Running Down Corridors

Fluorescent light gleamed on cold, metallic walls. The white and grey sterile corridors were freezing, as if the whole building were a giant refrigerator. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

Then a door was flung open and four figures burst out at tremendous speed: a mad-looking man in a tattered coat and scarf and three scientists in lab coats.

“Shut the door!” the man yelled. “Quickly!”

But the last scientist wasn’t quick enough. A black tendril ripped through the door, wrapping around him.

Everyone else ran. It was the only thing they could do.

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Word Count: 94

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

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The Last Garden

All around, there is sand, ash, dirt – stretching on and on to the blood-red horizon and the jagged outline of the desolate mountains. The earth is dry as old bones. Everything is dead here. It has been dead for a long time.

But there is the garden.

White flowers spout from grass, turning their heads to the sun blazing overhead. They grow out in all directions, refusing to stay in their neat rows. They are wild, free, alive, the last green things in a world of grey death.

They are the last embers of a dying fire, but they refuse to stop glowing. They refuse to surrender to night’s black cold.

An old woman tends to them as best as she can. She gives them what little water she manages to collect, saving almost none for herself.

There are no weeds to worry about now, at least, she tells herself. That makes things easier.

There is nothing here but her and her flowers. She knows that one day – one day soon, she fears, for her bones have begun to ache – she will be gone.

She hopes the flowers will remain.

And from them, life will begin anew.

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Word Count: 197

This is for Sunday Photo Fiction.

A Dangerous Situation – A Three Line Tale

George was certain that the yellow car – bright as a canary’s feathers, smooth and sleek like something from a gangster film – was hunting him, stalking him through the skyscrapers like a tiger through the trees. A glance out his window at lunchtime showed it was there, waiting, but he decided to risk going out anyway.

A hail of bullets almost got him just as the door of the yellow car was flung open and a man stuck out his hand, shouting “Come with me if you want to live!”

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This is for Three Line Tales. Thanks to Sonya for running the challenge and Wolf Schram for providing the prompt photo!

Giving is the Holiday Spirit

They glowed like a field of stars: a net of lights, swaying gently in the breeze from the open window. As she looked at them, she wondered how much they’d cost and how long they’d taken to put up.

They’re beautiful, she thought.

The whole house was beautiful: the curving staircase, the wide window she’d climbed in through, the almost castle-like exterior. Mr. Englehart could afford beautiful things.

It’s amazing how much you can get just by charging thousands for life-saving medication. 

Her only regret was the lights wouldn’t fit in the bag with the rest of her loot.

Word Count: 99

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

Shadows Under the Stairs

There was no top and no bottom. There were only the stairs, climbing upwards and downwards, a vertical eternity.

How long had they been climbing?

Vicki asked herself this question every night as they made camp upon a turn in the endless stair, breaking a bannister for firewood and cooking whatever it was they’d hunted that day. The old man seemed like he knew. The pain in his ancient eyes told her he remembered each instant they’d spent in that winding place.

“There has to be an exit eventually, my dear child,” he’d say. “Yes, yes. Eventually. All things come to an end.”

She was starting to wonder if the stair was an exception.

There came a noise and she was shaken from her thoughts. The old man whirled around, hands gripping his lapels.

“The spiders,” he whispered.

They ran as hairy legs scuttled half-seen in the shadows.

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Word Count: 148

This is for Flash Fiction for the Aspiring Writer. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and Joy Pixley for providing the prompt photo!

 

SPF – Beasts in the Firelight

Filled with ash, the marker sat at the heart of the courtyard, surrounded by squares of dew-bright grass. Each night the flame was lit; each morning the flame was naught but ash. That was the way of it: that the orange light of the cracking fire would give way to the spreading crimson of dawn.

To most, the lighting of the flame was just a quaint tradition, one more thing that was done, but to grey-bearded Rodrik, Keeper of the Flame, it was far more than that. His father had shown him the fire’s secret.

“Watch them,” he had instructed his son as they stood in the cold night wind, watching the flame twist this way and that. “Watch the beasts.”

Rodrik had turned his eye to the carved things worming their way around the octagonal base of stone: all teeth and claws and eyes. The fire had touched them with gentle, warm light.

And in that light they had moved.

“The fire gives them life,” his father had said. “They protect us.”

As Rodrik looked at the horrible beasts, now dead as ash in the morning light, he wondered what it was that such things protected them from…

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Word Count: 199

For Sunday Photo Fiction.

TLT – The Night Before the Wedding

Estania walked carefully along the passageway, torch in one hand and string in the other. She had said that it was to knit herself a wedding dress: a dress over which she slaved more months, secretly hoarding the spare string like a squirrel hoarding acorns in a hollowed-out tree.

Now she had enough to take her chance, to weave her way out of the labyrinth in which they had put her, the little orange trail marking where she had been as she sought to reach sunlight once more.

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This is for Three Line Tales. Thanks to Sonya for holding the challenge and Philip Estrada for providing the prompt photo!