365 Ficlets - #83 ~ "Beach Fire"

The waves were lapping against his feet when he came to his senses. As he opened his eyes he saw the mist and the gentle swell, and he knew that he was on the beach. The problem was not having the slightest idea how he had come to be there.

He looked around, hoping amongst other things to see a pile of clothes, as the breeze cut into him like a knife. There were no clothes in a tidy little pile up the beach, though there was a fireplace built above the high water mark, and what looked like enough fuel for the night at least. He turned away from the waves and walked back across the wet sand, his feet sinking just a little with each step as if he were walking on a giant butterscotch blamance.

As the sand turned dry, the little camp area became much more obvious, and he could see places where the evidence of prior tenants was all too clear; empty Coke cans and pizza boxes strewn across the sand.

He stepped across to the makeshift hearth and filled it with kindling, then twigs, and then he lit it.

It blazed.

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365 Ficlets - #82 ~ "Journalism Can Be Murder"

“What are you doing here?”

The fear in Dalton’s voice was evident; to hear it was a real excitement for Langdon.

“I’m meeting Denlow; Why are you here?”

Langdon laughed quietly. There was an unmistakably manic smile on his face that looked reptilian with his mouth slightly open and his tongue protruding between his teeth.

“I thought that you wanted an end to all of this, Dalton. Why did you arrange a meeting on the Pier of all places? Did you think that a public space would offer you some protection?”

The sights and sounds of Brighton Pier had been a comfort to Dalton, while he had waited, but now they suddenly seemed to be a noisy background that might cover any kind of mischief, rather than expose it.

Suddenly Langdon closed the gap between them and thrust a stiletto between Dalton’s ribs, perfectly bisecting the aorta; he would be dead soon, and with limited mess. Langdon sat Dalton down on a nearby bench, lay him down and then opened his copy of the Daily Mail and laid it across his victim’s face.

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This Ficlet was inspired by the contribution of a Place, an Item and an Activity on Livejournal by childeric. They were; Brighton Pier, a copy of the Daily Mail, Murder.

365 Ficlets - #81 ~ "Real Mexican Food"

The smell of chilli and sizzling meat washed over him like a wave as he walked into the taqueria, and it smelled really good. he cast his mind back to the last time he had eaten ‘Mexican’ food back at home in England and started to realise that all of the stories may well be true. Soon he would never be able to eat Mexican at home ever again.

The chefs were moving like a well oiled machine, this one tossing the meat on a flat, wide griddle, the other preparing a tortilla with salsa and beans, avocado and sour cream. People in the line were chatting to one another, pointing at the menu, and in the back there was the low hum of diners’ conversations over their food. He turned to his host and guide;

“So what’s good here, Dan?”

“Well, pretty much everything, but if you want a tip, I’m going to get the Super Shrimp Burrito.”

He turned the idea over in his mind, and could see no bad aspects to the idea of Pacific shrimp, griddle fried with chilli and onions and then wrapped up in a tortilla with rice and beans.

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365 Ficlets - #80 ~ "A Day to Remember"

“Here it is at last.”

These were the words that accompanied my father dropping the paper on the breakfast table in front of me.

I looked up and caught the headline:

‘IRA Announces formal end to conflict’

I nodded and went back to eating. There was nothing to say. In the end it was what we all wanted, on both sides of the argument, most people just wanted to get on with their lives, for their kids to be safe. The old hatreds were dying out, and even where they were hanging on, like ticks on a dog, the truth was that even the most hard line soldiers were losing their stomach for it.

“Is that all y’re goin’ ta say?”

“Yes, Da.”

I could feel his eyes burning into my head, almost hear him trying to decide whether or not to start something with me about it, and then it came;

“Those bastards took yer Ma, and even then we won. Do you know what this means son? It means we’re right, we’re better.”

I looked up into his eyes;

“No, Da, it means that less boys will grow up without their Ma. That’s what it means.”

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This Ficlet was inspired by the English Front Page of Wikipedia reminding me that on this day 3 years ago (28/07/2005) the Provisional IRA officially announced the end to it's use of pursuit of armed conflict in the effort to achieve a United Ireland.

365 Ficlets - #79 ~ Wake-up Call

“Get up! You’re sleepin’ when there is a party goin’ on out here, man! Get up!”

That was woke me at six a.m. Todd is a great guy; friendly, generous, fun. The thing is he had taken quite a few drinks by the time he got to six in the morning and he wanted everyone else to be up still too.

I shot out of bed like there was a fire or something; scared out of sleep. I followed the sounds out of the room I was staying in and wandered into the living room to find Todd holding forth on the joys of Absinthe and exhorting other, bleary eyed people to have fun.

“There you are. Come and have a drink!”

He motioned to the empty seat by the table and pointed at a shot of Absinthe that was sitting there, waiting for me like a little green devil. I knew that I had more than a skinful before I had crashed out at half one. I knew that I should not, under any circumstances, take the shot. I looked at him and was about to say ‘no thanks’ when the green fairy took me by the hand and explained that I needed to have more fun…

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365 Ficlets - #78 ~ Martello Tower

The fog was sitting on the line as they drove up the hill towards the Martello Tower. Franklin loved the way that it always sat at a predictable height, the warm air and the cold bay conspiring to shroud the headland in a soft white blanket, safe from the world.

Jenna pulled the car into the side of the road and they headed up to the tower on foot. It was a long standing tradition of homecoming that they had kept since leaving for college. On the first day that they were both back in town they would head up to the Martello and blaze one up and tell each other the whole truth about everything that happened since the last time they had said their goodbyes at the bus station.

They found somewhere to sit, and Jenna pulled a loose joint out of her glasses case. She put it into her mouth, reversed, to gently wet the paper and make the joint burn slow, then turned it back and lit it, the zippo that she had always used sheltered by her left hand.

Franklin could feel himself being at home; it had been a long road.

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365 Ficlets - #77 ~ "Monkey Rebellion..."

David backed away, on instinct he wanted to be further away from the ape. The open jaws, the sharp pointy canine teeth seeming to glisten in the bright light. There was an anger in the creature’s eyes that he could never remember having seen before in the otherwise docile beast’s behaviour.

Backing away was not helping, however. The ape started to advance quite quickly in fits and starts, not as if it were trying to catch up with David, but simply as if to maintain the distance between them. This was completely out of character, as far as David was concerned. He started to look around for why it might have come on.

He could not see any young that might have come along since had last been in that part of the jungle. Looking around the clearing he could not see any blood or evidence of injury, and the the ape was moving apparently effortlessly, not as though she were injured.

Then it dawned upon him; she may have been attacked by a human since he was last here. He hoped not; that would be most inconvenient.

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This Ficlet was inspired by the following image:




Photo by dboy (on Flickr)

365 Ficlets - #76 ~ "Newark"

The heat was what suprised him most. It had been a traditionally chilly July morning at Heathrow, but when he stepped off the plane in Newark he was struck by how much warmer it really was.

Now, standing by the exit of Terminal A at Newark Liberty International Airport he looked out at the crazy over-sized cars and the comings and goings and realised that the movies and television really did not lie; America really does look that way.

A small group of fellow travellers were swapping airline war stories;

“And then they told me the delay was due to poor weather conditions! Do you see any goddamn bad weather?”

“Oh I know. The last time I flew [deleted] they lost my bags. I was travelling for work and I could not change my clothes for thirty-six hours! I mean that’s not service, right?”

He smiled. It was good to be on holiday, to not have a care in the world. So his connecting flight was delayed; it did not really matter.

He wandered back into the terminal, into the bar and sat down.

“Sam Adams, please.”

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365 Ficlets - #75 ~ "Treasure"

“In nomine Patri, Fili, Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”

The small gathering of people mumbled their echo, and then began to walk away from the hole in the ground.

Ophelia was rooted to the spot, gripping the Incan necklace in her hands, willing them all to leave so that none would see her cast it into the dark cleft, to rest with Alonso’s body in this foreign ground.

Why had they come here? How had he persuaded her that the risks of the Peruvian jungle were worth taking?

She was crying now. The tears had begun to fall, silently, as the last footsteps disappeared out of earshot. She walked slowly to the edge of her husband’s grave and sank to her knees at the head end. There he was, bound in strips of cloth, as his will had requested. No coffin to keep him from the land he had loved so much. As she droped the golden necklace, sobs wracked her small frame and then a scream of pain forced its way out. She collapsed in the soft mud.

All at once she started; all around there were eyes in the jungle, watching her.

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You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

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This Ficlet was inspired by the contribution of a Place, an Item and an Activity on Livejournal by snorkel_maiden. They were; Peru, a Ceremonial Golden Necklace, a Burial.

365 Ficlets - #74 ~ "One perfect moment..?"

In that moment he felt as though he could die on the next day and feel happy. Whenever he tried to explain it to anyone later the words sounded so corny, so meaningless, but in that moment, that place, that time, he had felt so complete, so utterly whole. In all the times that he had made love, had sex and even fucked both before and after, with her, with others, nothing had felt so utterly perfect as the moment he had slid inside her that morning.

They had locked their gaze, they were holding each other close. They were apart, and then they were one. Neither of them moved for a long, ineffable moment, and then their mouths had met and as the heat from their kiss had mixed with the heat from between their legs, their bodies had begun to move with a will and purpose all of their own. First fast and frantic and then slow and tender and then everything all at once. Neither of them could tell whether they had been locked together for seconds or minutes; moving, feeling and all the while staring into each other.

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365 Ficlets - #73 ~ "War Criminal"

“Is that really him?”

Looking through the peep hole into the small bare cell Jacob could not believe that he was finally in custody.

“Yeah, Jacob, it’s him. We took so long to find him and now that he’s here I can’t believe it myself.”

“I’ve heard the stories, but I’ve always assumed that he would, you know, look evil. He just looks like someone’s old dad; tired and infirm. Are we really sure?”

Werner just nodded, and then shook his head.

On the other side of the door Eli turned his face away from the door and smiled to himself. Did they not realise that he could hear them through the peephole; after all it was just a hole in the door. Already he was starting to see how he might at least cheat the death penalty if he played his hand properly.

His thoughts turned back to the killing times; the days when he had been empowered and encouraged to give full reign to his pleasure in dealing death. His smile widened. He knew that no one would ever understand the pleasure he took in it; it did not matter now.

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You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

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This Ficlet was inspired by the final capture of Radovan Karadžić on the 21st of July 2008, as reported on the English Front Page of Wikipedia.

You can find out about him here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radovan_Karad%C5%BEi%C4%87

Clearly the above story is a fiction based on the widely accepted, but as yet unproven (in court) allegations that Radovan Karadžić is a war criminal; this story is in no way meant to be prejudicial nor is it meant to indicate that he is guilty before he has been tried.

365 Ficlets - #72 ~ "Pendulum"

“...take you down to the other side...“

The dub-step thundering out of the speakers as he threw the shifter up into third was having more than a little of the desired effect on his driving. Even under normal circumstances, when his stress was low or at least under control he did not play that CD in the car, but tonight was different.

He had been at home, just relaxing, watching a couple of the shows he had bought on DVD ; spending time just with himself. When the phone rang he assumed it would be one of his mates wanting to whine about Chelsea (again), or his sister looking for tech support. He did not even look at the display, just thumbed the green phone button and put it to his ear;

‘Hey, Jed here...”

“I need your help. I would not have called, but I can’t call anyone else.”

He could hear the fear in her voice; the timbre of utter despair edging its way in to make itself known as well.

“What’s happened?”

“I can’t... Not on the phone. Just come to Paul’s and bring some cash, please? A Ton, yeah?”

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365 Ficlets - #71 ~ "Home"

“Oh yeah and anyway there is a comfort in a place that you know so well you can see it in your mind’s eye when you are not there.”

I nodded; I understood what Luke was saying, but I still felt that he had misunderstood my question.

“I know it’s good to visit your family home, but I’m not really talking about that. What I mean when I ask ‘can you ever really go home?’ is not whether or not you are actually able to visit the place, or whether or not it is a pleasant or even bearable experience. I’m asking you if it is possible to still have the same relationship to your parents and siblings as you did when you were a child?”

He nodded back to me, and then sat for a moment, clearly thinking about what I had asked, as if he had never really thought about it before.

“I suppose it is about what that word ‘home’ means to you. For me it is a little bit about the people and the place, but it is more about support, acceptance and love and I can still find all of that from my family. So I can and do ‘go home’.”

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365 Ficlets - #70 ~ "Tacking"

The machine-gun rattle of the ratchet on the jib sheet winch snapped me out of my reverie and reminded me that we were tacking. I needed to think about where I was sitting, what I was doing and holding and where I was looking. I had been staring off at the coast,at the waves as they crashed into the end of the headland. Such power and majesty – I see it often and yet it always moves me.

Jacques turned to me, cigarette in his mouth as ever, and nodded that all was ok; we had gone about cleanly and now we needed to trim the boat and do our part to help Yves plough the course that would extend our lead. As I settled into my spot I closed my eyes and enjoyed the warm sun on my face and the fresh smell of the sea on the breeze; the feeling of salt on my skin.

I have been told by some that it is corny to speak romantically of the sea and my connection to it – we are an island nation, so we are all sailors at heart they have said to me. Still in that moment I knew no greater joy than making way under sail.

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You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

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This Ficlet was inspired by the following image:




Photo by sharkbait (on Flickr)

365 Ficlets - #69 ~ "Control"

“Come on, come in here; I can’t wait!”

Lori dragged me into a cupboard that I had not even seen and closed the door behind us. There in the dark she started to push her hand down my pants, to free up my hardening cock; her mouth covering my face with kisses. My head was spinning, I was still in the corridor just walking along hand in hand, but clearly Lori was not just at the next level; in her mind I was already inside her and now she was fighting to bring me up to speed.

“That’s right. Come on, baby, I want you inside me, now! Hurry!”

Before I had met Lori there had always been a part of me that wanted a sexually voracious lover. The thing was now that I had her there were times when it was tough to tell whether I was as much of an object to her as I felt. I know, from a male perspective it’s a terrible problem to have; I should have just shut up and enjoyed all the sex that I had always wanted, but I needed to know that what I wanted mattered as well. I could not believe I was saying it;

“No, stop.”

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365 Ficlets - #68 ~ "In The Court of the Lions"

“What do you mean ‘This will only work here and now’? You are starting to sound like you believe in magic, Edward.”

Teri had resented carrying the heavy cardboard box that had been in the boot of their car for two days. He would not say what was inside it. All that he had said was that it would all become clear once they arrived at The Alhambra, in Granada. She was used to his impromptu trips; she had even been happy to be asked along for once, but now she was starting to wonder why she trusted him at all. They had arrived in The Court of the Lions and like a change in the wind she already saw a different man in him.

“You will see, Teri. Tonight I am going to release my brother from his torment and then, together, we will see such sights…”

She shuddered, as if a cold hand had touched her shoulder.

“You’re scaring me Ed. What do you mean?”

“Oh you’ll see, but you are right to be afraid; quite right indeed.”

His eyes flashed red, and she turned to run. Sadly the feeling was not only gone from her arms.

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This Ficlet was brought to you by the suggestion for 'Three Things' from 8w_gremlin Those three things were:

1. A location: The Alhambra
2. An object: A cardboard box
3. An activity: Losing ones ability to feel

Thanks mon ami - I hope that you like what I did with your inspiration :-)

365 Ficlets - #67 ~ "Watts Station"

The bench was wet, but he sat there anyway. Josiah had sat there every day for nearly 33 years. He had been on the street that day; the day that Charcoal Alley got its name. He was nine years old when 103rd street had been razed to the ground at the hands of the rioters. He could remember the heat; it had been unbearable, all of the stores burning along the road.

As he sat and watched the new Blue Line train zip by the old Watts Station, Josiah could not help but think of the angry mobs of men, looting and fighting in the streets. Like a lot of kids he had hidden from them, but he had watched. Seen things that no child should see. There were times when it seemed so far away to him; now there were strong black figures in the movies, the pop charts, in politics even; so much more than then, and that was not really the half of it. Even if the election brought Obama to the Whitehouse there would still be his memories of that time. Hate would take longer than a man’s life to be banished, as far as he could tell.

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365 Ficlets - #66 ~ "Longing"

The sun felt good on her face, it raised her heart just enough. She knew that she would catch hell for leaving the castle and losing the guards that her father put such stock in. She was strong and agile but surely if they were worth their retainer she should not be able to evade them so easily.

As she wandered through the cherry orchard, idly picking fruit, she let her mind wander to Lissa. She could see her soft white skin, her smooth toned body slick with the dark water of the reflecting pool as she had climbed out under the moonlight. She burned to touch her, to kiss her. Lissa would never bear to hear it she knew that. One of her spying sessions had yielded the fact that Lissa was attracted to men. It had been hard and yet so powerful to watch her making love to Damon in the maze, their bodies becoming one in the night. Even with the lust that she felt there was something deeper there as well. Not being able to tell Lissa, knowing that it would hurt her, that was what cut her deeper than anything else.

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365 Ficlets - #65 ~ "On the Road Again"

The wind whipped the rain into his face; his hood offered no protection from the sharp needles of water, it was that it was keeping him warmer than he would be without it that gave him any comfort.

He had been on the road for twelve days, on the back roads, sleeping in ditches. When he had volunteered to be one of the Duke’s couriers he had forseen horses and diplomatic protections and heraldry, not traveling incognito on foot, jumping at every shadow. For the first six months he found it impossible to get used to carrying a sword whenever he left the manor, and even more troublesome to sleep with it by his side, slightly loosed from its scabbard.

He crested the hill and looked down at the valley through the rain and gloom; even though it was a hour before sunset it was almost as dark as a moonless night. He knew that it was important that he made it across the valley before night really fell, but the dark shapes moving along the treeline a hundred yards down the hill made him wonder at the chances of that.

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365 Ficlets - #64 ~ "Ending"

“I don’t know what to say, Sara. I really don’t.”

She tried to smile through her tears as she moved her head to the sound of my voice. I was struck by how odd it was to see her cry; I had not seen her cry since the accident, and her closed eyes with tears seemed somehow unnatural to me.

“I know that you are suffering Ethan, I know you are hiding things from me and I cannot bear that there is this wall between us. You know that I don’t blame you for anything, but since I left the hospital it’s as though you can’t bear to touch me. When you do kiss me, or hold me I can feel your reticence and when I’ve tried to initiate anything more you back away from me. I can’t bear that you are still here because you feel guilty; just go!”

I want so very much to be able to say that my heart broke in that moment, but I felt it lift; as though all of my guilt left me and I was free again. Not my guilt for taking her sight, but the guilt that was holding me to her.

I kissed her forehead, picked up my keys and left.

“Bye.”

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365 Ficlets - #63 ~ "The Time Has Come"

Llewellyn smiled as he felt the power surge through his arms. He had spent days preparing for this, researching the proper ritual details – the symbols, the candles, the tokens. It had been rewarding, but now there was a real understanding for him that he could hold power in his hands. There were no cold flames of blue energy, or crackles of electrical discharge like in the movies, but he could feel the ebb and flow of real power as he flexed his arms.

He stepped towards the small dais and placed his hands on the medallion, formed in the shape of a simple etched pentacle on a disc of pure silver.

“Invicta tempestatis, in petram audacia!”

As he spoke the words he tried to force the power that he felt coursing through him out of his hands and into the medallion. It seemed to him that is was working. There was a sensation, it felt at its strongest in his forearms, which reminded him of the feeling of bleeding, but much stronger.

In the end the feeling dissipated and he stepped back, he relaxed; it was done.

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365 Ficlets - #62 ~ "Surprising Stranger"

Allanah adjusted the hem of her skirt and tried not to look shifty as she cast her eyes about the waiting room. The thought was already at the forefront of her mind “I don’t belong here”. No matter how much Peter had tried to talk up her confidence, no matter how much he had reminded her that she had earned the chance to be there she was still a prisoner of everything that she had been told by everyone else.

GLUG , GLUG, GLUG

She started at the sound, jumped right out of her skin, and then her face flushed as she realised that there was someone standing at the water cooler. He was a good looking devil; six foot or so, athletic, sharp suit. As he walked past her she caught his cologne and she could not help but look up at him to try and see his face. He must have sensed her interest, because he turned back just enough to make eye contact with her. Her heart skipped a beat as she fell into his almond shaped grey eyes, and for just a moment she forgot about Peter, and then the stranger was around the corner.

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365 Ficlets - #61 ~ "Old and Constant Flame"

Felix crouched down by the tree, aware of the fact that if the rain started to come down any harder he would not be safe from it even there. It was not so much that he was bothered about receiving a good drenching at the hands of random chance and more that he was far from home with his camera and no waterproof bag to protect it from this unforseen, heavy shower.

Left and right, across the park, he could see people running for shelter, bags and newspapers held over their heads, and then he saw her and the rest of the world fell away.

Felix had always loved Serena. From when they were four years old, playing in the sandpit in her garden, to her being his date for his leavers’ ball after A-Levels and onward. Even after she had left him for the dreaded Jonas, he had still loved her. He had not expected to see her on this trip to see his folks, he did not even know that she was back in Marlow. He watched her, enchanted that as others dashed to ‘safety’ she pranced gaily through the rain, playing with her hair.

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365 Ficlets - #60 ~ "In the Eye of the Beholder"

Olivia was still unsure of herself as she perched in the corner of the room, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. She had been trying to get into this party for about four months and now that she was here she was suddenly aware of the gulf between fantasy and reality. She checked that the green armband was visible, announcing to anyone who looked that she was present as a voyeur, only to be invited to join in by being asked specifically to watch; never to be touched. She also felt in her pocket for the red one she had been given in case she changed her mind.

Just to her right there was a staggeringly beautiful woman perched on the edge of a table, naked, with her feet on the shoulders of the woman who was eating her out, still fully dressed and dressed as a man. Olivia watched, mesmerised by the woman’s beautiful breasts as they rose and fell irregularly with her gasping breaths as she approached orgasm, her head thrown back and her long raven black hair sweeping back and forth on the polished table top.

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365 Ficlets - #59 ~ "Another Day..."

George rested the mop against his brow and fought back his gag reflex. It was, and always had been, his worst fear that one day he would be forced to do a job that had bad smells attached to it. Now, here he was, cleaning the toilets in a school and wishing that the children who attended were not such animals. Why did they feel the need to block the toilets, piss on the floors, smoke and vomit and whatever else they got up to in here? Surely the majority of them were horrified by the state of the first floor toilets for both genders when they came to use them?

In most cases the majority would and did make sure that the minority were aptly punished for standing out. Goth kids were beaten for being ‘spooky’, sporting failures were ridiculed for not being able to catch a ball. Why was it that the ones with no respect for their private spaces, who created this stink and mess, were not equally punished? George certainly knew what he wanted to do to them, but he also wanted to keep his job, even with the smell.

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365 Ficlets - #58 ~ "Wanted, One Muse..."

Ferdie wondered if he was ever going to look at anything more than a blank screen. It was three weeks since he had written anything and his editor was starting to get really quite aggressive in his demands for material. Ferdie was not sure that it was okay for anyone to threaten to remove each of one’s fingernails with pliers if you did not deliver a blog article.

He had tried everything; drinking, getting high, sitting outside in the dark looking down on the lights of the city, smoking cigarettes and driving around the Venice streets looking for people that he used to know… Anything to find some inspiration, but nothing was working, and there was nothing there every time when he did one of these things and then reached in to try and find some inspiration.

There was nothing that had not already been said, nothing to believe in any more and it had been this way for almost exactly three and a half weeks. Why was this? Anyone could have guessed that it was because Vicky had left, but he could not see it.

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365 Ficlets - #57 ~ "High Street Satori"

I wanted to buy Sara a present; that was made me understand what had really changed. It was a week before our fourth anniversary and a month before we were still due to marry. I was in town alone and I decided that I would buy her something for our anniversary. I knew that no gift was going to make it better, but I wanted to signify to her that I was thinking of her; thinking of her more than I thought she knew.

I wandered around her favourite stores, looking for something that would make her smile, that would let her know that I had thought about what she liked, who she was and then I had found the perfect gift. That was the problem though; I was looking, and she could not do that anymore. After about an hour it dawned on me, and crazy as it may sound, I think it was then that I really understood for the first time that she was blind. I could not buy her a beautiful painting or exquisite jewellery, things that would once have captivated her with the way they looked. Now that was only cruel, not thoughtful.

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365 Ficlets - #56 ~ "An Englishman in DC"

Frank sat back and stared up at the fireworks exploding over the Potomac, the strains of patriotic music on the edge of what he could hear from the District.

There was something odd about being an Englishman on the Fourth of July; the defeated enemy watching the fete of his defeat. He had not received anything but welcoming and friendly overtures from his American hosts, but even so none of them had missed the chance to point out that he was witnessing the celebration of his nation’s own Waterloo.

There was really nothing like this at home. There was Saint George’s Day, which usually passed without mention apart from on conservative talk radio – a much less powerful force in the United Kingdom than he had found it to be in the US. There was the Last Night of the Proms, but that was not really even close to comparable. Having not been invaded for nearly a thousand years there was no great opressor’s downfall to cherish, no great uprising to remember. England was a rock, an island, and he liked Her that way.

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365 Ficlets - #55 ~ "Morning Drudgery"

Layla sat looking at her phone, willing it to ring. The problem with not having an excuse to ring someone when all that you want is to hear their voice, is that very few people have the power to make that desired voice and the person attached to it make a phone call.

She placed the phone back on the desk by her keyboard and picked up her coffee. She took a sip; it was cold, of course. Most people might see this as the very last straw, but she was one of the true coffee fanatics that just saw this as unplanned iced-coffee experience, and carried on sipping as she flicked through RSS feed after RSS feed of work related internet mumblings.

It was one thing to ‘keep up’ with the comings and goings of the start-up world, but it was another dimension of madness, as far as she could see, to actually care about it. Sure keep a weather eye on any other companies in the same space, but does it really matter if start-up X operating in a totally different market has announced that they have their first round funding?

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365 Ficlets - #54 ~ "Satisfaction"

John was pleased with the way that things had gone. As he cleaned off his Peacemaker, which had been spattered with blood and grey matter from the first shot, he reflected on a job well done. Mister Sparks was going to be very pleased.

He had already heard that the Police were mystified as to how the killings had occurred. In truth there was no riddle to solve; the five heavies were killed so that he could get to Smalley, if they had run after the first one fell he would have let them live – why waste the rounds?

Mister Sparks had been very clear about how he wanted Smalley to die, and though John was most pleased to perform surgical kills he was not squeamish over special requests. It had been hard to find a knife that was able to pierce an average skull easily enough that he could be precise about the entry points of the stab wounds. He had found the perfect one in a hunting store in Virginia a week before and paid cash. It was a small place with no cameras, so he had decided to keep the knife for now.

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365 Ficlets - #53 ~ "Pieces of a Puzzle"

Paul stared down at the scene from the catwalk above, trying to walk through the sequence of events in his mind, based on the resulting carnage.

The attacker must have entered to the left, shooting the first stiff in the back of the head as he walked past. This apparently casual act of violence clearly sent the remaining people in the room to seek cover – all of the overturned tables were pointing in that direction.

So the assailant, whoever they were, just kept walking, shooting as they went. The lack of bullet holes in the pieces of ‘cover’ that had corpses behind them suggested a high velocity load in his or her ammo, and a keen eye for shooting blind at a target behind cover. Whoever the assailant was, they had unparalleled confidence and actual ability with a gun.

One, two, three, four, five shots and five dead bodies. It was at this point that the only person left alive in the room apart from the mystery assailant was Smalley. He had only lived long enough to kneel and be stabbed thrice in the face.

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