flash fiction friday #82
flash fiction friday #82 trigger: pick a genre [afrofuturism/detective/horror/romance/noir/scifi/fantasy/speculative/etc.] and/or conceptual/structural trope [hero-journey/zombie-or-other-apocalypse/coming-of-age/etc.] that isn't your usual m.o. and make it yours.
rules of engagement:
you will send in your suggestions for flash fiction friday triggers (starter sentences/phrases, closers, titles, inclusions, structural/thematic challenges, etc.) anytime during the week up to 11.09a.m. friday, trinbago time; i will post the new fff trigger by noon friday trinbago time.*
if your trigger is not chosen and you think it is too brilliant not to be chosen, you will send it in again the next week.
you will write an anecdote, short story, song or novel length prose poem using the trigger provided.
you will add comments and appropriate linkage to this/my trigger-post indicating your desire to participate and the completion of your piece (don't need a blogger/gmail account to comment here).
you may join in at any time prior to deadline.*
you will display your piece as a post on your own blog (or as a comment on this/my trigger-post or fasbook note or instastory or whaever, once we can all read it; please make sure we can all access the link to read it, not just those who are your friends online).
you will be done by monday noon trinbago time.*
[in light of collective busyness and my general mentality, i not pressed about these deadlines 'cause i'd rather have fun reading late than never, so if you want to fff past deadline, go through hard, just make sure you comment on the appropriate trigger-post so we know which it belongs to, and if is a real old trigger, comment on the most recent post as well so we know something new to back-back+read...if nobody fffs i leave the same trigger up until at least 1person other than myself writes a piece]*
write fresh!
walk good.
posted by sweet trini @ 11:49 am
11 comments
11 Comments:
The blood on his fingers didn't bother him. Quite the opposite. It was a balm to his racing mind. Like coming home. It was warm and viscous and good. Like sucking on pennies that had been drizzled ever so slightly with honey he thought as he curled his tongue around each finger making sure to savor the taste. Each person had their own distinct flavor. Subtle but very telling. The untrained palette might miss it. No the blood on his fingers didn't bother him one bit. In his mouth, on his face, dripping down his neck. It was why he did what he did. It wasn't the killing that he craved it was the near-spiritual feel of that first spray of warm blood across his body. Every spray like electricity tearing across his skin. It always amazed him just how much blood a body held and how the heart would keep pushing it out. Torturing him. Seducing him. The first night he surrendered to that sweet call he sunk into a corner drenched and sticky. He was so charged up that he couldn't resist the urge to touch himself. He didn't have to do much either. Just peeling out of his shorts, feeling them cling to each raised hair as they reluctantly slid across his wet skin brought him close. It was all he could do not to cry out when he wrapped his bloody hand around his penis. His body bucked so wildly his head snapped back and slammed into the wall behind him. It was the hardest he'd ever cum in his life. He was stunned. He could only lay there slowly tracing the tip of his dick and tasting his fingers now covered in a mix of his life and their death; well at least until he heard sirens in the distance.
The blood on his fingers didn't bother him at all. He just wished it hadn't gotten all over his new shoes. Someone would have to pay for that.
“#lightandlove #beachdaze #goodtimestanlines #__(blank)__” It had been 15 long minutes of staring at his smartphone but, still, Adam could not find the right hashtag that would truly resonate with all of his 600,000 followers. It was these anxiety induced, mental blocks that made him always hate #Mondays.
Adam studied the photo more closely- he was standing on the beach facing the shore with his back angled towards the camera at just the right angle to catch the glowing, hazy rays of the sunset bouncing off his brown, muscular, slightly flexed body. You could see the profile of his handsome, defined face - the cheekbones that were chiseled from the darkest granite; the ripe, rounded lips; his cool hazel eyes, gazing into the distance.
He had specifically asked Paula, his full-time photographer and part-time girlfriend, to take the photo at a slightly upward angle (but not so far upward that it looked intentional) so that he could appear to be about 6’3” instead of 6’1”, which he actually was. She knew that he hated being only 6’1” and he didn’t understand why she was being such a bitch about having to kneel down for the shot. She had never complained about getting on her knees before, plus, he hadn’t planned on using up all the good lighting on himself; he had intended to ask some beachgoer to take a shot of the two of them together and, if she had asked, he would have even considered posting a photo with someone else for once.
Anyway, he had always allowed her to post the pictures of them together on her own profile so long as she didn’t publicly tag him on them because that might lead to rivalries with his mainly female followers. She didn’t have to work on her angles as hard as he did, she already had more likes, more follows and more endorsements than he did, which, he was sure was not in small part to her not-in-any-way-small breasts.
Adam’s train of thought was broken by Lori’s shrill voice shouting something that sounded like “Rarmour me thing!” over the chipboard wall that separated their offices. “What?” Adam shouted back. “The meeting!” Sarah responded, “I was asking if you had remembered to go to meeting! The one upstairs”.
“Shit!” Adam exclaimed as he dashed out of his office; one minute more and he would have been late. As he pushed open the heavy wooden door that led into the hallway, he realized that the elevator was stopped and waiting on his floor with its doors wide open, inviting him in with its clean, silver and glass interior.
Luckily, Adam was alone in the lift so he decided to lean into the big, square mirror on the back so that he could groom his beard just a little before the meeting. He kept his beard at just the length and thickness to give the appearance of someone who was polished yet feral, mysterious yet inviting, someone approachable yet sexy.
Slam!
As the elevator jolted to a halt somewhere in between the 15th and 16th floors, Adam smacked his head into the mirror and felt himself dropping to the ground.
Adam could hear a firmly reassuring voice in front of him. It was a man’s voice that was saying “…happy that you’re awake”. As the mist cleared from his eyes, Adam looked towards the voice and blinked so quickly and so markedly that the voice told him not to be “too alarmed” because of the “minor head trauma.” The blue V-neck shirt and the little clipboard made sense but the dark, handsome doctor, the chiseled cheekbones, the pursed lips, the hazel eyes, even the beard were eerily familiar – not just familiar to Adam, but identical to him.
As the doctor scribbled something on his clipboard, a high, thin voice came from outside the room – “Doctor, you’re needed in the Intensive Care Nursery”. The person who hurried into the room had the same face as the doctor, who had the same face as Adam – dark, handsome, chiseled bone structure, round lips , hazel eyes and full beard but this time the face was wearing, or the person wearing the face was also dressed in a skirt, a short top that covered what looked like breasts, and a white nurse’s cap.
Adam didn’t know that he was going to scream until he was actually screaming. The doctor had already left but the nurse was either trying to calm him or drown him with a full cup of water; he couldn’t tell the difference.
“My phone! Where’s my phone?” Adam panted as the nurse fussed about him. When the nurse handed it to him, he opened his profile. Nothing had changed. His profile was still littered with his selfies, selfies of him with an affected unawareness that he was even being photographed. He was still topless in all of the photos. He remembered all the poses, all the filters, all the shots it took before he could get the perfect one to post. He looked exactly the same as he recalled.
Maybe he had stayed the same online but something about him had changed now, in this moment. Adam opened the front camera on his phone and used it to look at his own reflection. He held the phone up above his head, to the left and to the right. He scrutinized every eyelash, every pore but nothing was different.
“Nurse, did I hurt my eyes when I fell? Or did I hit my head really badly or something? I don’t think I’m all right.” The nurse responded “Your bump this morning was really minor. Everything’s normal and look, your girlfriend is here to collect you. Just relax”.
“Paula?! Paula???!!!! What the fuck is happening to me?!!!” Adam exclaimed the moment he saw her. “Adam, I know you had an accident but I really don’t appreciate you talking to me like that, especially in front of other people” Paula said as she looked over at the nurse.
He recognized her voice and with it, the firm chill that meant that she was one step away from anger. “Why, why do you look like that? Like meeee?!” Adam pleaded, quietly, almost like a child. Paula brushed the side of his face with her slim fingers and said reassuringly “Babe, what do you mean? I look the same. Look at this picture that we took just yesterday. Do you remember? Look, I posted it this morning”.
As Adam looked at the phone he saw two bodies in an embrace, the brawny arms and legs were his, and the other body, the slim waistline, the big breasts, the butterfly tattoo on the shoulder, were definitely Paula’s but as he looked at the faces they were both him, his face, his faces, kissing himself…
@kristoff Swantastico
I"d really like to hear where this goes. Excellent idea.
finally finish+posted@ https://urbanfolktales.blogspot.com/2020/05/fff82.html
walk good.
They descended on him like a horde, the buzzing of the different engines gave the bikers an insect-like quality. He felt his chest tighten, his heart race faster, as they swarmed around him and thoughts of the past over powered and penetrated the fear in his mind. Thoughts of the time before, when things was nice. When the virus first came, it changed things, yes, but everyone thought it would be for a short time. There was hope that we would soon be back to normal. Across the whole planet, pandemic, panic dem. It spread slow, but fast. In three months every country in the world housed infected. After six months hope dwindled into nothing as the realization set in. Those who didn't die the first time, without exception, became infected again. Every national health system, supply chains for food and supplies, all failed. Already strained since the start of the pandemic and not able to recover before the second wave of sick. There were no beds, no medicine, no time. The death toll spiked. Entire families erased in days, neighbourhoods in a week. Some islands, entire countries, collapsed in a month. As more people died off, more and more empty buildings and vehicles full of bodies but not life, became the norm.
A few humans had immunity, but only a few. Internet, banking, air travel, oil and gas, all things we took for granted, all came to a grinding halt.
There was a sign we missed. It was the americans. Not all of them, just the 'real' America. They descended on their own cities and state legislatures by the hundreds and in some places thousands, with swastikas and nooses, holding their bibles, toting their guns and reciring their constitution. The founding fathers had given them rights and they would exercise those rights and trade liberty for death. They marched and intimidated their way into the reopening of American cities and towns ignoring warnings of it being way too soon. Three days after they got their wish the first of them started getting sick. Still, they went out, refusing face masks and in some cases evven reacting violently or even intentionally coughing on people who were just trying to do their jobs. Two weeks after and maybe ten were left. Not just ten in Detroit or ten in Chicago, ten Americans. The second round of the virus was unprecedented. In a matter of months the whole world changed. Internet gone, cable television. What happened with the Americans affected the word more than material things. It showed how things like rights were fictional, at best. It challenged the sense of morality. Governments fell, no police or army. The few survivors, those with immunity, lived by their own rules. Some hoarded fuel, others weapons and ammunition and others food and clothing. Some nieghbourhoods came together and tore themselves apart. It wasn't even organized enough to be anarchy. It was primal.
That is how he reach here, swarmed by the bikers studying when and how the world went bad.
@winter, definitely not your norm (at least from wha' i know) and i find it real work, dread. good+taut, and i think the connecting/overlap of different desires well written. feel like fff was a good means for this exploration...
@swantastico: yes! i think at the moment more existential horror than scifi, although, if you continue working on it you could choose to make it go either direction with the explanation and story development. i think it pretty damn decent, though; how you feel after sleeping on it?
@adam i like the setup but feel like i need more of the connection between the recent history narrator describing and the scene with the bikers. i also know time was not on your side so curious to see if you pursue the other part of this. i suspect i unintentionally fail to deliver similar connection in mine this rounds but hadda go back+see...
@sweet trini
Definitely not my norm. nowhere near. I only had the vaguest idea of NOIR. took the challenge. scared mih damn self at how easily it poured out and how risque it became. I"m really enjoying this FFF experience. puts me on a schedule which I need. and makes me explore more of who I could be as a writer.
@adam i love the speed of this. makes me feel like I'm in the chase with the character.
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