May18

Ambitions

by jeremiah on May 18, 2013 at 17:38
Posted In: Fiction, Flash Fiction

This story is for the Terriblemind‘s Flash Fiction Challenge: The Random Fantasy Character Generator.

The task was to use one of five randomly generated fantasy characters in a story. I thought what fun is that? Leaving the other characters hanging, so I used them all. The list of characters generated follows the story.

Enjoy.

 

Rudyard was frowning as he wiped down his bartop. He did that a lot, frowned. If you asked him he would say it was because of the heavy burdens on his shoulders: the stresses of running a bar and an inn, the lack of appreciation from his staff. He would then likely utter a statement regarding heavy was the weight of the crown or some such. According to him, he had almost sat on the throne of a small nation to the west before it had been stolen from him. To this he would typically add, under his breath and with mysterious tones, “traitorous wench”, before returning to his scowling.

What really drove Rudyard to his frowns, and scowls, and sometimes even glares, were his ambitions. He had many of these and they remained perpetually unfulfilled. The causes for this were many, not the least of which were that they continued to grow within his chest. His bar was not big enough, his revenues not high enough, his clientele not rich enough. And so behind his rough, blocky features, and small hard eyes, he schemed.

His most recent plan — his grandest, and most audacious to date — remained, like so many plans that had fallen before it, uncompleted. This was not for his lack of trying. He said as much now to the figure seated nearest to him at the bar.

“Three months. Three damn, bloody, wasted months!” Rudyard said harshly.

It was hard to determine if the words affected the person they were directed towards. The thick grey cloak, large hood pulled low, obscured all features save a lone hand that extended to wrap knobby fingers around a pewter mug. Such was the imposing presence of this figure, or perhaps the slightly overripe smell, that the nearest seats to them along the bar remained empty.

“Patience,” came the low voice from within the darkness of the hood.

Rudyard only frowned harder at the words.

“Bah. I have no time for patience, Mezger. Only fools wait.”

The barkeep scooped up a glass and polished it furiously, his mind on all that glittering treasure.

“It’s not like we want them to overthrow a kingdom. We’re only asking them to kill a dragon. How bloody hard can that be?”

So far it had proved vexingly difficult. With his inn’s location on the crossroads of the King’s and Queen’s highways, it should have been a trivial matter to find the stout adventurers required to meet this task. None thus far had proven stout enough.

“I really thought that knight would have done it,” Mezger muttered.

Rudyard snorted. He still didn’t know if ‘Sir Galantese’ was any sort of real knight. In any case he wasn’t much of anything now, unless you counted a pile of over charred bones. That barbarian had talked big, but he’d gotten into an argument with a troll before he even left the bar. They’d both died in that fracas and Rudyard had had to replace an entire wall! After him were the ‘wizard’ and the ‘priest’, useless, both of them. Mezger had wanted to recruit a band of a dozen dwarves and their even smaller travelling companion to go, but Rudyard wasn’t that much a fool.

He snatched up another glass and let his eyes wander the large smoky room. He certainly had enough possibilities this evening; most of his two dozen tables were occupied.

Nearby sat a sinewy jester, his hat of motley discarded before him. The man’s eyes closely followed one of his girls, Beth he thought. His gaze was entirely too longing, besides a jester? A stable boy would have a better chance. Also one of Mezger’s suggestions at one point, and also ridiculous.

Seated across the room was some sort of rich bloke, an advisor perhaps. His eyes were darting around the room, fearful, as if he expected the end of the world or something. According to Mezger’s charts that wasn’t happening this week, and Rudyard wasn’t going to have anything to do with anything near to a politician.

“Ingrateful harpy,” he growled and kept looking.

In the corner… was that a zombie!? A gangly looking woman with sallow skin was swatting and mumbling to herself. He was going to have to have a sharp conversation with Yandry, his doorman.

He was looking around the room for him when something else caught Rudyard’ eye. A tall athletic woman with a curved bow held in one hand suddenly burst through the front doors. Behind her in the night, something swirled and danced. Something smoking and burning at the same time. It struck the doorframe and bounced back, Mezger’s wards along the door posts glowing azure in the oak. Large, crimson eyes flashed then vanished. A daemon if Rudyard had ever seen one, and a big one too.

The doors swung closed and the woman collected herself. Her face was sharp angles, high cheekbones, pointed chin. Her eyes were hard and tight, not afraid, but desperate nonetheless.

Ah desperation, he could use desperation. And an archer. Of course an archer! Why had he never thought of that. With a dragon you needed range. It was so obvious now.

He nudged Mezger and nodded toward the corner table where the woman had seated herself. After a moment’s consideration Mezger’s hood bobbed.

“Potential. Let’s see how much.”

The man slid off his stool and headed across the room, dropping into a hunched shuffle as he went. This would be the one, he was sure of it! Now if only Mezger could seal the deal.

He barely made out the words across the babble of the room, but they were already familiar to him. He’d helped write them.

“Excuse me, mistress, but you appear to be in a bit of predicament, and I am looking for some assistance myself. Perhaps we can help each other?”

After staring back through narrowed eyes, the woman nodded cautiously and Mezger slowly sat.

For the first time in a while, Rudyard smiled.

And  now the character list I received:

- A nostalgic advisor is hoping to escape the destruction of the world.

- A Sinewy jester is trying to get a date.

- A ruthless barkeep is trying to kill a dragon to acquire its treasure.

- A sallow zombie is trying to rid herself of a curse.

- A sly archer is being assaulted and pursued by mysterious, demonic spirits.

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May14

Welcome to the Jungle

by jeremiah on May 14, 2013 at 00:27
Posted In: Fiction, Flash Fiction

This story is for the Terribleminds Flash Fiction Challenge: Smashing Sub-Genres.

From a list of 20 sub-genres we had to randomly select two, then write a story based on them.

A RNG gave me:

13. Lovecraftian
1. Men’s Adventure

“…”

Yeah that was my reaction after getting this… wonderful? (not really) combination. I dug around in my brain, went back and forth a bit and finally got this out. The result basically being a men’s adventure with Lovecraftian elements rather than the opposite, which would probably just be very dry.

I’m pretty happy with it. For once I went quite long on the initial draft (1500 words) and it was also one of those stories that I was much happier with at its initial length. But even chopped down, I think it’s decent.

In any case, here’s the result, of this … strange combination.

 

July of sixty-eight, we were deep in the stinking jungles of southeast asia. Our squad’s assignment had been simple, to send home a bunch of commies in body bags. The problem was the lieutenant had lost it. One day he was fine and the next his eyes went hot, wild. Tension built after that as our course changed. The knowledge that something was very wrong sawed through frayed nerves like rusty scissors. A week later we were way off our maps for the operation.

And then he disappeared. We were relieved until Sarge told us we had to go after him. I can tell you that didn’t do a hell of a lot to help morale.

A day of brutal marching later we stepped into a small village at twilight. The place was typical, bamboo and old boards, the scent of cook fires in the air. The scent of something else too, blood. I was opening my lips to ask sarge what to do when the familiar CRACK of an M-16 split the air. We all hit the tall grass flat on our bellies. After a few quiet minutes Jenkins crawled over to Sarge to ask for orders. He found a bloody round hole through Sarge’s right cheek instead.

Half the men split right then. Sarge had been the mortar in our cracking bricks, but a few of us — myself, Landon, and Green — held it together and stayed behind. I was going to find out what the hell was going on.

Silently we converged on the center of the village. Something was drawing us to that spot like the itch of a festering blister.

A minute later I stepped out from behind a building and froze.

My skull and my guts went hollow at the same time. The scene before me was unfathomable. There were bodies everywhere. I blinked, it didn’t change. Women, and smaller figures. I barely managed to contain the bile in my throat. Blood ran, pooled, dripped everywhere, from everything. The rank spoiling smell of it, heated all day by the sun, nearly drowned me in its stench. Flies buzzed across the scene. One landed on the lieutenant’s arm.

He was standing in the center of the crimson sea of offal. Blood slid congealing down his arms. clung to his face. Large drops of it plopped slowly from the Ka-Bar in his right hand. His left hand was wrapped in the dark hair of a sobbing woman, the only one I saw alive. His eyes burned, an inferno to the hot sparks I’d seen days before.

“Howdy, Johnson,” he drawled, “Fancy seeing you here.”

I barely heard him. I’d seen horrors before. I’d seen blood and bodies and awful things. But something else was moving behind the lieutenant. Something that couldn’t be.

The air itself was moving, twisting, spiraling behind him. Blood and darkness were in the air. Dark ruby spirals, sucked up from the sopping ground outlining a shape my eyes couldn’t trace, my mind couldn’t comprehend. Limbs in multitude, organs pulsing, vanishing. Eyes, their glow piercing, malevolent. So many eyes…

I tried again to follow the lines. My brain shook in my skull, I felt hot warmth leaking from my ears. I couldn’t look away.

“Lieutenant, let the woman go,” Jenkins from the other side of the square. Level headed even now. I was vaguely aware of him swinging his carbine up.

“No,” the lieutenant said, frowning.

Then he said a word, made a sound, I didn’t know, but the air moved. An iron hard impact crashed through my flak jacket, threw me away like rubbish on the wind. I slammed back into a hut and slumped limp to the ground. My breath was gone, my limbs useless.

I could barely see, my helmet had fallen across one eye, but the exposed eye stared. Terror tore out from my chest and seared through my veins. The only thing left of Jenkins was one boot in the mud and a blood smear running down the wall of a hut. I didn’t know where Green was, I couldn’t turn my head. All I saw was blood and the lieutenant.

“One more,” he said, and raised his knife. The woman was screaming soundlessly, her wide eyes, fixed on the blade

As he stood with arm raised, I finally saw it. I saw the bodies, not strewn randomly, but laid out in some terrible pattern my mind could only comprehend a part of. Some buried primitive part of my psyche picked at the design like tangled yarn. I suddenly knew if the woman fell the pattern would be completed and whatever twisted behind the lieutenant would gain its final form, would gain freedom. Would return.

My right hand started moving again. My rifle was gone, I didn’t know where, but as my hand flopped across my chest, I felt the hard edged shape dangling from my harness. The thin ring attached to the pin.

I had no breath, no strength, but I seized the grenade with everything I had left and pulled. The PING of the grenade coming free was loud in the deadly silence.

The lieutenant turned his head, his eyes went wide and all the eyes behind him with them.

I couldn’t save the woman or myself, but maybe I could save the rest of the wretched world. I drew enough air to scream and hurled the grenade.

The hot blast buried me in cold darkness.

Two days later another patrol came across the village, pulled me from the blood and guts and death and took me home. I don’t remember the trip back, or even the flight home.

Years have passed, and I may have escaped, but I left a piece of my mind behind along with one eye and a lot of good men. I still break into a sweat as the sun sets. That place is thousands of miles away, but every night I still wait to see those eyes in darkness.

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May06

Feline in Repose

by jeremiah on May 6, 2013 at 00:44
Posted In: Fiction, Flash Fiction

This story is for the Terribleminds Flash Fiction Challenge: Five Random Sentences.

We had to pick one of five sentences and incorporate it into a story. I went back and forth a bit on this one, and finally settled on:

“The portrait cat sneakily gestured at everyone.”

I then wound up rewriting the story about the moment I’d finished it as a new setting struck me, but after all that I’m pretty happy with the end result.

So here is “Feline in Repose.”

 

The room was bustling around Drake as he stood against the wall watching his client. She wasn’t smiling. Not even a little bit. He didn’t think she ever smiled, at least not that he had ever seen.

He didn’t know her age, none did, and none dared ask, but appearances indicated the later half of a privileged life. Her skin was pale, but rouged. Her hair blonde, and piled improbably atop her round head, a few ringlets left to hang aside her equally round cheeks. Her crimson gown, high necked, and low cut, did what it could to highlight what could generously be called a voluptuous figure, if perhaps the speaker was very kind, or very knackered. Her pale eyes swept across the people that filled the room.

The guests were high society all the way. Upper echelon and whatever was above that. Her men moved through the babbling throng. Pale faced to a one, a half dozen of them, dressed alike in dark suits, white shirts, and red ties. Always red ties for them. Long and straight, and never bowed, goodness no.

He shifted the comfortable shape of his folio case under his arm as he waited, and wiped a damp palm across his mulbery vest. The case was the only comfortable thing about the situation. He felt a light sweat break out beneath his collar.

He could blame the painting of the woman in white for him being here, but that would do no good. He’d needed the money, and, as a painter, not accepting a commission was like sanding off his own face. So he’d taken the work. He should blame Dodgson, that madman. A looking glass was one thing, but a two sided mirror? That was sheer foolishness. It was too late for blame though, the woman in red had already arrived, was already ensconced with the elite of society. This was just the latest of her endless parties to impress — or intimidate, he was never sure — what she considered her new subjects.

His painting was to be the centerpiece of the event. She’d meant for it to be his disgrace and his doom, following whatever offense she’d taken from his last work. So she’d given him a simple task with a simple consequence.

Of course the “simple” assignment had been impossible. Everything with her was, he’d known that from the start, but he hadn’t really had a choice. She’d meant to humiliate him, but he’d done it, and without great ease either. His frontal lobe still itched, as it were recovering from claw marks he could never see. That sing song voice still echoed between his ears. The voice and that grin. He shivered at the memory.

Somehow he’d pulled it off though, so she’d turned everything on it’s head. Now his triumph would be hers. Drake didn’t even care. He just wanted to present the painting and get far far away from her and her hallways of flowers dying beneath lacquer and latex.

His client addressed the crowd, her voice high and strained as always.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve asked you here this evening, for a very special presentation. The good Mr. Drake,” he gave a small bow as seemed appropriate, “has recently completed a commission for me. A work of no small skill, and one I am pleased to reveal to you today. I think you all will be rather impressed with this work and what a wonderful addition it will be to my collection.”

Light applause filled the room, and she basked in it for a moment, of course.

“Mr. Drake.” She gestured for him to proceed.

With only slightly shaking fingers he unlatched his case and withdrew the painting. Large green eyes above a perpetual smile gazed out at him as he carefully hung the work on the wall. Once it was properly in place, he stepped back. For all the stress and strain of the assignment, he was proud of the work, he felt he had truly captured the subject. A rather large cat lay stretched atop a knobby branch; its posture both relaxed and playful in a way that was hard to really grasp.

“I give you, Feline in Repose,” his client said.

Warm applause and a babel of appreciative comments broke out at once. His client did not smile, but she perhaps frowned a bit less. Relief washed through Drake. He’d done it. He’d done it and he was free.

Drake opened his lips to speak, to give perhaps a very brief thank you, when something happened. The portrait cat sneakily gestured at everyone. Or perhaps it was only to him. He wasn’t really sure. It wasn’t a rude gesture, or even particularly obvious, but Drake saw it. A small twitch of a paw, a come hither gesture.

She saw it too. Both of their eyes went wide together. Drake was a good painter but none of his works had ever done that before. They both stepped toward the picture without really thinking about it.

The cat leaned forward as well. Flat as the canvas was, somehow he leaned forward. His lips spread even wider, showing more teeth than any cat had ever possessed, but just the right number to fill that pearly, crescent of a grin. And then he winked one emerald eye, and with that he vanished.

Drake’s canvas hung blank before them. As blank as it had ever been.

Drake swallowed. He should have known it was too easy. Despite all his troubles completing the work, he should have known.

She was not pleased. She was less pleased when the crowd took notice of the blank painting and the murmur of conversation turned to throttled chortles of amusement. Clearly at her expense, he knew she would hear it no other way.

And what an expense it would be for him. He knew what she was going to say before she spoke.

“Off with his head.”

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