Lux - Flash Fiction

I have been exposed to the light just the once. The occasion of the expulsion of my birth. Tumbling from the primordial interstitial paradise, into a searing light that sundered the milky membranous veil from my eyes. Reflexively I averted my head and pressed it into the cold breast of my mother who had expired from the moil of evacuating me. Burying my face into her clabbered flesh blotted out the punishing light and stopped up my incipient breath. These twin inundations red-illuminated the arteries behind my own eyes and caused shooting spangles of stars. Another tunnel of light opened up before me, its adit beckoning me into its maw. Light beyond and light within. Fortunately I blacked out until the siege of me was somehow lifted by the midwives.

Since then I have only ever shunned the light. Reverse heliotrope. Abetted by the pollution in the air that strains the sunlight and turns it caliginous. Some say such fetid air reeked of brimstone, but such a notion struck me as fanciful though it enfettered me in my daily wake. Abroad at night, the reflected and depleted light of the moon pierced me no threat. While the spill of the gaseous orange glow of the street lamps served to smear and blanch the twinkling of the stars. I just had to ensure I kept my head down so as not to stare into the coronas generated by the bulbs. I had my catapult in my pocket were any street lamp to shine too brightly, but even that I knew was a harbinger of its imminent death as the filament teetered on the point of burning itself out. Light does that, it consumes itself bloodily.

So I inhabit the shadows and the gloom. I bask in the Cimmerian. It puts me proximate with other tenebrous brokers and stewards of the night. These creatures with reptilian eyes. Yet when they look into mine unshrouded by any lids, they misconstrue my gaze as unflinching and steadfastly abysmal. A trick of the, well light. Or lack of it. But the opacity of my gaze is sufficiently indurate for them to pledge me adamantine fealty. 

Nevertheless I am not one of their cohort. I promise them nothing, reward them less. Still they seek my sanction for their wicked acts. They propitiate what they imagine must be my appetite for blood. They see me vampire, when in fact I am more humble angel. 

Nor can I abide the fires they light to warm themselves, for there coruscates an accelerated energy giving rise to sharp stabs of light. Fulgurant embers rise into the air as an unsympathetic echo of the spangles which stamped my newborn vision. So when I am accused of presiding over a realm of persecutory flames, I shrug my wings in refutation. They dub me "Lucifer", the son of dawn, bringer of light. Have they failed to notice that I am usually long-gone before Helios has mounted his chariot? 

Cop Aesthetic - Sunday Sample Flash Story

I hated petting zoos. All that callow vulnerability on display. Both animal and human. Innocence for innocents. Lambs and calves eating out of children’s hands. A rathe tender connection that soon evaporates when their cousins are sent to the abattoir on our behalves and our kids fail to make the connection. Not that I care much for animal rights. Not compared to those human ones flouted in lethal fashion I have to deal with.

I managed to prevail upon my wife to undertake today’s roster of artless bonding. Thus releasing me to go wandering the zoo’s grounds for more copacetic fauna. The raptors. Those in whose company I felt more at home. Or more compatible with my work life perhaps. I brought my work home every evening, so why not bring it to the zoo in my family leisure time as well?

I’d done the sharks, alligators, big cats and anacondas. Each desultorily nudging silver-serviced prey with their spotless maws. Predators on Easy Street had failed to sate my own hunger. The jackals were out of commission due to a virus running amok in their enclosure. I came upon a new beast. Not predator exactly, more scavenger, but I was still drawn to its pen.

The creature was pressed up against the mesh fencing. Its hooked beak protruding through the grille. I sunk to my haunches so that I was at the same level as the vulture. Lammergeier or Gypaetus barbatus as the little information plaque sunk into the ground informed me. A quick glance downward and I saw the area of the globe the bird hailed from. It was indeed a long way from home.

All I knew about vultures was that they were Nature’s table cleaners. They took care of corruption in the animal kingdom, happily devouring the rotten carrion left by other carnivores. Yeah I could relate. Oh and that they circled on wind thermals so that they barely had to expend any energy flapping their wings in order to fly. They were like gliders. But this poor specimen had no such luxury in its confinement. But there again it was hardly unique in that. The zoo was full of caged tigers and birds with wings clipped by the walls of their aviaries. Goodness, the reptiles were entirely animated by human control of the temperature gauge. If there was a need to clean out their case, down went the pointer of the Fahrenheit dial and the snakes were frozen into immobility. Imagine having that level of power over another person’s life? I don’t have to imagine. I’ve seen it not even at one remove, sat across a table from me.

I caught the bird staring at me. I mean that was what it was actually doing, fixing me in its beady gaze. I don’t think I was imagining that, or attributing it a human slant on an action that otherwise wasn’t there. It never blinked nor averted its gaze. The beak never moved a fraction from the centre of the mesh square it pierced. Seems like we were playing statues. Okay, that is anthropormorphising the situation. Was it sizing me up, or more likely as I wasn’t moving was it computing whether I was dead and ripe for trespass by its beak? I made sure I moved to let it know I was still pulsing with living blood.

I regathered holding the bird’s steely gaze. Its irises were black obsidian pools. I couldn’t determine whether there was any depth behind them or that it was all just surface. They were too opaque to afford any reflection of me within them. Could it see its own shrunken reflection held within mine? Damn beast was unnerving me. I couldn’t read it at all. Nor could I drop my gaze from that of the bird’s. I was only wrenched away from the staring match when my daughter came beetling up to me and flung her arms around my waist. The sudden shock of it was rapidly followed by my brain factoring the smallness of the touch as inevitably being that of a child and ameliorating any alarm. The bird signalled the cessation of our mute conference by extending its wings and waving me away. I’d say dismissively, only of course the bird could make no such reckoning.

*

The man sat across the table from me. He was handcuffed to one of its legs, but even with that precaution there were two burly officers stationed at either of my shoulders. Of course such was this man’s proclivity for violence, there was no certainty that he would make any such calculation of the odds for three against one. Or if he did, perhaps he didn’t see it as disadvantageous to him.

He wasn’t answering any of my questions about the litany of murders he’d perpetrated. It wasn’t clear if he was hearing them, if he even registered my voice at all. In many ways it didn’t matter, since we had a catalogue of evidence pinning him to his crimes. But we are always after gleaning some insight. 

His eyes were aligned with mine, but they weren’t holding them in his gaze. His irises were black obsidian pools. I couldn’t determine whether there was any depth behind them or that it was all just surface. They were too opaque to afford any reflection of me within them. The flesh eater was just as damn unreadable as the vulture.

from the flash fiction collection "28 Far Cries" available from Amazon in both print an e-book

The Caller To The Bingo Caller's House Calls 'House'

Time For Fun, 41 - There are 41 paving stones from your gate to the front door

Key of the Door, 21 - Your wallet has a combined total of twenty-one credit, debit and identity cards

Clickety-Click, 66 - As usual, there will be a total of 66 prizes given out by you down at the bingo tonight. Everyone's a winner, of sorts

Gateway to Heaven, 27 - Twenty-seven stairs up to the bedroom

Dancing Queen, 17 - The seventeenth step is loose and groans, so take pains to avoid it

One More Time, 79 - There are seventy-nine books in your bookshelf on the landing

Naughty, 40 - All your lightbulbs are 40 Watt energy savers

Knock at the Door, 4 - In her sleep, your wife snores four times before a whistle

Pick and Mix, 26 - The bedroom door is twenty-six inches wide, I have to turn side on to squeeze in through it

Ghandi's Breakfast, 80 - Your wife has eighty, yes eighty count 'em, dresses in the wardrobe

Coming of Age, 18 - She has eighteen different beauty creams, ointments and salves on her bedside table

The Lord is my Shepherd, 23 - William Burroughs and other occultists attribute strong magic significance behind this number. It happens to be my lucky one

Up to Tricks, 46 - There is forty-six minutes until the last game and the end of your shift

You and Me, number 3 - Your wife sleeps propped up on three pillows, one fringed

On it's Own, 1 - Now that I'm here, she can no longer be said to be all alone

Dirty Gertie, Number 30 - We all know your wife isn't called Gertie

Candy Store, 74 - She ain't called Candy either, she's not American

Rise And Shine, 29

Thee and Me, 23

Down on your Knees, 43

Droopy Drawers, 44

Ask for More, 34

Red Raw, 64

Staying Alive, 85

Get up and Run, 31

House!

Eyes down...

Clean the Floor, 54...

* * *

Okay, your wish is my control C button - here's a podcast version you can ddownload http://www.box.net/shared/ddc6ec6u0q

Rejection Letters (Flash Fiction)

Indelible red digits reached out to claw at his eyes. He shook the gauzy haze from them, to better confront that which he sought. The LED display blinked and then devoured the custodian numbers. A Cerberus of three zeroes licked themselves over with gleeful satisfaction. Midnight. No longer a mere immanence. The witching hour's scythe had transcribed its arc once again.

They were all at large tonight. Vampires, werewolves, ghouls and zombies. Nightmare afflatus, borne upon the keening wind stalking his eaves. Or perhaps it was the cunning legion of undead who had summoned up the wind from hell. In order to cushion the howls of their predatory approach. Wolfsbane, garlic, silver and icons. All were at their appointed stations up and down his house this night.

He gazed up at the moon. Dead satellite to us, yet war standard and pendulum pacemaker to the heartless host yonder. Strange how we look to it for our dreams. Yet it can only ever time us out. Send us scuttling like rats back to our cloistered redoubts. Making each of us in our isolation feel like we are the last mortal on earth. At least for as long as we wrestle with loquacious phantasms in our visions, while the outside world is given over to these wordless fiends. The host forms a corps of sorts, in that they occupy swathes of land. But what could be more illogical than to hold that they follow rules or maintain discipline? They are singular silent assassins, feeding on gutted human husks. Else they starve for nourishment, yet still uncomplaining in their taciturnity.

With only the fragile vinculum of fibre optics now linking him to the rest of humanity, he turned back to address his computer keyboard. He padded the dabs of his fingers against his words hanging in the plasmatic blue void of the monitor. Unloved words. Unheeded words that elicited no response from the destination of beyond. The plasma receded from his touch. Bucking and warping, spiralling his words away and out of his grasp. He jerked his fingers away but the plasmatic sluice remained in place. Siphoning the rest of his word trail along after their predecessors. Lost to the world now. The wind piped a particularly goading lament. He peered in towards the hole in the screen. The plasma appeared to have spun some virtual cobwebs where its surface twisted inwards. Mocking the self-repair of clotting human skin. Suddenly he lurched back, as the hole disgorged a vermillion sputum back in his direction. It appeared to be his own letters. Ripped from their original orderings. Smeared in blood red coagulate. Even the ether could not stand to have his words in its midsts.

The bloodsuckers had claimed his soul after all. They were communicating with him in kind.