Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 229

This week's photoprompt was taken by @dbereton on twitter. This was taken in a hotel in Hammersmith, London. 

I rather like it's dark foreboding feeling - lots of 'The Shining' feels. So with this one I went dark, and it's not for everyone, especially those with an arachnophobia. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Lucid Screaming

She was here again, in the hotel corridor with all the doors. This time in black and white, that was new. Theresa sighed. Now what?

She’d tried all different ways to get out of this recurring dream – waking was the most elusive. She knew the exit signs to the stairs would only lead to other corridors and not out, which meant she had to open the doors. And they would open, but the question was to what?

She shuddered. They’d lead to scenes of carnage: bloody car accidents, gory train wrecks, trapped in burning buildings, lost or drowning in the sea, and once there was even a maniac with a chainsaw. The mind knew no bounds where her fears were concerned. She didn’t want to open them, but she had no choice if she wanted this dream to end. So here she was, lucid dreaming without the option of deciding what would happen next.

Theresa moved to the first door on the left and turned the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Okay, that was new too. She move to the other side and tried the one there, the same thing.

She frowned. Maybe the exit door would lead to somewhere else in this dream. But when she opened it, she found an identical corridor, also in black and white. Okay, not then.

She moved on down the corridor checking the doors and still nothing opened. The distance ahead was the same as it had been at the beginning, as though she hadn’t travelled at all; the corridor was infinite.

Then there was a sound. She stopped and stood in the middle of the corridor, listening.

It was like rushing air of some sort. Had the air conditioning units in the hotel come on? She couldn’t feel a breeze. Was it blowing a gale outside – if there was an outside? She couldn’t work it out. And then there was another sound under it, a strange scratching sound that increased in volume.

Theresa stood frozen to the spot, her mind filling up with potential scenarios of what that could be, what was coming along the corridor – because something was coming, she was sure of it.

As the sound escalated so did her fear; her chest tightened and her breathing became shallow. She whipped her head back and forth between the identical views ahead and behind. Which way was it coming?

She saw movement at the corner of her eye as she was moving her head to look behind her. It was in front of her. But when she turned back she couldn’t see anything … or could she?

There was something on the wall; something darker than the wall; something crawling. But was it one thing?

No, no it wasn’t. It was hundreds of little things.

She stared at the mass as it moved along the walls on both sides of the corridor coming towards her. She still couldn’t make out what it was; it had grown and the density of whatever it was made it look black. Were they spiders? Ants? Beetles?

The sound increased with their appearance, and it wasn’t just their scurrying that was making the noise; they were making some kind of chittering sound. What the hell were they?

But Theresa’s body refused to hang around to find out. She took a step back and then another, and then blind panic took over, and she turned and fled.

But the corridor behind was the same as the one in front; it didn’t matter how far she ran there was still more of it. And whatever the swarm was it had picked up speed as well, because it was just on the edge of her peripheral vision keeping pace with her.

It was going to catch her, overwhelm her; do whatever it wanted to do to her. She had no choice, not in this corridor.

She could feel them at her heels.

She could even feel them on her skin.

She was running out of breath; she was running out of strength. She wasn’t going to win this one.

She opened her mouth to scream, but they were there, filling it.

Theresa sat bold upright in her bed, clawing at her throat, her scream turning to a cough, and a big fat spider that had crawled into her mouth while she slept, shot out onto the duvet in front of her and scurried away.    

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 228

This week's picture prompt is by photographer Kari Liimatainen from Finland. He has some wonderful landscape pictures, worth a look at his galley on DeviantArt. 

I could see him looking through the branches. But who was he, and what was he looking at?

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Capture

He’d sit here and wait, and then when they came out he’d have his fun. It was the best bit; the waiting and the anticipation.

The forest was muffled under snow, and little moved in the freezing hour before dawn, but Puck was here, eyes keen and watchful. He wouldn’t miss a trick.

The lake was all aglow and so were his eyes as the sun crested the horizon. Oh the glory, oh the delight. He was such a lucky Puck.

He saw them on the edge of the bank, appearing out of the water. They were tiny and delicate and oh how he wanted one. But they weren’t to be had; they weren’t to be owned. There were strict rules he had to adhere to – imps like him couldn’t get away with it. He might be named after the most famous fae, but he was a lowly dark half-fairy. These water sprites were elegant and fragile, and not for the likes of him.

No, the best he would get is this, peeking at them from the other side of the water, remaining hidden, and startling them a little to capture some of their essence to trade.

Water sprites held a lot of power, which is why catching them had been banned. It could lead to abusing and enslaving them and that wasn’t something the enchanted community would tolerate – unless you were one of the privileged few who could pretend it was consensual. But if they gave away a bit of their power, intentionally or accidentally, then that was allowed.

Puck shifted a little in his position and prepared to shake the branches above him. It might not seem like much but it would be enough to spark their fear, which would release electric shocks into the air. He was a nimble Puck and could easily catch them.

When it looked like the group had all emerged from the water and were basking in the morning sunshine on the snowy banks, Puck raised his arm up to the branch overhead, and with a sudden movement swiped it with his hand, causing it to snap out and back, sending showers of snow to the ground.

It worked. The sprites leapt to their feet, letting out tiny bolts of what looked like lightning into the air, across the lake to the object of their startlement and where Puck was sitting. He swiftly reached out with a bottle he’d brought in preparation and swept it through the air to catch them. It filled up fast, and he stoppered it quickly, not wanting any to escape.

Oh he was going to be a rich Puck for a while now too. But as he watched them return to the water, a darker shadow appeared in their wake and moved in his direction. He squealed. Puck knew what that was; you couldn’t get up to tricks and not know the consequences. Guarding demon spirits were in the employ of water sprites. They could take you over and cause you to lose yourself for several days. Puck didn’t want to suffer that, oh no.

He scrambled back up the riverbank and over the top rushing into the woods for protection. He shimmered up the nearest trunk and waited. The shadow appeared below circling round the trunks, but it hadn’t seen which one he’d picked. Oh thank Aine for its oblivion. The only problem now was how long it would stay down there. Puck settled into the nook of a branch. It might be hours but now he had his treasure, he could spare the time.  

Review: Paths Best Left Untrodden, Kev Harrison

Paths Best Left Untrodden: Thirteen tales of horror fiction by Kev Harrison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was such a great read. Not only was the writing good and well edited, the stories really left their mark. It's hard to pick a favourite, because I loved them all. A few really stood out though.

Big Game was a great opener. I could imagine this happening in real life - if it doesn't already in some dark corner of the world somewhere.

Special Order was both amusing and dark. It definitely was a good sci-fi horror cross over.

No Such Thing As A Free Lunch is another disturbing one, because it leaves you wondering if it could actually happen.

That's just three out of the thirteen to enjoy. If you like horror, this is definitely worth your time.

View all my reviews

Cover Reveal & Release Date Announcement - Dead Lake, Tricky's Tales Book 1

I am finally here to announce the release date for the first book about my character Tricky, who has been appearing on my blog in my Mid-Week Flash fiction challenge entries for three years now!
(her first story was back on Week 77) 

Not all of her stories appear in the series. I have often used the opportunity to explore the world and characters, and taken ideas or themes from them. You can find a catalogue of all her tales here, if you fancy reading them and getting a taster for the story. 

The release date will be: 26th December 2021

The book is available for pre-order, so get your copy now at a reduced price. 

Damn and blast! That rancid piece of excrement, Carter, has had her ransacked out of Clancy!

Tricky returns to her cottage to find it turned upside down. An action that means she’s got three days to leave the district or face punishment. Randolf Carter, head of the district, is spreading lies and suspicion about her kind, making life difficult. But it wasn’t just an ordinary ransacking – they were searching for something.

Using her gifts, Tricky traces the energy left by the men and spies another creature’s energy among it: a jackdaw. Swift and wily, it’s pinched her precious gemstone, a piece of black obsidian. But at whose bidding? Communicating with birds is a rare ability and she knows all who possess it.

Tricky wants her stone back, but coming up against people like Carter won’t be easy, especially when he’s got one of her kind in his employ. But she’ll handle it, oh yes she will. She'll just have to be careful and a little bit tricky. Good thing she is then, isn’t it?

Adept at working with energy and time as well as communicating with trees, Tricky is lured into something bigger than ownership of a gemstone, and finds out that sometimes it pays to be a little bit tricky.

 

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 227

This week's picture prompt is from artist and underwater photographer Elena Kalis. Based in the Bahamas Elena has some incredible images and attained global success in her field. 

Another dabble into Tricky's world to see where it ends up.  (Last Tricky Tale was on Week 222)

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Play Dead

Tricky was thankful her mother had taught her how to swim. She’d struggle otherwise. She’d been wise enough to take in a deep breath when they’d chucked her overboard, and swum down as far as she could despite her tied hands.

She felt the riverbed under her feet and pushed herself away in a horizontal line under the water, getting as far from the boat as she could. She hoped they’d think she’d drowned.

The River Red was wide, so it was going to be a struggle to get to the side without coming up for another breath, but she kept going as long as she could. Then turned over on her back and floated up slowly, letting her face and mouth break the water just enough so she could exhale and take in another breath.

She daren’t look back. They were nasty pigs onboard, cut you up as soon as look at you. Tricky knew their sort, and under Stanislav’s vicious hand they’d been given free rein to abuse the people in their charge. It mattered little to them; you were just a piece of meat for them to try out their sick perversions. Even in the water Tricky could still feel all the sore spots where they’d attempted to extract information they’d wanted. She’d given them nothing.

But one thing was for sure, they’d still be looking out for her body to appear. Stanislav wasn’t stupid – at least not that way. He knew their ilk better ... in fact she wasn’t even sure he wasn’t one of them. He knew more than any non-gifted person should, and things that weren’t in any book or learnt in any classroom.

It wasn’t like Tricky to be unnerved, but he’d achieved it. He’d even managed to scare her, which since her mother’s death she hadn’t thought possible – despite all they’d put her through.

The water grew darker ahead and she was confident she would see the side of the river soon. She hoped to come out under the shelter of some trees, even draw some energy from them, because she couldn’t pull herself out of the water just yet – oh no, she would be trickier than that. She wasn’t going to let those slimy rancid slugs spot her again, no definitely not. They were never going to get their filthy hog paws on her again. Next time they saw her it would be their death, oh yes.

When the muddy wall of the river appeared in front of her, she drifted up as close to the side as possible, her fingers touching the soil wall, and tilted her head back so her face broke the water surface. She blinked, trying not to sputter or make any sound, and looked up into the leaves of an overhanging willow. Wonderful.

She reached out and sent her energy reserves and felt them met with the deep green energy all trees possessed. She felt immediately refreshed.

But rather than come further out, she took another breath and went back down, underwater until her feet were on the bottom and put her hands out against the riverbank. She breathed out hard, humming as she did, the sound filling her head, and a pocket of air opened up.

She watched the water part and shimmer as the air pushed it out. Her floating underskirt and camisole top dropped and stuck against her it moved round her, and she opened her mouth to breathe, taking in big gasps as she relaxed.

Some people would think she had been able to part water, but really all she had done was create a time bubble. The tiny bit of river bed she was standing in was not actually here, but in another time and place.

She considered opening it out further and travelling through it away from the river, but she wasn’t sure where she might end up. It was always a nice idea travelling through pockets of time, but you could come out on the other side of the landmass even though you might have only travelled a few feet. Time was tricky like that. It’s what gave her an affinity for it. She liked tricky, she understood tricky.

And not just that, she didn’t trust Stanislav not to anticipate such a move. She’d found she wasn’t the only one adept at manipulating time. Where had he learnt that skill? Who had trained him and honed it? Someone must have. She’d seen his ability wasn’t natural like hers; he needed tools to achieve the same effects. But the only other person that knew as much had been her mother. Or was there someone else, someone unseen?

She sat on the floor of her time bubble and pondered such things. She had plenty of time to do that, oh yes she did. She chuckled, time was never hard to come by for her, oh no. She’d sit here and wait out those dumb meat heads and play dead.     

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 226

This week's picture prompt is from Italian photographer Sergio Pessolano. This is a salt flat in Bolvia - Salar de Uyuni. Sergio calls this 'Just Salt'. He also suggests that the viewer scroll up and down fast. You should see light/shadow changing, depending on the gamma value of your monitor. 

Just a glimpse of what I saw when I looked at this picture. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Hallowed Ground

It was in sight at last. He didn’t know how many weeks he had been staggering toward this, but Logan struggled to believe it. He knew what a mirage was; he’d had plenty of them on this journey, yet it was still there.

He tripped over the edge of one of the strange raised pentagons that the salt had shaped into, and fell to his knees. He was grateful for his long trousers, although the knees were thin after the times he’d only had the strength to crawl.

He’d come close to death from dehydration so many times, but fortunately the skies had opened and rain had fallen, and he was able to catch enough to carry on.

He didn’t want to think about where he had come from, he only wanted to think about the future. The pain and captivity were over and that was all that mattered.

He swiped his hand through the air in front of him. The image of the mountains in the distance didn’t waver or change in any way, unlike a mirage. A spark of hope lifted inside him.

He got back up to standing and allowed himself to take a single drop of the rain water he had collected two days ago, and continued with his stagger.

Thoughts of seeing people again entered his head. What would he look like to them? Had the wounds on his face from the continual beatings during his imprisonment healed, or would they still be visible? What would they think of him? Would he be considered weak for having been caught in the first place, or praised for escaping? Few escaped and even less made it across the salt desert.

For a second Logan was filled with terror. What if they took him back? What if they felt he didn’t deserve freedom? What if they returned him?

But his mind at least gave him a reprieve from those thoughts; he knew that escapees were never sent back and that they were hailed as survivors, his own uncle had been one. Maybe it was in the genes.

His mind continued to ponder all the notions and he let it run like credits at the end of a film, watching his feet as he continued to move forward. When he lifted his head again the mountains had grown and he could see details. This was no mirage. He was almost home.

The way the clouds covered the sky above and the sun sat behind the mountains, it gave them a halo as though he was headed for hallowed ground – which to Logan he was.

For over four years he had been trapped and confined in that hell hole, and despite the initial excitement of freedom and space, the salt desert had become its own prison. Empty of life and hope with no sense of place or direction, if it hadn’t been for the sun Logan would have been lost or dead. And now with it there, lighting up his destination, actual liberation was within his grasp.

For the first time since he’d broken out, the surface beneath his feet began to change. The pentagon pattern was beginning to disappear as yellow sand and grit replaced it. Soon he could feel hard stone under his shoeless toes. He would reach the town soon. He increased into a staggering lope.

Lights in the distance came into view and increased the closer he came. The land opened out and cultivated swathes of earth appeared between the rocks. He could smell the sweet smell of desert dried foliage in the air.

Tears came to his eyes as he walked, he couldn’t help it, he was beyond thankful he could behold life again, instead of a cell wall. He had dreamed of this moment.

He started to see people farming the land. A few looked up and then he saw people running towards him, calling to others for help. As they reached him the last of his strength gave out and he collapsed into the arms. Safe at last.

Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 225

This week's picture prompt was created by Australian artist Cameron Gray, known as Parablev on DeviantArt He calls it Cage. He has some incredible creations. I really love his art. Worth a look. 

This week it went a bit dark. Not what I had initally intended, but still like it. 

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here. 

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.

Test Subject

Dr Hayden chiselled round the face. It was messy work, but she managed to pry it off. She knew the top of the head came off easily, but she was surprised the face did too. There was blood everywhere and the flesh underneath was deeper than expected.

She stuck her fingers in and rooted around. Yep, there it was. She could feel the hard nub at the back of the third eye. She got her fingers under it and pulled it out, holding the blinking purple light up to inspect it, some sinews still dripping off.

It seemed intact and was still working so what had gone wrong?

She dug around further, going in around the brain which had gone mushy. All the wires were where they should be, and there was no evidence of a short circuit. So what had happened?

There’d never been a case of such a psychosis; all were stable and never questioned themselves like this one had. Self-esteem had never been questioned before and certainly none had displayed paranoid delusions that they turned on themselves.

The entire point of the third eye neural transmitter had been to help individuals remain open and to have a healthy perspective. It kept them looking forward and not back, out instead of in. It had been one of the most successful resolutions to the mental health problems over the last century. It had even become standard practice to have one implanted once adulthood was reached. Those that chose not to were considered feral.

So why now, after all these decades had this one malfunctioned?

Dr Hayden took the transmitter over to the counter. She washed it off and inspected the outside of it. There was no evidence of any kind of tampering, and with its position behind the skull it was well protected. She opened it up and found nothing out of the ordinary inside either. It was a complete puzzle.

She took out the patient’s paper file and leafed through. There had been no accidents in their thirty-two years – they’d actually had an exemplary medical record. But something struck her; when the patient reached her thirties there had been repeating visits to their doctor.

She went over to the computer and put in the patient’s details. The name of the doctor appeared. Hayden covered her mouth as she read the name of one of her former colleagues. He’d been relieved of his position at their lab because of his unethical ideas about patient care. He believed the transmitters were a manipulation tool to keep people passive, and wanted to see if they could be removed.

She quickly brought up the specifics of the visits. He’d been giving her medication, a wide variety of them including hormonal replacement therapies and heavy duty stimulants. They were virtually unheard of now. Only those without the transmitters were given them and then at a high cost. Why had he been giving them to this patient? She had no requirement for them. Her initial visit to him had been for a simple bacterial infection.

But then she noticed the note under the initial visit: ‘test subject for hormonal activation of transmitter’. He’d wanted to see if it could be triggered.

And it had; an early death by turning the brain to pulp. But had it been the transmitter or the drugs? That would be the next investigation, after she had made a call to the authorities to report the murder.