#FridayFlash - Name Day

Just a short one for this week. This one's a drabble, which is a special kind of flash fiction that's exactly 100 words in length.They present an even more unique challenge than a regular piece of flash does, so I try to write one every now and then :o)

Reebok Jones bit his lip as he read through the list of offers sitting on his table.  Tomorrow would be his twentieth birthday.  Usually this was an awkward one, lacking the pomp of the rites of passage associated with nineteenth or twenty-first birthdays.  For him, though, it was big - the naming rights lease his parents had signed was set to expire.  He would no longer be Reebok Jones, and would be, for the first time, able to choose his own name.  He had no idea what brand he wanted to represent next.  Who did he want to be?


Note: this story, along with others, appears in the collection All Our Tomorrows.

Three Word Wednesday

This week's words: render, impact, and eject. Hope you enjoy what I came up with!

The reporter ejects the cassette; I’m rendered speechless by it.

“What do you want?” I ask, eventually. “Money? I don’t have much…”

“You accept it that easily?” he asks, surprised. “No attempted denial? I know he betrayed you, but the Senator must be worse than I’d thought.”

“I know there’s no point in denial,” I say.

“You know the impact this will have,” he says with a smirk. “What I want is to see your reaction. Do you destroy the cassette and protect your friend, or do you publish it and get back at him?”

He hands me the cassette.

Friday Flash!

This was originally just going to be a #vss, and then it grew to a drabble. It could probably grow further, as well, but I decided to put a cap on it! I was going to post it on ficly, but since today is Friday, why not put it on here as a Friday Flash!

Trog dabbed the stick in the paint again, smearing it across the wall of the cave. He had no idea what this was meant to accomplish, or why he was painting a deer. They'd never seen deer near here.

The odd-smelling man in the strange animal skins had said it would be “a hilarious prank”; Trog didn't what that meant, nor kind of animal had originally worn the fancy silver skins the man wore. What did he know was that the man had given him enough meat and tools to feed the clan throughout winter, so he kept painting.

Three Word Wednesday

Yes, it's time for yet another round of Three Word Wednesday! This week's words: lie, adapt, glide. Lately it might seem like these are all I'm writing, because drabbles are all I've been posting here for the past while. I *do* have some other interesting projects on the go right now - just don't want to say too much about them before they're ready to be shared. You know how it is.


I watch dragonflies gliding over the swimming pool’s surface, their ebon bodies reflecting sunlight.
“You going to just lie in that hammock all day?” Susan asks, her words stabbing into the moment. “I mean, that’s what you did yesterday, and the day before. Would be nice if you did something with your life.” She didn’t wait to give me a chance to retort, and stormed back into the house.
We’ve got twenty million in a Swiss bank account, all we ever dreamed of, and she won’t let me relax my life away. Some people just don’t know how to adapt.

Three Word Wednesday

A new drabble for Three Word Wednesday. This week’s words were viable, mute, and gasp. I initially misread ‘gasp’ as ‘grasp’, which explains the end a little :o)

(note: this is not at all autobiographical)

When you’ve been trying to have a baby for a long time, you find yourself avoiding certain words in favour of others. So you don’t say “healthy” and you definitely don’t say “baby”; instead, you start to use words like “viable” and “fetus”. You don’t even say “fucking” or “lover” anymore; instead, you are “partners” “attempting to conceive”, like a pair of dancers attempting a plane landing. All that stops the first time your newborn gasps and grasps your finger. You stop caring about what you said, and what you didn’t say. You just let yourself fall, mutely, into infinity.

Three Word Wednesday - The Conqueror

This week's words: tranquil, fond, alter.  Visit http://www.threewordwednesday.com/ for more info on Three Word Wednesday

The Conqueror sighed as the tranquil air blew through his hair. When he reached these fields a generation ago, it was to raze them, as part of a prophecy that he would reshape reality in his image. He never suspected that it was he who would be altered; that he would grow as fond of this place of peace as he had been of destruction.



'Conqueror'. They still called him that. At first he thought they were mocking him, but with him he came to realize the truth. He share their sense of peace; he had conquered the fiercest dragon.

Three Word Wednesday

I knead the dough mercilessly, relentlessly.  Father said the work a man does with his hands is what cleanses his soul of sin.  I am generally inclined to disagree with the old man, but he knew his sins, so there must be something to that.

I work the dough until all my sins have passed into it.  Then I shape it into a loaf, placing it in the oven to bake.  Later, I melt some butter to make a glaze; later still I give it to my dinner guests.  They devour it, sin and all, with smiles on their faces.

Three Word Wednesday

And we're back!  Last week was one of those ones where I didn't really get anything done writing-wise, so I was glad to jump back into Three Word Wednesday this week.  This week's words were loud, persuasive, and riches.

John read the words out loud. They were difficult, and felt like they lacked the persuasive power that the words from the English school had.  He wished David were still here; David had always been better at pronouncing these words from Father's tongue.  John was alone, now, though – he had the riches of a thousand books but no one to speak to.  Everyone else who spoke his language was long dead, through wars and plague. He had to reteach himself the language. Learn it well enough to spread it to others. Then his family, his people, could live again.

Three Word Wednesday - The Yucatan Breeze

This week's words for Three Word Wednesday: Breeze, Tickle, Mellow.

Three Word Wednesday - The Haunting

 Another drabble for Three Word Wednesday this week!  This week's words: dainty, haunting, and tantalize.  I'm cheating a little by conjugating tantalize, and by using a different meaning for haunting than the one supplied in the prompt, but well, what can you do.

Lucia was frustrated. It'd been three months since the new owners moved in, and she thought she had been doing a good job of haunting them. The miss's dainty clothes were taken from her dresser and tossed around the bedroom; the mister heard her shocking screams whenever he went to the wine cellar. They were only tantalized by it all. “Oh, wait until the neighbours hear about this!” they cooed after every act. She didn't know if they would ever leave. And if they didn't, how would she be able to show her face at her next deathday party?

Three Word Wednesday!

This week I'm taking part  in 3 Word Wednesday!  The idea behind it is to take three words that you're assigned and work them into a piece of writing.  I buckled down and came up with this crime fiction drabble:



As the cops dragged me from the bank to the cruiser, they thought my silence was me exercising my rights. Instead I was thinking about how Benny got me into this mess.

“The way I figure it, you still owe me,” he had said with a smirk. “Plus, it's a juicy score.

He was right – I owed him. I had enough stress in my life without this asshole crawling back into it, though.

“I do this, we're even, right?” I asked.

“We go our separate ways,” he confirmed.

He forgot to mention my separate way was to a prison cell.

The Three Little Druids

 In my day gig I teach adults.  I was doing a reading with a student about stonehenge a little while ago and this popped into my head, fully formed.  (cross-posted to my ficly account)

There were once three little druids who set out to find their fortune by building henges. The first little druid made his henge out of straw. But then along came a big, bad dragon, who huffed, and puffed, and burned that little henge down! The second little druid made his henge out of wood. But along came that dragon again, and he huffed, and puffed, and burned that little henge down! The third little druid made his henge out of stone.  When the dragon came by, he huffed, and he puffed, but he just couldn't burn that little henge down!