Plot Medics 

Here's another one from the Scottish writing retreat. Each member of the group wrote a few song titles on separate pieces of folded paper. We each picked one and then had 20 minutes to write a story of exactly 100 words, including the title.

Sunshine Underground (100 words, including title)

It has taken generations. Tunnelling up to the surface cost a tenth of our number; crushed by falling rock, snatched by beasts that slide in the dark, sickened by the Grey Wasting if they stayed too long at the top. The expedition beyond the far caverns to fetch the crystal spent more lives, and we polished away days and months.

Finally all of the lenses and mirrors are in place. We wait for the sun to rise,  for the touch of our god to reach us in exile. As we wait, we draw lots for the first sacrifice.

This came out of a writing exercise while the Plot Medics were away enjoying themselves in the wilds of Scotland (thus the late posting of this week's flash - we were Beyond Broadband).  The exercise involved taking three pictures at random from a stock of images and writing for 20 minutes, including all three images in the story.   I got a woman in a red dress, a young man perched on a framework seeking something in the distance, and...well, you'll see.

A Storm is Coming (996 words)

“I keep expecting someone to shout, “Unmask, Unmask!”  The woman in the red dress complained.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”  Her companion, a chunky, middle aged man, danced quite well, but the woman in red, whose name was Gwynneth, was beginning to realise he was a bore, at least by her rather exacting standards.  She didn’t want to be stuck with him all night.  “Edgar Allen Poe?  The Mask ofthe Red Death?”  He looked blank. 

"Is that something else we're supposed to be worried about?"  He said.  "The Red Death?  I thought what with all this.." he waved at the shuttered windows, "we had enough problems."

"Never mind," Gwynneth said.  "But you never know, do you?  Everyone's been talking about climate change for years, but I don't think anyone expected this, either."

"I certainly didn't," he said, his tone indicating that his very lack of expectation should have prevented any of this from happening, if the world were properly organised.

Gwynneth excused herself to go find a drink.   

The bar staff had obviously decided to go for broke – they’d just loaded a table with everything in the cellar and scarpered, God knew where to; it wouldn’t be outside, at any rate. 

Gwynneth poured herself  a generous glass of a fairly decent merlot that the scavenging hordes had missed, and looked around for anyone interesting.  She had no idea how long she was goingto be stuck here, and with the television reception erratic  verging on nonexistent, and consisting mostly of weather reports, there was no point sitting in her room.  

She couldn’t see anyone she fancied talking to.  It was just her luck, she thought, to be caught at a hotel largely given over to a conference of timeshare salespeople. Several  had already tried to interest her in property in Greenland.  

The only other people seemed to be a stag-night, one of whose guests had tried to grope her but had been so drunk he had missed, and a small, morose group of car-salesmen, who were huddled in a corner drinking away the last of their wages and hoping to avoid being spotted by any of the other trapped guests.  She only knew they were car-salesmen because she had seen them arriving with another man, who in a moment of drunken fury, had jumped onto a table, told everyone what he did, and started ranting that it wasn’t his fault and why did everyone blame him, he was just trying to make a living?

The remaining hotel staff – there were still a few around at that point – had bundled him out, but she was pretty certain at least one of them had put the boot in, and she hadn’t seen the man since.  

Gwynneth wandered out of the badly decorated and rather chilly ballroom and down a side corridor, pushed open an anonymous white-painted door and found a set of worn-carpeted stairs.  For lack of anything better to do, she went up them.

The patchy paint and dull colours seemed to suggest that these were staff quarters.  Further along, she could hear a much livelier party than the one downstairs. 

No harm in trying, she thought.  She still had the rest of the merlot, it might act as a party-passport.  She glanced at a window as she passed; the flat middle-of-nowhere landscape was already darkening under its fuzzy orange haze of pollution.

The room was crammed with people in the hotel’s blue and lavender uniforms, and several in the white of porters, cleaning staff and cooks.   In the middle of the room, an iron staircase led up to a roof opening.  Several people were clustered around it, looking up.  

It was still open.  Gwynneth raised her eyebrows, and pushed her way through the crowd.  Despite the fact that it was obvious from her dress, no-one seemed to notice or care that she was a guest.

She drained her glass, paused for a moment, then shoved the corked bottle in her bag and climbed the narrow stairs onto the roof.  The sky looked ill and bruised.  Against it, she could see some kind of iron framework where a young man was perched, peering south.  People were yelling at him to come down.


“We’re shutting the hatch if you don’t,” someone shouted. 


“Just a minute,” he yelled back.  “I want to see if I can spot them.”

But the wind must have changed.  The first toad caught him on the back of the neck.  The few people still on the roof screamed and scrambled down the stairs as he flailed and lost his balance, tipped forward, and held on with one hand, legs kicking.  He just managed to catch a foothold when the rest of the stormfront came in, and toads began to pelt from the sky, splatting against the roof.

People were screaming to shut the hatch, shut the hatch.  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” Gwynneth said.  She pushed through the yelling, arguing mass and ran up to the top step, and held out her arms.  “Jump!  I’ll catch you!”  He looked at her panic-stricken and his foot slid from the railing.  She tried to catch his flailing legs but they were too high up.  “Come on!”

He dropped, right onto her, knocking her back down the steps into the room below.  A dozen people slammed the roof hatch shut, while more stamped on the few toads that had fallen through.  The noise of them hitting the roof was like wet thunder.

Gwynneth, winded, dragged herself out from under the young man.  A toad had landed in her cleavage.  She picked it out, and looked at it.  It looked back with bright, gold eyes.  All around people were screaming and killing them.  “Poor thing,” she said to the toad.  “It’s not your fault, is it?” 

She got up, took the wine out of her handbag, left it on a table, and carefully put the toad in instead.  Then she left the party, shutting the door behind her.

This one came from staring out a train window, listening to "Supermassive Black Hole" by Muse, and "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" by the Scissor Sisters. I had to trim like mad to get it into 1000 words.

Demon Driven (998 words)

It’s carnival time in Dindrisk, has been for three days, will be for another ten. They know how to party here. I barge my way through a drunken crowd, a blur of masks, feathers and spangles, to the spaceliner’s dock. A young man fidgeting in an engineer’s uniform meets me at the top of the gangplank.

“Astromancer Pierce?”

“That’s me.”

He’s probably expecting a corset, a lot of eyeliner and black leather. I did all that. Now I’m older and a little bit wider, and I stick to comfortable and easy to clean.

“I’m Bradford,” he says. “The Portal Engineer.” We jog along a plush corridor, all oval  windows and gold swirly bits, strung with carnival feathers and shiny beads.

“We picked up a new artist here two days ago,” he says. “The last one went, well, you know how they do, and we had to drop him off for, uh, a quiet rest. We can’t get another one until the carnival finishes, we’re supposed to take off tomorrow and it won’t work and...” Bradford swallows.

“You’ve got a Muse, right? With a sculpture kink?” I ask.

“Yes, but it doesn’t like the new artist.” He hustles me through a door into a more utilitarian space; industrial grey, tracked with cabling ducts.  “It ignores him, and it’s moving around. A lot.”

I can hear what he’s screaming in his head. “What if it gets out?”
 
“Muses are tricky,” I say. “Not big on ripping out guts, but they’re the definition of changeable.”

Bradford cranks open another hatch and we’re in the portal drive  room. Sage burns in the censers, the silver circle set into the floor is filled with the blue shimmer of magic, and with demon.

“The binding looks solid,” I say.

The place is littered with discarded beads and champagne corks. A skinny, clay-smeared bloke circles around a huge lump of a work, darting in to pinch on another piece.
 
The demon spins, stamps, points a talon at me. “I smell magic on you,” it says. It grins a zig-zag half-moon. “And Incubus. Ha!”

Talons are bad. A happy Muse usually takes human form, and is all big eyes and improbable breasts or chiselled cheekbones, whatever works. Unhappy demons won't bend space to move your ship. 

“Greetings to you too,” I say in its language. “Don’t you like what they’re feeding you?”

“So stale. I feed. I hunger.” The demon rocks rhythmically, waving its skinny arms.

“What is it you want?” I ask, not expecting much. Demon and human concepts don’t relate too well. Everything is energy to them.

“I crave. New flavour in the air, and then gone. I starve.”

“Uh huh.” I wander over to the sculptor. The work looks familiar, and when he looks me in the eye my instincts scream “fake”. But there are formalities to observe.

“Tell me about this piece,” I say. It takes a moment for the bullshit to kick in, and it’s all the wrong kind. He spiels about light and angles and sublimity. He doesn’t talk about how he saw it in his head, and what the work demanded. And his aura stinks.

“This guy’s a forger,” I tell Bradford.  “He’s just recycling somebody else’s work, even with the Muse there, so his energy is stale. You got any sculptors on the passenger list? One or two pieces should get you to Bratngash. You can hire a new artist there.”

“Do you think they’d want to do it?”

“For inspiration from a Muse? They’ll bite your hand off.”

#

The enthusiastic volunteer has hair dyed green and chews gum non-stop. She works with wire and  discarded carnival feathers and beads. I can see her ride that rollercoaster of  doubt and exaltation as the extraordinary piece takes shape. The Muse stamps and claps its hands as the sculptor pirouettes around her work. And it complains.

“Stale. So cruel to give delicousness and take it away. I starve. Give it back to me.”

“Give you back what?”

“This,” the demon stamps and waves its hands again. “What was here before.”

“What does it want?” asks Bradford. His eyes are red, and ringed with dark circles.

“I don’t think it knows. But I want a drink. And you need one.”

“I’m on duty.”

#

The bar is crowded. Drink is drunk, quite a lot of it. Bradford leans forward, leers, wobbles, rights himself and shouts over the music, “I heard your first job was with an Incubus.”

I look out over the dancefloor, where couples are doing their best to shag standing up and fully clothed, and I smile. My Incubus had been a – well - a demon on the dancefloor; all that eye contact, bodies almost touching, the pounding beat. He needed sex, but he loved to dance, and he taught me a thing or two.

“When exactly did your Muse start acting up?” I ask.

“First night of the carnival.”

A day before the forger came on board. “And you were partying in the portal room?”

“Look, I was off duty,” he says. “And all these passengers wanted to see the demon.”

“They danced around it, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“So your Muse has changed its kink. It’s come over all terpsichorean.”

#

The demon perks up as soon as the bass beat kicks in. I clap my hands and twirl and suddenly there’s a man with angular cheekbones and snake hips in the circle. I undo the binding with a flick of my wrist, ignoring Bradford’s screams. Demons work better when they’re willing.

People use sex to describe the feeling of sharing with a demon, because it’s the closest common experience. But it’s a eureka moment, the flow, the surrender to spontaneous art. Your head and heart are wide open, you are relaxed and powerful and everything is just fine.

The demon might have to go back in its cage at Bratngash. But right now we’re dancing, and I could stand to lose a few pounds.

This was a remnant, rewritten and brought into the open.

I’m not sure it was a good idea, but I guess, as with many things, it’s a little too late to change that now.

Works of Art (964 words)

The first punters are coming in now.  I won’t allow myself to look yet.  I smell canapés and perfume, wine and chemicals.

They shriek greetings, but when they look at the walls, they are restrained, quiet, cool.  Still, I smell their greed in the air. The first photographs are only the appetiser, after all.  The main dish will be meat, rare and bloody, and only one, of all of them, will be able to taste it. 

I know all their names.   They have to give them beforehand.  Alicia, my publicist, loves this.  Exclusivity is such a draw.

Adolescent voices wind through the galleries; the gritty windblown shouts of the playground, the echoing babble of the changing room.  There are no actual words;  those are for the audience to supply from the hidden attics of their own memories. 

Attics, of course, are where madwomen are traditionally kept.

Alicia has the talk, she can roll it out like wallpaper.  Transgressive Art, the Aesthetic of Excess, everything the critics purr over.   She drops it when we’re alone; a weird form of trust.  I don’t think she does it with any of her other clients..  “Darling, you know what I think,” she says.  “Self-indulgent crap, the lot of it.  You’re all bloody mad.  But you sell yourselves like nothing on earth; I love it.  And you, you’re the most.”  Sometimes, after the third glass, she leans in, fixes those conker-brown eyes on me like laser gunsights.  “Except the bullshit doesn’t mean a thing to you either, does it?  Tell me, sweetie, what are you really after?”

She tilts her head, with a sort of cynical hope. I just smile.  I’ve never answered yet. 

She doesn’t have to care what I really want, so long as I bring the punters in.  Even for me it’s getting harder, though.  Art meant to outrage has been around for so long, so many envelopes have been pushed, torn, shredded, and binned.  And as Anthony Julius pointed out, you have to try pretty hard to be more shocking than what’s been done by real people, for real reasons. 

But enough still come; hoping for that extreme experience.  Hoping to be lucky.  Hoping to be chosen to see the final part of the installation.  And if they don’t manage that, well, at least their pictures will be in the glossies.

In the first room, among the mirrors, the photographs are crammed, half hidden.  Some are blown up to blurring, others are clear, but fragmented.  Sections of skin.  Near the entrance, most of the skin is marred only by the faint chalkpits of adolescent acne. 

As the audience move deeper, the pictures clarify.  The white line left by a nail-file.  The pallid ridge, punctuated either side by stitches, of a deeper slash made by a serrated kitchen knife.  That picture has a bluish wash, the colour of ambulance lights.

In the next gallery, parts of the body.   Arms like railway junctions, tracked with ridged lines, running into each other.  A breast, half the nipple excised.

The first murmurs of discomfort.  If I were doing this for art, it would be my moment of triumph.

Come in little fishies.  Little sharks. 

The computer beeps.  One of my special guests has signed in.  Tonight, I have something in my net.

I look up at the monitor.

Francesca Lampeter. 

It always surprises me, how much, how little, they change.  She was glossy, streamlined as a thoroughbred.  Now she’s plumped up, but it looks artificial, like a fat suit.  Her hair is still expensively styled; she went to Vidal Sassoon, back then, at fourteen - and anyone who didn’t…well.  But it’s thinner.  Definitely thinner.
The man she’s with is much younger.  Son?  Toyboy?  Gay arm candy? 

It doesn’t matter.  He won’t be allowed in.  She will.

I don’t bother watching the rest.  The monitor doesn’t beep again.

I’ve never had two in one evening.  That would be interesting.  Thinking back, there are only a handful left, now.

I taste iron, in the back of my throat; I manoeuvre the chair into position.  It’s too soon; even if she barely looks at anything, it will take her at least twenty minutes to get through the last gallery.

I wait.  It’s something I’ve perfected.  Pain hums along my nerves like wind in telephone wires. 

Alicia will be coming up to her now, informing her that she’s in luck.  She’ll look surprised, delighted, maybe a little apprehensive.  She might shriek, clap her hands, hug the toyboy.  The rest will moan, sulk, pretend it doesn’t matter.

The Francesca I remember would just toss that head of glossy, perfectly cut hair; knowing that of course she’d been chosen.  Because she was one of the special ones.  Because she was entitled.

I wonder whether this Francesca tosses that thinning mop with the same assurance. 

The doors open with the exact sound of the girls’ changing rooms, all that time ago.  The echoes of laughter, the orange-painted walls; everything is the same.

Except me.

She looks at me, where I sit, naked.  Her face jerks with a reflex of disgust I recognise: she used to look at me in a very similar way.  But back then, I deserved it less: I was just a girl.  Plump, a little spotty, with the wrong clothes, the wrong voice, the wrong interests. 

Now, I’m a work of art. 

She’s looking around, her eyes beginning to widen with something: recognition, panic.  Nausea.

“Francesca,” I say.  I always left my lips, my tongue alone, knowing one day I would be able to speak. 

I reach out with the remains of my right hand.  “So nice, to meet one of my collaborators.”

All I'm going to say about this one is that it's about the importance of an active socks life. (I'm making up for the bad pun I had to sacrifice last time.)

Lefty Turquoise (784 words)

My socks have wriggled off my feet in the night again. One has escaped all the way to the end of the bed, the toe poking out beyond the duvet, a vibrant turquoise against the dark red cotton.

"Where the hell is my other sock?" I throw back the duvet cover impatiently. The troublesome pair in question are thick and knee-length and going a bit slack in the elastic.

"Maybe it just hopped off on a little socky escapade," says David, knotting his tie. "Look for it later. You'd better get up or you'll be late for work again."

"Wouldn't that be a tragedy?"

David plants a kiss on my cheek and scoops up his bag on his way out. A few minutes later the front door slams.

Perhaps David is right. Perhaps the sock in the bed, I'll call it Righty, is happy slumbering in the second drawer down in the chest, or sometimes fulfilling its purpose by keeping my foot warm at night. Perhaps Lefty has become bored with the pointless routine, the days that trundle by, with only the occasional outing to the space under the duvet. Lefty is longing for adventure. They are ski socks, after all, and I haven't been skiing in years. I can see Righty reaching out of the bed after Lefty as he wriggled away, calling out, "Come back you fool!" Or maybe, "Take me with you!"

I join the ant file of commuters on the trail to the station, and I am nearly there when I escape from my thoughts and see that it is a beautiful day, even in suburbia. It's one of those free-gift April days, wrapped up in shiny green and blue and hot enough to make my jacket burdensome. It is a day for icecream, and sea breezes. As I step onto the London-bound platform, a flash of turquoise catches my eye, disappearing down the tunnel that leads to the south-bound trains.

I bolt after it, hope swelling up inside me. I can see nothing in the tunnel, so I run on, up the stairs to the other side, just as a train pulls up. The train is going to Brighton. After a second's hesitation, so am I. If I'm seeing blue flashes it means another migraine on the way, so no point in going to work anyway.

When the guard comes by, I tell him I jumped on the train on a whim.

"Good for you love," he says in a bored voice. But he sells me my ticket without a penalty.

I am right. It is a day for icecream. It is a day for buying a dress and changing in the shop, for taking my discarded suit to the pebble beach and jumping on it. For letting salt wind tangle my hair, for catching the sun across my nose and cheeks, for paddling in icy water. There is something turquoise floating out in the sea, but I am squinting into the sun, and it's too far out to wade and look. Instead I dig myself a comfortable hollow in the sun-warmed pebbles and watch the clouds float by and I wonder what the hell I've been doing with the rest of my days.

I don't go home until it's dark. I have to reluctantly reclaim my suit jacket because it's getting cold.

"Where've you been?" says David, hugging me. "Are you ok?"

"I had a day off. If my sock can have an adventure, I don't see why I can't."

"Cup of tea? You can tell me all about it."

I follow him into the kitchen. He puts the kettle on and rattles around with cups and spoons.

"I found your sock, by the way," says David. "It was outside the front door. It must have got tangled up with my bag."

"Was it wet? Sandy?"

"It was lying in a puddle. I've put it through the wash. Are you sure you're ok?"

"Just the same as usual. Unfortunately."

The next morning on the train to the office, I think over my day off. A little holiday from sanity, perhaps. It scares me how much I want to believe that Lefty was out there with me. I find myself thinking of buying teddy bear eyes and stitching them on, making him into a sock puppet. Or buying more wool, unravelling and reknitting him into a scarf so I could take him out and about. I finally decide that I'll leave Lefty exactly as he is. But I'll leave the sock drawer open, and the topmost window in the bedroom. And I'll keep my eyes peeled for what might happen next, for any free gift that comes my way.

This idea, or something like it, has been hanging around for a while – the worst thing about finally getting it on paper was the fact that I actually had to watch some Jerry Springer. Not sure I watched enough of it to get the feel quite right – but there are limits to what I will do for my art.

Show and Tell (982 words)

"Aand heere's your host!"

"Gunnar! Gunnar! Gunnar! Gunnar!"

Gunnar Bateman surfed onto the stage, cresting the roaring applause.

"Today we’re going to meet Darleen and Chet. They’ve been married some time, and Darleen claims that Chet has changed. That the same things that attracted him about her, he doesn’t like any more." Oooh, from the audience.

"Chet says Darleen isn’t acting like a proper wife, like a proper mother. Who’s right? Who’s at fault here? Let’s find out, shall we? Let’s hear it for Darleen Lubowski!"

Darleen was blonde, toned, tanned, pumped, glossed, and cantilevered. She swayed up to Gunnar on vertiginous heels for her air-kiss and slid into one of the chairs with catlike ease.

"So, Darleen. You and Chet have been married for how long?"

"Ten years, Gunnar." She had the voice of a gin-soaked angel.

"You told me that you were on the verge of a divorce. Why is that?"

"Well, I’ve always attracted men."

Woooo and a few, "You go, girl’s," from the audience.

"He said he liked that," Darleen said, pouting. "He said that I was the first sexy woman to go for him. But now, it’s all, ‘don’t wear that, Darleen. We’ve got children, Darleen. What will the PTA think, Darleen?’"

"Well, let’s hear Chet’s side of the story, shall we? Here he is, Chet Lubowski!"

Chet blinked his way onto the stage, leaning forward as though the applause were a high wind. Scrawny, with big hands and a bad combover, he looked at least twenty years older than his wife. Out in the distance, a bulb popped, and the tech crew hurried to deal with it.

Gunnar shook Chet’s hand, gestured him to his seat.

"Can you tell us a bit about your marriage?"

"We married pretty young. Darleen was always kinda wild. That’s was OK. But we’re older now. I just think she should, you know, stop trying to look like she’s sixteen. And stop flirting with other guys. We got three beautiful kids. It just isn’t right."

"Are you saying I don’t love our kids?" Darleen started up, eyes flaring.

Chet glared. "Do you?"

"Don’t you dare accuse me of being a bad mother!" She turned to the audience. "I just about brought them up by myself, they never see him!"

Oooh!

"I work hard!"

"OK calm down," Gunnar said. "Now, Darleen, you’ve got something to tell Chet, haven’t you? Something you think will help explain everything?"

"Yes, Brendan."

"Why don’t you go ahead."

Chet’s lower lip started to shake; he got that rabbit-in-headlights look. The audience leaned in, hungrily. Darleen stared straight ahead, glowing. "Chet, you always said you thought I was a sexy woman, now, you don’t like that about me any longer. But it ain’t gonna change. I’m a succubus."

Woooo, from the audience. Chet blinked, gasped. "You…you bitch! You never told me! All these years, and…no wonder I lost so much weight! No wonder I was tired all the time!"

Darleen crossed her legs, endangering several marriages out front, and shrugged. "You never had it better, Chet. Lots of men would be grateful."

Ooooh, the audience moaned.

"Besides, I never complained. Did I ever complain about your little secret? Hmm?"

"Oh don’t you dare," Chet said. "My friends watch this programme!"

"And you never had the guts to tell them," Darleen said. "I married a man with no guts. I married…" she drew the pause out like a pro, "a gremlin."

"You - bleep!" Chet launched himself out of his chair. One of the legs collapsed, and the stage crew whipped another chair into place, while security – a burly priest and even burlier ex-cop, both armed with water-pistols loaded with the show’s special mix of holy water, silver leaf, crushed garlic and obscure West African herbs – grabbed Chet. One of the water pistols exploded, drenching the front row of the audience, causing screams, howls, and a disturbing bubbling sound.

"Look at that!" Darleen shrieked, leaping up, pointing a trembling, perfectly manicured finger. "That’s what it’s like living with you! I never had a TV last more than a week! We pay more in insurance premiums than most people earn! And you complain because I look good? Well bleep you, Chet Lubowski! Bleep you and the kelpie you rode in on!"

Gunnar strode out front – stepping around the remains of one of the more drastically drenched members of the front row. "Let’s hear from our audience. You, sir?"

The sir in question was large, and hairy, and had a snout. "Seems to me she can’t help it. I mean, hell, I was coming home to that, I’d be grateful. In fact, I wouldn’t leave the house."

Chet lunged for him, and was restrained. Darleen smirked and waved her fingers. Another bulb exploded.

A large woman with a terrible perm and tusks said; "Once you’re a mom, you gotta change. You can’t act like a high-school kid no more. Lady, you need to get serious."

"Oh yeah?" Darleen said. "What’m I supposed to do? Pretend to be someone I’m not? Dress like you, maybe?"

Oooooh! Flecked with a few miao noises. The large woman headed thunderously for the stage, and was hauled back.

Gunnar got the nod from the wings. Time to wind up. He made a ‘quiet down’ gesture. "We all think we know somebody when we marry them. But do we ever really know them? And can the secrets at the heart of a marriage ever be something we should keep? Until next time; don’t you go changing." He’d used that line for years, and he wasn’t altering it now, however much the lycanthropy rights society complained.

In his dressing room, he found a message lying next to the mirror.

Great stuff. You bastard.
Odin.

Gunnar – aka Loki - grinned to himself. He’d found his niche. He was a god at peace with himself, if not with anyone else.

This story got started as I was falling asleep and a bad pun on flowers/flours popped into my head.

Although the bad pun got me started, in the end it had to go. (There's an anecdote in Robert McKee's "Story" about the screenwriters who started with a body behind the sofa, wrote the whole film round it and then realised it had become irrelevant.)

The Baker's Bargain (981 words)

Tom had half an hour to spare to try a new recipe before he opened the bakery. He had a whole rainbow palette to work with: pastry and dough, fruit peel and flesh, juice and jam, seeds and herbs, honey and treacle and custard and chocolate. He could spend a lifetime finding the perfect combinations of substance and flavour. It was a wild, gusty spring morning that made him think of freshness; he’d try cinammon rolls with cloves and mint. The clock’s hands whizzed round as he measured and stirred. When the rolls were in the oven he phoned Anna around the corner. She was always up at sunrise.

The bakery door opened, letting in the tinkle of a far-off bell. A slender young woman in a bright green velvet coat blew in, a smattering of sleet skipping around her shoes. The smell of cut grass filled the shop.

Tom smiled. “Hello again, Flora," he said. "Let me guess. A dozen honey cakes?”

“They are so very good. And such kind service. Perhaps one day I will be able to offer you something that you like as much.” A blush burned Tom’s face. He avoided Flora’s lime green eyes as he took her money.

The door banged open again and Anna limped into the bakery, leaning on her cane, a box tucked under her other arm. Her brown hair was tangled, her cheeks whipped pink by the wind. Mud stained the knees of her jeans. Flora smiled at Anna as she passed. Anna glared her out of the shop.

“That was a fey,” said Anna. “Most of them have got a sweet tooth. One day she’ll come in here and offer you a bargain. Don’t take it. The fey always trick you on the price.” She tapped her cane irritably.

“The fey. Right, I’ll be careful.” Tom hurried round to take the box. The honey from Anna’s bees had flavour that stretched for miles. He was willing to put up with some New Age nonsense for the sake of his cakes. 

Anna sniffed. “Do I smell cloves?”

“Yeah. One of my experiments. Want to try?”

Anna clambered up onto a stool at the counter to eat the warm roll. “Not a success, this time,” she said. “But my teeth feel nice and clean now.”

“I have these ideas. It’s always so clear in my head, and then I try and it doesn’t work.”

Anna smiled. “That’s the nature of experiments. Sometimes there’s happy accidents too.”

“I wish it would turn out how I imagine it. If I could just got the proportions right...”

“You will. Knowledge requires sacrifice and all that. Remember the cheese and chilli scones?”

“I'll give you some to take with you. Looks like you’re busy,”  he said.

“You caught me sorting out the raspberry canes. It’s new moon, the best time for planting.”

“You don’t seriously believe all that stuff do you?” Tom blurted. “I mean, new moons, fairies, aren’t you a bit old for all that?”

Anna slid off the stool. “She will come back. Whatever she offers you, the price is always too high. Don’t have anything to do with her. You can drop my payment through the letterbox.”

#

Flora did come back, when the weather was all blue skies and warm breezes. She ordered her honey cakes and said, “Perhaps I might offer you better payment than money.”

“Er...”

“Be bold, Tom. Many things are possible.” The scent of flowers drowsing in sunshine flooded over him. The wooden floor of the bakery creaked and groaned as it thrust out green shoots. Flora smiled at him, her lips as red as the depths of a rose.

“Surely, you must have one heart-felt wish?” she asked.

“Yes. I want to be able to bake everything perfectly, every time.” Tom blinked in surprise as the wish leapt from his lips. “I want the flavours to come out just as I imagine them.”

“Your wish is to have every bread and cake and pastry turn out exactly as you plan?”

“Yes. Although, I was told, there would be a price...”

“My dear Tom, I am offering you payment. How can there be a price?”

#

Tom woke tangled in the trailing ends of a nightmare. He felt drained and woozy as he began baking, but his loaves and pastries were better than ever. He made the cinnamon, mint and clove rolls again, and phoned Anna.

“It’s perfect,” she said. “I  knew you’d get it right.”

“They came out exactly as I imagined,” said Tom.

#

Tick tock, every day perfect loaves and pastries. He set the oven too high, he put in too many spices, he left the flour or the yeast out. It didn’t matter. Every new recipe turned out exactly as he imagined it. No surprises. No happy accidents. As he baked, his mind imagined a lifetime of tick tock, idea to realisation, no matter what he did or didn’t do. The clock hands crawled. Every morning he picked up the phone to call Anna, and changed his mind. After a fortnight, she came to the bakery anyway.

“You took the bargain, didn’t you?” she said.

“She said there was no price!” Tom wailed.

“Tell me exactly what was said.”

When Tom finished, Anna said, “Oh, that old trick. She’ll be back to offer to take it away, for a price. She’ll ask you for something like one blink of your eye. And you’ll think ‘What harm could that possibly do?’ And that blink will happen at the very moment when you need your eyes wide open, and then, wham!” She waved her cane. “You'll be bleeding in the gutter. I'd learn to live with it, if I were you.”

“How?”

“She wasn’t that clever.” Anna patted his hand. “If you can’t be a baker, find something else to cook. Now, I must get back to my bees.”

Little Red Hoodie (706 words)

"Now don't forget the bag for your Nan." The woman looks into the shopping bag, shudders, and closes it again.  “Sometimes I wonder what I married into.”

Red sighs and does an exaggerated, adolescent shrug.  She’s heard that before. 

"And don't go by the Whitman Estate.  And stay away from that old tramp by the off-licence."

"Mu-um."

"I don't want to be phoning the hospitals.  Or the police."

"I'll be late."

The woman looks out the window.  "Oh, blast.  Yes.  Hurry.  Wait, have you got your mobile?"

"Yes, Mum.  And yes, it's got credit, and yes, it's switched on."

"Don't you give me that voice, young lady.  If that plumber had turned up when he was supposed to..." she rolls her eyes towards the upstairs, where there is an ominous, constant dripping sound.  “But I have to keep emptying the bucket.”

Beyond the kitchen window, the moon is rising over the rooftops, fat as a cheese, smoky autumn yellow.

"Can I just go?"

"You ring me the second you get there.  Tell your Nan I said you're to stay overnight.  And if she gets out of hand..."

"I know.  Anyway she can't help it."

"Sometimes I wonder.  Just make sure her chain's on.  I know what she's like." 

She grasps the girl’s wrist as she’s about to leave.  “Red, be careful,” she says.  “You’re old enough…”

With one final, eye-rolling, “Mu-uum,” Red escapes, swinging the bag with Nan's supplies in one hand, tugging at the neck of her jacket with the other.  It's too small, really, but she likes it.  She pulls the hood up and pretends she's one of the lads from the estate, all droopy trousers and bravado, and giggles to herself as she walks. 

She’s still, mostly, a child.  She doesn’t hurry.  She wanders and looks in windows and makes up stories about the people behind them; but her musings are interrupted by the crash of glass, a straggle of drunken laughter.  She looks up; the moon’s lost its yellow.  Suddenly it’s a bone-white eye.  

She starts to walk faster. 

Red isn't very interested in cars, and doesn't notice the sleek black late-model Jag cruising like a shark; even when it comes past her the second time.  Slower.   

The streets are almost empty.  The car stops.  The window slides down, electrically silent.  

"Excuse me?" The voice is smooth.  "I'm looking for Laburnum Drive."

If she'd been watching, she would know the car has already been down Laburnum Drive; it turned out of it, just now. 

She pulls her hood further down, her voice comes out gruff.  "I don't know."

"I've got a map here...perhaps you could show me?  Come on, you can't see it from over there."  A pause.  "I'll give you some money, if you like...for your trouble." 

She shouldn't get too close.  But by the time she realises she shouldn't, it's already too late.

***

Nan's bungalow sits with three others at the far end of the estate; a last decrepit clutch at suburban respectability before the motorway.  Her garden is overgrown.  In the morning light, the girl's mother pushes frantically through the nettles, ignoring the stings.  "Nan!"  She hammers on the door.  "Nan!"

Eventually, slowly, it opens.  The old woman looks out, blinking.  "Oh, hello, dear."

"Where is she?"

"Inside.  She’s…” 

But the woman shoves past her, into the house, and sees Red curled in the old chair, tugging idly at the buckle of a studded dog-collar attached to a thick, heavy chain.

"What happened?  I phoned and phoned..."

"I'm sorry, Mum."

There is a streak of darkness on Red’s jacket; her face has changed, suddenly older, as though years happened to her last night.   Or centuries.  She is remarkably calm. 

"Honestly," the old woman says.  "Sending her out on full moon, and her all of twelve!  You should have known."  

"Who was it?"  Red’s mother says.

"Some perv.  Don't worry.”

“Don’t worry?  What do you mean don’t worry?”

“We disposed of it.  I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing a long time, dear.”

Nan grins.  Her teeth are long, and white, and sharp.  “If you’d been one of us, we’d have saved you a leg.” 

Warning: This story contains rude words.

It was hand-written at the Friday Flash Fictioneers' workshop at Eastercon. I then promptly lost it. I've rewritten it from memory and polished it up a bit.

I find with flash that I'm more willing to dive in and see where the story takes me, and trust that my brain knows it's got 1000 words (or fewer) to pull something into shape. With this one I also managed to get a terrible joke into the title, which always makes me happy.

A Stupid Place to (Jurassic) Park (656 words)

“What kind of arse-brained idiot parks a steg next to a T. rex?”

“Maybe they just popped in for some milk or something,” says Alison.

“Look at this shit-awful mess! I hope their insurance covers this.” I wave at where the stegosaurus is placidly chewing the cud and still swinging its club-ended tail, scattering a few drops of blood. Rover’s snapped chain and the stamped-flat scrubby carpark bushes were no doubt just the first steps on a trail of destruction.

“Oh dear. You can’t blame the steg for defending itself. Our boy’s had a go again,” says Alison. “We really need to put a stop to that.”

Alison just doesn’t get it. If I left it up to her, we’d be plodding around on a triceratops.  Safe, solid, oh so slow. Give me a carnivore every time.

“It’s in his nature,” I say. “He’d be fine if some cock-knocking moron didn’t park a stupid herbivore next to him. And now I’ll have to try and catch him.”

“Have you got any spare Trexie treats?”

“Of course I’ve got spare Trexie treats. I’m not the cock-knocking moron. But the spare Trexie treats are where they always are. In the glove compartment, strapped to Rover’s back. For crying out loud Alison!”

“Sherbet lemon?” She pops open the bag and holds it out to me. “If you’re going to work yourself up into one of your rages, you’ll need the sugar.”

“I don’t want a fucking sherbet lemon! Do you hear that? That din is Rover rampaging down the High Street, destroying our credit card balance. Come on!”

I sprint off, glancing back to see Alison sauntering behind me, sucking ruminatively on a sweet. As I scramble round the corner, I tot up the damage in my head. Broken glass, flattened bins, scattered brooms and buckets, a butcher waving a gnawed haunch of something at me.  “Shut your door next time,” I shout as I sprint past.

I teeter at a road junction and look around. For fuck’s sake! There’s Alison down the street outside a shop, standing in a plastic avalanche of laundry baskets, exercise balls, storage boxes. She’s handing some cash over. I can’t believe she’s actually shopping! That woman just does not understand the concept of immediate action.

Looking the other way, I see Rover bounding down the street and I take off after him, full tilt. He skids to a halt at the mall doors, scrabbles round, tail windmilling madly, then charges back past me. I spin on my heel, flailing my arms for balance, and follow. Alison waves as I run past. She waves again as we repeat the maneouvre at the other end of the street. Rover’s tail is bouncing half-time now. He’s a hunter, a sprinter, not an all-day plodder like the pathetic herbis. The third time we pass Alison, Rover’s breath huffs out in hot gales. He staggers to the end of the road and flops, sides heaving. I lean on an unbroken lamp post, red-faced and gasping.

There is the spanging sound of over-inflated plastic smacking off pavement. Alison wanders up the street, bouncing her just-bought exercise ball. Rover’s head snaps up and he clambers to his feet.

“Good boy,” said Alison. “Who’s got a new toy then?” Rover tilts his head and trots towards her. “Let’s go home and you can play with your new toy. Come on, it’ll be nice.” Our T. rex follows Alison, placidly as you like, tail waving happily.

“Are you alright?” she asks me.

“I’m worn out. You could have helped.”

“Sorry,” says Alison. “You know I’m not as quick as you. Let’s go home and I’ll make you a big steak dinner. Come on, it’ll be nice.” She smiles her wide sunny smile.

And I smile back, secretly pleased. Of course I’m the cleverest, but it’s nice to have it acknowledged once in a while.

An Experiment (539 words)

The question before us, ladies and gentlemen, is: how much can the subject  take?  

Red and pink.  The colour of valentines, love-hearts, babies’ skin and little girls’ bedrooms.  The colour of blood and peeled nerves, sizzling in the raw air.

Earlier experiment has shown that this amount of trauma applied at once tends to result in massive shock and almost immediate termination.  As you will notice, gradually increasing the amount of trauma over a period of time permits the system to adjust.  Some nerves are destroyed.  Scar tissue is formed.  Note that the scarred areas lose their sensitivity not only to pain-stimuli, but to pleasure.  Note the lighter, rose-pink colouration of these areas. 

Increase the nutrients, please.  We do want to keep this going as long as possible.

Love hearts, lace, valentines.  You can’t love scar tissue, and scar tissue can’t love.  Yet who would want to go on feeling?  Surely, in the end, you must become numb.  

But what if that isn’t true? Sometimes you can’t stop feeling, even if you long to.  Even if that’s your greatest desire.  Instead, sometimes, perhaps what you feel…changes.  It mutates like a virus.  If you can’t find love in a laboratory, an end, a cessation, seems all that’s left to aim for.  But after enough of the essential nerves have been severed, enough scar tissue has formed, the desire for oblivion can transmute into - something else.  

Please note that the pattern in which the stimuli are applied is almost as significant as the intensity. If this is done correctly, the survival period can be extended far beyond what was originally considered possible.  The subject’s system continues to adapt. What one might term ‘the survivable level of trauma’ becomes greater than was originally considered possible.

We have experimented on a great many subjects in order to gather this information, but there is still more information to be gathered.  The question remains, ladies and gentlemen.  How much can the subject take?  At what point does survival become pointless?  At what point does the system simply give up? 

Old habits die hard and almost invisibly, draining away, leaving a hollow place.  What fills it?  The last fragments of the old self are seared away. Heat cauterises. Once you’ve learnt to take enough pain, perhaps you can learn to take…everything.  

The subject’s responses have altered.  This is interesting.  Note the increase in adrenalin levels, the bunched muscles.  I do believe our subject would be baring its teeth, if it still had lips. We have of course seen this before, if you look at your notes.  There is sometimes this last-minute surge of physiological activity before the inevitable end.   Gather round a little closer, please....  

It’s been a long time since I had vocal chords.  Now…I scream, not with the throat but with the entire body.  To feel stripped muscles snap their chains is like exploding into a new universe, like becoming another order of being.  I am transmuted, translated.  

There is nothing left of what I was. 

It doesn’t matter if the figure on the table was one of those that originally strapped me down.  All hands are shaped for scalpels, including mine.  The question remains, ladies and gentlemen...how much can the subject take?