Announcements

First of all, I want to apologize for the lack of activity over the past month. A combination of work, lack of energy, and writer’s block led to the least productive writing month of my life. Hopefully I can get things back on track for the New Year.

Secondly, I’m excited to announce the publication of a short mystery called “The Lazarus Riddle.” You can read it for free on Crimson Streets complete with a brilliant illustration by the talented Tim Soekkha!

“The Lazarus Riddle” by J.A. Prentice, featuring art by Time Soekkha. Riddle me this…How does a self-proclaim messiah get shot point-blank in the chest in front of multiple witnesses, be pronounced dead by the medical examiner, and laid in-state, suddenly get over his death? Is Cavan Bishop really the Messiah resurrected? The woman who shot him swears she shot him “proper”, yet he’s appeared in flesh and blood once again. It was up to PC Tara Connor and the mysterious consultant Victoria Burton to crack the seemingly impossible case. Whatever you think the answer is, you won’t be right.

Thanks to all my incredible followers. Wishing you all an excellent New Year and hoping to have some more content for you soon!

Airport Lines

The line moves in spasms, little fits of stopping and starting. All around: coughing, grumbling, the whining and crying of children, the barks of irritated adults. He is adrift in a river of misery, drawn slowly on towards the little booths with their tired attendants and thumping stamps.

He clutches his passport, making sure he has it close. He won’t need it for another ten minutes – perhaps twenty – but he wants to be ready. Announcements echo: last calls for flights to cities he has never heard of, messages to people he does not know. He tugs his suitcase closer, trying to make space for the couple behind, shoving forward like all this is for them and everyone else is an inconvenience.

A traveller and her family are pulled aside. He’s not sure if they’re being giving a pass to the front or an interrogation, but she follows the attendant with dignity, even with two children tugging at her legs.

He tries not to pay attention to security guards with their guns in their holsters and their stern faces as the crowd surges again. An anxious voice tells him something’s gone wrong.

He checks his watch. It’s only been three minutes.

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Word Count: 200

This is for Sunday Photo Fiction. Thanks to Susan for running the challenge!

The Mariner’s Broken Chains

Once the mariner was bound in chains – of duty, of expectation, of law, of iron – but she cast them aside, seizing her ship and making for the open seas. Above the crash of the surf, skimming through white spray and deep blue waves, the mariner pressed on.

She heard the cries of the gulls, free upon the wind, and laughed, sailing on into the unknown, towards the rising sun.

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This is for ThreeLineTales. Thanks to Sonya for running the challenge and Lalo for providing the prompt photo!

The Innocence of New Buildings

There is a purity in beginnings, the architect thinks as watches the digger trundle across virgin earth.

A fresh building is like a newborn, untainted by people and purpose. The building simply is. A thing unto itself.

The digger claws at dirt, gouging holes in the earth, ready for the foundation to be laid. The architect watches and the building takes shape in his mind, his pen strokes and measurements becoming strong walls and gleaming windows. Beautiful apartments. A new way to live.

Shouts echo across the site. The fence is broken; a woman is running towards them, screaming, a can of paint in her hand, security tight behind her.

The architect doesn’t dodge in time. Red paint goes everywhere, like blood.

“Our homes!” she screams as they drag her away. “You tore down our homes!”

Hatred simmers in the architect’s heart. The purity is gone. She defiled it.

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Word Count: 150

This is for FFfAW. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and wildverbs for providing the prompt photo!

The High Price of Roofing

Tristan had once haggled for ten minutes over a banana, so it came as no surprise to his friends when he fired the man he’d hired to put a roof over his new restaurant.

“Simply criminal prices,” he muttered. “Daylight robbery.”

A week of torrential rain left tables and chairs floating across the floor, but Tristan wouldn’t call back the crook he fired. That would be admitting he was wrong. And Tristan was never wrong.

The night before the grand opening, he purchased a few dozen umbrellas and strung them from the rafters, a paper-thin wall against the pounding rain.

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Word Count: 100

This is for Friday Fictioneers. Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for running the challenge and Dale Rogerson for providing the prompt photo!

The Jacobites

The army of the Pretender encircled the high rock of the castle, armed with bullets and steel and Parliament. They would win. There was no question of that.

The commander of the castle walked its wall, speaking words of encouragement to his men, offering easy smiles in the face of difficult defeat. He looked upon stones as old as the land and prayed in the church of his kings.

His kings, not theirs. His king was king here still, even if England and half of Scotland had spurned him. He would bend no knee to the continental interlopers, to invaders invited by treasonous plotters.

Here, in this castle, the Kings of Scotland had reigned. Here Queen Mary bore King James, first king to rule all Great Britain: united by peace and not by war. Here they had kept crown and jewels safe from the Roundheads.

And now that royal line was cast aside for the Pretender. All that history abandoned.

In the early morning air, he heard the call of the bagpipes, echoing across crag and castle and he smiled.

No matter what false king sat on the throne, the stones of Edinburgh would only know one.

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Word Count: 197

For Sunday Photo Fiction. Thanks to Susan for running the challenge and C.E. Ayr for providing the prompt photo!

Third Night

It was his third night in the hotel and he was getting used to all the noises in the night: the wind whistling through cracked plaster, the scurrying in the walls, the groan of the elevator, the shrieking of police sirens and car alarms. Everything stank of cigarette smoke and cheap disinfectant.

Three nights. He’d told himself that it would only be one before she called and begged him to come home. But then, he’d always been a liar, even to himself.

Brushing the curtain aside, he looked at the moon – flawless and bright, distant and cold – and wept.

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Word Count: 99

This is for Friday Fictioneers. Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for running the challenge and Gah Learner for providing the prompt photo!