365 Ficlets - Day #22 ~ "Like a thief, Death crept into our lives..."

When I arrived home from work, Sara was in the bedroom; there were no lights on. Initially I had thought that I was the first to get home, but then I heard the sobbing; why was she crying?

I followed the sound, my heart breaking with every step; her pain flowing through me, not like a stream, but like short pulses of hard, icy water. I had never heard such sounds come out of her.

I pushed open the bedroom door and there she was, her entire face wet with tears, the knuckles on her left hand white where she was almost crushing her phone, and her whole body shaking with grief. She looked up at me, her eyes like deep wells in the cold ground of her ashen face and just said;

“Dad’s dead.”

The next moment she threw herself at me and clung to me so hard that I was on my knees in the doorway before I knew anything else. She was still shaking; my neck was already wet with her tears. I pushed my fingers into her hair, gently stroked her head and kissed her forehead;

“I’m so sorry darling.”

It was all I had.

---

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365 Ficlets - Day #21 ~ "Last Night a DJ Saved my Life"

Jonas stared at the mixer, trying to work out why he had said that he would DJ. It was one thing to put sets together in his room at home, where there was no one to hear his amateurish beat matching and no one to groan out loud when he mis-cued a track. William was finishing his set, and the crowd were already worked up into a frenzy. If he had not been concentrating on the first three tracks that he was going to spin Jonas would have been as carried away by Will’s set. It was an easy trick to play, but hard to knock based on how good a reaction he was getting; he was looping a key-change section that built toward a crescendo and mixing in a good complimentary beat underneath. It was the mixing equivalent of bringing the crowd to the brink of orgasm and then slowing it down again and going around one more time.

“You ready to go? I’m going to build this one more time and then you need to cue-up for your takeover, ok?”

Jonas nodded, trying to look cool, to not sweat so much; this was it. Time to prove it.

---

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365 Ficlets - Day #20 ~ "History"

Jana looked at the letter again. What on Earth was she going to do about this? She thought that Adam was long gone from her life. It had been a long time ago, when they were both a lot younger. They had been at University together. They had run headlong, practically hand in hand into the kind of love affair that people generally only experience in their youth.

They say that the flame that burns too brightly never burns for long, and it had not been long before the cracks had begun to show. She had needed a saviour, he had needed to be someone's hero. He was good to her, he had not pressured her into sex too soon, he had not smothered her with his constant presence, he had not been jealous about her time... The problem was that she was not really in love with him. She cared about him, she enjoyed his company and his mind, his affections and yes his body, but she did not really love him.

She ran away. They had tried to remain friends, but they drifted apart. Now here he is in a letter, coming to see her. Why?

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365 Ficlets - Day #19 ~ "Shivers"

Lennie reached out, his hand shaking, towards the hot toddy. He knew in the back of his mind that whisky mixed with sugar, hot water and lemon juice was in no way going to cure his cold. The thing was he did not care so much, because the drink was making him feel good or perhaps drunk. It was hard to say.

Even though he had enjoyed the warehouse party a couple of days before, he was starting to wonder if spending all night in a leaky, dirty warehouse with eight hundred people and kissing and hugging a large number of them had been smart. Certainly the rattling noise that the phlegm caught in the top of his chest was making seemed to indicate that it had been a bad choice.

The thing was that Trance Garden was not like any other club night. Lennie had stopped going to clubs for years when he had realised that they were full of people who were prettier and cooler than him, and they knew it and did not want to know him. Trance Garden was not like that; there he felt like part of a family; a good, loving family.

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365 Ficlets - Day #18 ~ "Epiphany"

Michael tried not to utter a sound, but try as he might a small whimper did escape his lips. He looked around hurriedly to try and ascertain whether or not anyone was paying particular attention to the stall that he and Sadie were in. Satisfied that they remained undetected he relaxed a little and let himself enjoy the moment. He looked into Sadie’s eyes as she looked back up at him, grinned mischievously and then flicked her tongue across the tip of his cock once again. It was like a small electric shock that started there and shot to the base of his prick, then accelerated across his body. The combination of the massage that she was giving to his balls, and then the intermittent and almost lightning licks, followed by her breathing her gentle, cold breath onto him where she had made him wet with her tongue, was the most delicious torture. No one had ever prolonged his pleasure like this, and he savoured every moment.

“Are you ready?”

He nodded and waited; the world exploded behind his eyes and he came.

---

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365 Ficlets - Day #17 ~ "Changing the Guard"

Loric was starting to wonder if he was ever going to see any action at all. It was all very well being in charge of the gate guard, but being good at keeping a tight hold on the security of the centre of the city made his chances of going off to the front slim at best.

In fact the worst thing about wanting a chance to prove his mettle was that in order to get into a fight the Ellenians would have to over-run not only the outer curtain wall, but fight their way through four circles of the city and defeat his guard before he attempted to defend the door from the keep yard into the King’s chamber. There was no circumstance under which this would be a good thing; the war would be over to the detriment of his country.This was too high a price.

As the sun set to his left, across the city, he turned his attention back to the latest dispatches and tried to count his blessings, to be thankful for being close to his wife and children. All he wanted to do was join his friends on the front, under the setting sun.

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365 Ficlets - Day #16 ~ "Circus, Circus"

Jarod felt his heart stop, for just a moment, as she dropped down the rope and came to rest on the crossbar. There in the dark he felt as though he was alone watching her on the trapeze. Her grace belied a strength that went beyond impressive. She wrapped her form around the ropes and the crossbar, with apparent ease, and Jarod saw the muscles in her arms flexing and straining, but not once did the effort register on her face, and not once did her moves appear anything less than trivial to her. The act was like a dance and the mood was one of fear and pain, no matter how beautiful a spectacle it was.

As she held one pose, the spotlight picked out the rigid muscles across the top of her chest as she allowed her head to drop back, and Jarod could have sworn that as she looked out into the crowd, she matched his gaze for just a moment. Her eyes looked so sad, indeed forlorn. He felt drawn to her, because of the melancholy portrayed by her performance, not to mention her beauty, but surely it was just the act?

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365 Ficlets - Day #15 ~ "Cold"

Cold

Really Cold

My eyes are so heavy; need to try.

Ow! Bright!

Slowly; try again. It’s so bright. I can see a lot of white, and it is so cold. Can I move? Touch your nose. Ok I can move that arm and I can see my hand. Try the other. Yeah that one’s ok too. My feet are cold. That’s good, I can feel my feet. Can I move them? Yes! Yes I can!

Sit up? Yes. Woah! Slowly; put a hand down behind you. Good. Now look around.

Snow. What’s that over there? Oh my God, that’s the plane! I remember. Harriet!

Got to get over there. There are no flames at least. Up on one knee. Feels steady. Up; careful! Just get used to it for a second. Now one foot in front of the other. Good.

It’s not that far. Only a few metres. Why is there a ringing in my ears? Must have made a lot of noise when we hit, I suppose. Oh look, my camera bag. Still intact. I guess the manufacturers were not exaggerating after all.

Nearly there. Is she here? Can’t see her; can’t see any blood either.

“Harriet!”

---

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365 Ficlets - Day #14 ~ "Proposal"

Stephanie could feel the cool grass under her hand as she stretched her fingers out in an uncontrolled spasm of pleasure. The new ring on her finger felt alien and yet, unsurprisingly, its presence was magnifying the joy she felt as James pulled her close and planted a myriad of kisses around her neck.

It would be safe to say that she was the happiest she had ever been in her life, in that moment. Ever since she and James had started living together she had hoped that he would ask her to marry him. She had been ready for some time, but she had put that aside to allow him the space to want marriage as much as she did rather than pressure him. She never once believed that he would take less than 3 months to make her dream come true. She smiled wryly to herself as she felt his hand begin to move up her thigh and under her skirt; he had given no clue that this was coming and just turned to her when they reached the top of the hill ‘will you marry me?’. She had said yes to that and then they were on the grass.

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This Friday Ficlet was inspired by this picture from Flickr that is licensed under a compatible CC license to the one used on ficlets.com



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365 Ficlets - Day #13 ~ "Of all the gin joints in all the world..."

Caitlin studied the menu, holding it in front of her face as Paul was shown past her table with his dinner companion. Why did he have to go and choose this evening to come to their restaurant? She had picked the one where they had dined together most often before she caught him banging the new girl. She had hoped that shame would have kept him out of here; clearly the soft-shell crab was far too enticing.

It was bad enough trying to look comfortable with eating alone in a restaurant. She had male friends who simply did not understand her discomfort at doing this – for them dining alone was a pleasure. They loved to be waited on without having to discuss car-pooling or office politics or any number of other quotidien concerns, and never had such luck when dining with their wives. To dine alone for a woman was almost to say ‘I am alone and I cannot cook’.

Once they were seated she peeked over the menu. He was holding her spindly cuckoo hand, looking into her eyes and laughing. Caitlin just wanted to cry.

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365 Ficlets - Day #12 ~ "Intruder"

David turned the device over and over in his hands, staring at it intently as if somehow the combination of touching it and staring at it would unlock its secrets. He turned to look at the unconscious man tied to his solitary chair, willing him to come to, so that he could question this mystery visitor as to the purpose of the smooth black disc with two unmarked buttons in the centre of one side.

It was cold to the touch, but only in so much as it was not warm – it was not chilled, just cold. The light seemed to slide off it, without reflecting, and it was that particular shade of black that really is just a lack of colour.

The man in the chair, from whom David had liberated the device, groaned and tried to raise his hand to his face, struggling against the rope restraining it. David slid the disc back into the pocket of his gilet and stepped across the room to be in his prisoner’s line of sight as he falteringly opened his eyes.

“So, what exactly were you doing, climbing in through my bathroom window?”

---

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365 Ficlets - Day #11 ~ "If I had a photograph of you..."

Eric lifted his head up out of his hands. They were wet from the tears that were still silently streaming down his face. His eyes were red, raw from him trying to rub them dry and banish this outward display of grief, even though there was no one there to see it.

He looked across at the bed. The nurses had disconnected the drip and ventilator, pushed back the machines and dimmed the lights a little. He could tell that they wanted to extubate as well, but that would not happen until the post. Despite all of their efforts Jenny did not look at peace; she barely looked like herself.

Eric made himself really look at her. A voice in the back of his mind kept telling him that he would only have so many more chances to commit her face to memory, even this injured version of her face. He had expected to see her face every day for many more years to come. If he had known he would have paid more attention to it, learned it more closely. Now he would have only a few photographs to help him keep her in his memory.

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365 Ficlets - Day #10 ~ "Cry me a river..?"

Selena tried very hard to not cry. It is quite hard to explain to people that there is no actual concrete reason for why you have suddenly burst into tears and she was becoming tired of having to go through this dance with random passers-by, co-workers and even members of her family. The thing was even if she could get people to understand that she was just generally unhappy and ‘thing x’ or ‘happening y’ had just somehow pushed her over the edge emotionally, they would still try to comfort her or fix it, or both. This was not actually helpful, because it made her focus on her sadness. What she needed more than anything was to be distracted.

Anyway, in that moment there was nothing she could do but choke back the tears, holster her gun and try to help her partner getting the perp into the back of the car. She tried to turn her eyes away from the little girl sitting in the gutter who was cradling a dead puppy in her arms – this was what had almost made her weep, though she did not know why it hit her so hard.

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365 Ficlets - Day #9 ~ "Whitstable Sunset"

Jason cradled his camera and took a deep breath as he took in the view. The sun was already starting to sink over the Isle of Sheppey and as such was no longer the bright disc that it had been just half an hour before. Now the sun looked for all the world like a glowing orange that a giant hand was placing very slowly onto the horizon.

The sun was finally low enough for him to look through the view-finder and try to compose the perfect Whitstable sunset. The gulls were wheeling in the light wind between Jason and the sunset; it crossed his mind that he could hope to capture a gull in flight against the fiery sky.

He breathed deeply one more time, checked that he was sat comfortably and then raised the camera. In the same way that he had been taught to shoot in another life he steadied the camera and took a long slow breath in, then started to let it out slowly, waiting for the shot to be right. A gull crossed into the frame and Jason held his breath. He made a final check and pressed the shutter release.

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365 Ficlets - Day #8 ~ "Aftermath"

“Get up! Come on, you have to get up!”

My inner sergeant-major was not letting me just lie there, no matter what I might have wanted. My head was definitely bleeding, I could feel the tell-tale stickiness in my hair. I looked around at the carnage and almost immediately had to fight back the urge to vomit – there were a lot of dead people sharing this space with me and it was not pretty.

The carriage was clearly derailed and tilted at a difficult 30 degree angle. The lights were either out or dangling from their wires, like potentially fatal pendulums. The hole in the side, about half way along, looked for all the world as if someone incredibly strong had thrown a huge marble against the carriage wall. I steeled my nerve and started checking the other passengers to see if anyone in there with me was still alive. Nothing can prepare you for the real outcome of a bomb going off in an enclosed space and no one should have to see it. As I checked for signs of life all I could wonder was; how did I survive?

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365 Ficlets - Day #7 ~ "Must Love Dogs"

Joe lay back on his elbows and smiled to himself. The soft sand was piled up under the blanket and made a kind of chaise-longue for him. His eyes were fixed on Steph and their dog, Boomer, playing together on the wet sand. There was a fundamental beauty to seeing them so carefree and happy; Steph had her ‘real’ smile on her face.

Joe cast his mind back to the first row that had errupted from him saying that he wanted to get a dog. Steph had been adamant that she disliked, even hated, dogs and that there would never be a place for a dog in their lives. They were too busy, too socially active, too young, too recently cohabiting to even consider that kind of responsibility. She had gone on to be quite clear that her veto was partly predicated on the fact that she fully expected that if they did keep a dog, she would do all of the work.

Of couse it didn’t work out that way. Three weeks later Boomer was living with them and even though Joe tried to do all of the work, Boomer really was Steph’s dog.

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This Ficlet, as with all of my 'Friday' Ficlets, was inspired by a photograph on Flickr. In the spirit of the Creative Commons ideal (these stories are published under a CC license) I will find a photo on Flickr each week that is published there under a Creative Commons License and write a story that occurs to me when looking at the picture. This week's picture is here:







Photo by Sharkbait - Please click the photo to see the original version on flickr.com


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365 Ficlets - Day #6 ~ "Weihnachten in Hamburg"

Dario looked down on the Rathaus square and wondered how many times he had studied this scene over the decades that he had perched here on Saint Michael’s sword. He lifted his gaze from the Weihnachtsmarkt and stared at the Tannenbaum on the island in the Alster – a shame, he preferred the fountain.

None of the people below enjoying Glühwein and Flammekuchen had any idea that what appeared to be a raven perched high above them was not so simple a creature after all. He took some personal delight in their ignorance.

The wind was whipping by, and Dario was cursing Julius’s desire to meet in Hamburg. Why not Venice, after all it was December; why choose somewhere so cold? He supposed that Julius had business near by that would not keep, at least he hoped that was so, not that Julius was amused by Dario perishing up here in the wind off the Elbe.

A large Barn Owl landed on the parapet below Dario, bobbed in greeting and then he heard in his mind;

“Hello old friend, I haven’t kept you waiting I hope..?”

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365 Ficlets - Day #5~ "Cave Kill"

Luca sank into a wide stance and concentrated on remaining silent. The cold of the cave was making his breath visible, but he could only tell because of his ability to see its heat. He calmed his mind and deepened his breathing to slow his heart. This was instinctive to him; years of combat training had left him as much a creature of reflex as one of control.

The orc was looking for him. Its torch had sputtered out and now it was moving towards where he had been a few moments before, jabbing with its weapon randomly, in an effort to stab Luca by luck.

Luca watched, waiting to see if the stupid brute would turn back, but it seemed that the sudden loss of light had robbed it of any remaining wit. Silently Luca closed the gap between them, moving close to the ground and transferring his weight carefully and evenly so as not to disturb the cave floor. Once he was within a sword’s length he chose his moment and sprang, driving his sword in through the neck and down, killing it before it even heard him move.

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365 Ficlets - Day #4 ~ "Terminus"

Jenna stared up at the vaulted iron roof of the station. She wondered how many people walked through it every day and never noticed the stark beauty of its construction, or the melancholy of its evident, albeit slow, decay.

The shade was up there somewhere, she had spotted it by the stairs leading off towards the Hammersmith and City Line, and once it had noticed her it had flitted up into the rafters of the station.

Shades often flee from those among the living that can see them; Jenna was used to this kind of thing. Still she preferred it when they were curious rather than scared, it made it a lot easier to connect with them. She closed her eyes and stretched out with her emotional self, broadcasting waves of compassion upwards. She slowed her breathing and tried to focus on the shade and let the hustle and bustle of Paddington on a Friday evening fall away into the background. When she opened her eyes the shade was directly in front of her, its face looking right at her;

“Who are you?”

“Jenna.”

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365 Ficlets - Day #3 ~ "How long is a minute?"

Tabitha reached across the table and laid her hand on her granddaughter’s trembling hands. She smiled her ever so slightly crooked smile and the lines of time around her eyes scrunched up in a way that just made Ellie feel happy all of a sudden.

On the table to Ellie’s left lay the test; how could a minute take so long to come around? As long as there was no blue line she could carry on with her life and David need never know; if he ever called again anyway.

Ellie’s mind wandered to that night. Why had she been so desperate to have him? It was not as though he was going to settle down and be her boyfriend; she knew that he was a player. If that blue line did show up he was not going to change – why had she risked all of this for such a fraction of a man? She had no idea, but this was scaring her enough that she felt sure she would never be so careless ever again. She was just so thankful for her grandmother, she had not judged her at all.

Tabitha picked up the plastic wand and stopped smiling.

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365 Ficlets - Day #2 ~ "Happy Birthday"

Tommy counted to ten again. He was fairly sure that if it was light outside his window then he was seven now, but he could not hear his mother moving around their apartment, so he was concerned that he might be about to break her admonition ‘not too early’.

Ten…

Slowly he swung his legs out from under the covers and touched his feet down on the hard wooden floor. It was a proper June day for his birthday this year, not like the rain that would not stop all day long the year before, so the floor was not cold, it just felt solid and real – he was awake now.

He went to his bedroom door and put his ear to it; nothing. He opened the door and tiptoed over the hallway to his mother’s and did the same again; nothing. Ever so gingerly he pulled the handle down and softly pushed on the door.

As he stepped into the room he knew that something was wrong; his young mind could not process the silence and the alien odour in the air, but it knew that something was not as it should be.

Then he saw the blood.

Mum!

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365 Ficlets - Day #1 ~ If wishes were horses...

I woke up to find Sara sitting by me on the bed, her feet by my head, gently stroking my morning hard-on. There was a glint in her eyes and a subtle, cheeky smile on her face;

“Good morning baby…”

I smiled at her and took in the lovely sight of her body laid out before me in the dappled early light trickling into the room through the blinds. I have long been fascinated by women’s bodies, but hers was pure and beautiful; living art to me.

The love I had for her was the only thought I can remember being in my mind in that moment, but I want to believe that I took a second to appreciate how lucky I was to have her in my life, my heart and my bed. There is something truly special about having a lover that delivers on love’s promise.

“I love you Sara, I really do.”

She nodded and then in one swift motion she threw her knee over my body and knelt above my face. As she lowered herself onto my mouth she turned around and said;

“Happy Birthday, baby.”

and then she took me in hers and the world went away.

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