It was only once we were airborne that we learned that our pilot was a horse.
Tag: Flash Fiction
100WC – Zoom Out
A perfect globe, precious and fragile. The only one of its kind. Zoom out: crooked trees with leaves like wax, grasses little more than wires clinging to the ground. Zoom out: a rash of tin roofs overtaken by sand, only dust moving now in empty veins. Zoom out: an iron-hard land, baked and cracked by… Continue reading 100WC – Zoom Out
Derelict – SmallTales
His body is cracked and bowed, his clothes stiff with dirt. His day is a doorway and an upturned cap, cans of cider, corrugated cardboard. His nights are darkness blotting like ink and the bitter howls of the ghosts of his past.
Body – SmallTales
Joseph Monroe started building the sarcophagus on the day his father fell under a bus. “Fall under a bus?” he said, “No sir. A nice peaceful death, that’s what I want.” It took him six weeks, and when he’d finished he lay inside and announced that he’d remain there until his dying day. He fixed… Continue reading Body – SmallTales
Shade – SmallTales
The shadow that the sun prints on the parched sand is as sharp as pressed metal, and its edge creeps towards him like a curse. He huddles into the shrinking panel of shade. An hour until the second sun rises. Maybe less. He rubs the visor of the envirosuit and wishes again that it wasn’t… Continue reading Shade – SmallTales
100WC – Ed
I met Ed on a train. I jumped it outside San Isidro and there he was, bundled in the corner of one of the freight cars. Drink? he asked, like it was nothing, and offered up a bottle wrapped in brown paper. After that we rode the tracks together for a while – Pecos, Sonora,… Continue reading 100WC – Ed
Feast
In rags and lace the half-folk come, in velvet and in iron. On the year’s longest night the ancient kings shake free their bones, and the forgotten creatures pass from their world into this. From their standing stones and crossroads the hobs and fairies come, from their hills and holes the sidhe and the elves, all down deep into the long, cold barrow.
The Reality Machines
See the green door? The little green door like an entrance to a hobbit hole? Padlock, veins of lichen running up it like rust? Yeah? See the stones on the ground? The paving stones that look like broken toffee? Stand on them. Stand on them, hold your breath and try to feel. With your feet, try to feel with your feet. It’s difficult at first, but just wait. It’s there, underneath. You can feel it. It being vibrations. Big, sticky, echoey vibrations, like the ground itself is kind of simmering. All the time. It’s like a kind of energy. Don’t stand on it for too long, though. It’s no good for you. It’ll mess you up.
After Jeff Goldblum And The Ripples In The Water
The old Cannon Cinema was where he went on his first ever date. A girl who drew bouncy cartoons called him up one day and said to him do you want to go to the cinema with me, and he said yes without even thinking, without even checking what the film was, and when she called him a day or two later and told him that they were going to see Jurassic Park he still said yes, said it twice in fact, even though he’d already seen it and he knew which of the characters would be crushed and torn apart and eaten.
100WC #43 – A Child Of Fire
100 Word Challenge #43 Prompt: ...the flame flickered before... It was the only thing that he truly understood. Something that he had created, that he had brought to life from phosphorous, wax and string. There was a purity and a truth to it. That’s what he’d say, anyway. To the psychologists. He’d talk about a… Continue reading 100WC #43 – A Child Of Fire
Simon John Cox 