. As time passed we grew close. She helped me stand up and held me close when i walked. Eventually i was healed enough to leave. But I had no where to go. And a debt to pay. So i married the woman who saved my life and said not a word. It was a desicion i will never regret. We are happy and she is proud to be a mother. To our babies.