Borrowed Strength
by G. Deyke
Copyright 2014 G. Deyke
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Contents
Introduction
That Which Grows in the Wasteland
Frailty
Kokytos
Afterglow
Sk?ll's Bite
The Perfect Man
That Which Slept a Thousand Years
Four Words
The Worms
Borrowed Strength
The Way After Waking
Billy and the Truth Fairy
The Color Without a Name
Finding the Line
Three Brothers Were Granted Three Wishes
Twelve Drowned Roses
Narasimha
Into the Deep
Awakening
After the War
The Isle of the Dead
Here, There, and Everywhere
An Absence of Aliens
The Swan Song
His Eyes
Gina Star's Debut
The Earth-Queen's Sorrow
To Skirt Destiny
Final Wishes
Flight and Vengeance
Chimera
A Severely Subjective Appraisal of this Author's Experience with the Event
Closing Words
Find G. Deyke Online
Introduction
So: here you are. You've just acquired this ebook (or perhaps you're just sampling it online), and you're wondering what it is you're getting into. 31 stories in under 15,000 words? you're thinking. What treachery is this? Hear me now, most excellent reader: there is no treachery afoot. There really are 31 stories in here. They just aren't very long. In fact, they all have 1,000 words or fewer: mostly fewer.
These 31 stories were written as a part of Flash Fiction Month, which is (to no one's surprise) a month-long event for writing flash fiction. The premise is simple enough: write one 55- to 1,000-word story for each day of July, fifteen of them meeting incrementally more complicated challenges. It is not a task undertaken by the faint of heart. It is not a task finished by the faint of will. Well before the month is out one begins to feel that one is writing on borrowed strength.
It is, however, a task that pushes boundaries; a task that allows participants to grow as writers; a task that encourages rampant experimentation. I believe the diversity of these stories speaks for itself.
The month's harvest has been collected here for your perusal and enjoyment, followed by a severely subjective appraisal of this author's experience with the event. Take a breath, open your eyes, and dive in: you're sure to find something worth seeing.
That Which Grows in the Wasteland
Challenge #1: write a story featuring, or inspired by, one or more of the usernames of your fellow FFM 2014 participants.
(I based this story on the name of a person going by Osterkaktus.)
It jutted from the landscape much like a love plot inserted into the screenplay of a popular novel: which is to say, completely incongruously.
Sand and dust spread in every direction, littered with the occasional rock or snakeskin or piece of bone. Sunlight and dust had turned even the sky blindingly white. Heat poured over the land like honey into oatmeal: which is to say, heavily and with a bit of a melty effect. Nothing that came this way had any real chance of surviving. Even the vultures tended to fly off in search of greener pastures if they wanted to eat.
The thing was a cactus: that much could be said for it. It was a cactus and therefore it belonged in a desert. No one could argue on that point.
It was tall, and bulbous, and grew in passable imitation of the saguaros common to the region. It was even covered in thorns. Or prickles, possibly. Something pointy and organic, at any rate. Given the right conditions, one might even pass it by without noticing it: cacti belong in the desert, after all, and this one even had the requisite ox-skull lying in its shadow. There was nothing to distinguish it from any other plant that managed to survive in this bleak desolation.
Well, assuming the viewer was colorblind, anyway.
Also assuming that they failed to notice the eggs.
Frailty
She crafted the thread from spit and sinew and strands of her hair. The needle was wooden: with it she sewed hope into his heart, tucked into the wall of his ventricle where the taste of it would bleed out into his veins. But her needle was old and brittle, and on the final stitch the point of it splintered off.
It lay sharp and heavy in his breast: she had no craft to remove it, so there it remained.
He had come to her with clouded eyes and thoughts like whispers in his head, he said. They spoke to him of things gone by, of things to come, of things that lived and breathed within him even as he listened. They spoke in riddles of answers. Come taste the knife, they whispered. Come taste your life. He listened, and his eyes grew clouded and his breaths grew weary and though he did not always know where he was, still he thought he knew how he must go on. Come taste the knife, he whispered, and his steps crept ever closer to the edge.
But then she sewed hope into his heart: and his eyes grew wide and bright and wary, and his breaths grew short and sharp. He saw where he was, and he saw how he must go on, and he thought - if need be - that he might grow wings. But the point of her needle dug deep into his heart, old and broken, heavy as an unforgotten sorrow. And though he spread his wings, indeed, he could not fly. He was weighted to the ground, tethered by a thing he could not see and could not understand.
He followed the pull, and went to see what bound him.
He found that he had fallen in love with the earth. He did not wish it: he wished to keep himself: and so he strained against the bars of his cage, at first, though his wings were too heavy to fly. Hope, he thought, is freedom. The whispers had quieted under the touch of the needle, but this thought threaded through his veins as though it were one of them: Hope, he thought, is freedom.
Though he clung to his wings, still they fell from him in time. He clung to the feathers as though to his hope. But always the point of the needle lay heavy in his heart, and always tears fell from his broken eyes as he whispered, whispered, whispered: Hope is freedom.
When he went to her again, she cut the thread that bound his heart. Still the heavy sharpness aches in his breast; but beneath the veil of whispers he no longer thinks to feel it. Hope is freedom, he whispers, and his feet find the edge.
And he leaps.
Why should he care that he has no wings?
Kokytos
Challenge #2: write from the perspective of an unreliable narrator.
They hate me. They hate me. I don't know what I did wrong.
Mother's eyes are bright and hard. Her lips are pressed together, thin, tight, like anger, like a coiled spring. She doesn't look at me. She doesn't speak to me. Even when I tug on the hem of her shirt, she doesn't listen. She just keeps washing the dishes with hard angry strokes and when one breaks from it her lips tighten even more, and she doesn't talk to me and she doesn't look at me.
Father sits silent, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. He pours himself a drink and then throws it out. Maybe he's just tired. Maybe that's why he doesn't look up at me, doesn't smile, doesn't pull me onto his knee and hug me. Even when I kiss his cheek he sits silent and stony, and pretends that I'm not there.
My sister comes into my room, but she doesn't talk to me, doesn't look at me. I don't know what I did, I don't know why she hates me, but she hates me more than the time I stuck gum in her hair, this time. She hates me more than the time I stepped on her action figures. She doesn't even glare at me or yell or pull my hair, just ignores me and goes to the closet and starts pulling out all my favorite clothes and throwing them on the bed. Even when I start crying and pulling at her arms and yelling at her to stop, she just brushes me aside and doesn't say anything, doesn't look at me, doesn't stop. She takes my things and she walks back to her own room and she slams the door, and I don't know why she hates me.
My brother was shaving and when I went to ask him what I did he saw me in the mirror and he turned and held up his razor like he was going to kill me and I was scared of his eyes and so I ran and I ran and I hid in my room until suppertime.
But they didn't set a plate for me.
I don't know what I did. I don't know. But they hate me and I'm scared and I want to not be all alone, and they won't even let me eat and they won't tell me what I did wrong. I don't know what I did.
I'm scared.
What did I do wrong?
Afterglow
These are the signs of happiness:
1. pain.
He can hardly lift his head: the muscles in his neck scream with protest whenever he tries to move it. He moves slowly, cautiously, leaning back against something whenever he can get away with it. He avoids touching his head, his hair. It's still sore from brushing out the knots.
2. odor.
He smells of sweat and beer. His own sweat and the sweat of strangers; beer spilled on him, beer that condensed out of the atmosphere and onto his skin. Sweat. The smell is in his hair, in his clothes, clinging to everything around him. He's sticky with it even where he touched nothing but air.
3. exhaustion.
He left for home around two in the morning. It's nearly an hour to get home, longer if he wants to eat something to make up for missing supper. He'll definitely want to drink something. And he'll want to brush out his hair: with his fingers, at first, separating the knots into something the brush can handle. It'll take half an hour, maybe more, just to get out the knots. That's precious sleep-time wasted, but it's worth it; his hair will only mat more if he sleeps on it like this. By the time he gets to sleep the sun will have begun to rise, and he'll have to fight against the birdsong calling him to wake.
4. tinnitus.
His ears are ringing. He didn't notice until he was home, alone, sitting still, but then the silence was loud in his ears: a high chime, unceasing, impossible to ignore. It's softer by the next day, no longer approaching painful in its loudness, but still present. He plays his music more loudly than usual that day, trying to drown it out.
5. adrenaline.
The rush doesn't wear off for a few days. He's calmer than usual, happier: content. Small irritants don't bother him. His inhibitions are lower than usual and his confidence is higher, and he'll do the things he enjoys without worrying about whether he can; and he'll do better at them because of it.
The world will flow by him as soft and harmless as wisps of cloud, and he will float through it unhindered.
Sk?ll's Bite
Challenge #3: write a piece of historical fiction. Your piece should include an event from July 5 in history.
(I chose to write about the partial solar eclipse over Nordland on July 5th, 1331.)
That summer we thought we felt the Fimbulwinter upon us. We thought that Ragnar?k had come.
It was two weeks after ?lfr??ull turned: we looked to the heavens and there we saw Sk?ll, closer to his quarry than ever before, nipping at her heels. We saw her stumble; we saw her fall. We saw him beginning to swallow her.
Oh, she eluded him. She is running still. But we have seen the span of that great wolf's jaws, and we have seen the terror that comes in the darkness.
Our sun will not last forever.
The Perfect Man
Jon slumped down angrily on the table, glaring across the bar from behind his drink. The object of his glare, and also of his desire, was his friend Mindy; the glare also encompassed the man she was talking to.
"What does she see in him, anyway?" he asked in a half-plaintive, half-furious slur.
"Well, let's see..." Rhonda tapped the fingers of one hand against the palm of the other, counting off. "He's smart; he's kind; he's funny; he's very attractive, so they tell me; he's rich; he has a stable job; he's famous enough to be glamorous, but not enough to warrant paparazzi; he donates yearly to charity..."
"Whatever."
"...he's not clingy or controlling, but not likely to ignore or abandon her either; he's extremely loyal; he shares her religious and political views; he shares her sense of humor and of aesthetics; he shares about 80% of her interests..."
"So do I," Jon muttered into his drink.
"...he's very healthy; he has good teeth; he has no genetic tendency towards any disease; his family are all extremely welcoming to everyone he knows; he cooks very well; he has no aversion to doing housework..."
"Okay, okay..."
"...he likes animals; he's twice rescued children from burning buildings; he's romantic; he's artistic; he's responsible; he's communicative..."
"All right, Rhonda, I get the point!"
She shrugged and fell silent; he resumed watching Mindy and her conversational partner. They sat like this in silence for some time.
"I guess he is pretty good-looking," Jon said at last, grudgingly.
"I wouldn't know."
Further silence; then Jon stood up, downed the rest of his drink, and set it back down on the table with a decisive slam. "Screw it," he said; "I'm going in."
"Jon -" Rhonda sighed, rubbing her temples. "You can't possibly hope to win Mindy over competing against that guy? He's pretty much the ideal boyfriend. You don't stand a chance."
"What? Oh - no no no no no no. Screw Mindy." He threw another long glance at the couple across the bar. "Do you think he likes Italian?"
That Which Slept a Thousand Years
It had slumbered for a thousand years, buried beneath the earth, awaiting the moment when it would roam free once more. Its dreams, as it slept, were of weird and eldritch things; and when it turned in its slumber the people above fell to writing and painting and murder, and to weeping. There was madness lurking on its breath. The beating of its hearts drummed fear into the minds of men, even from far below the ground.
In the thousandth year of its slumber a farmer unearthed a part of the great shell in which it rested: and seeing that he had come upon a great shining orb of unknown substance and (doubtless) great worth, he hastened at once to the palace of his prince to report his find. The prince received his report with great interest. He sent an army of men to excavate the thing at once; and for himself he retired to his library, to see whether any oracle had foretold of this great thing that shone beneath his kingdom, and what joys and sorrows it might bring him.
On the first day of the thousand-and-first year, the last of the earth was carried away, and the orb shone great and mighty for all to see. The prince himself came to inspect the find. With him he carried an ancient scroll, worn with many readings.
"The orb will open," he spoke. "The ancient oracles have foretold it."
And touching the orb upon several of the strange and arcane carvings with which it was marked, he caused it to split apart, as though a great door in its shell had swung open. The people wondered at the might of their prince, and of the oracles, and of the ancient scroll.
"I alone will enter," spoke the prince.
Within it he found the slumbering thing, with mad dreams floating like mist all around it. It shuddered and writhed with every breath, and there was no order to its many coiling limbs.
The prince hesitated, consulting his scroll a final time; then he gathered his courage and his dignity about him like a cloak, and stepped close to the slumbering thing, and
kissed its slick and toothy flesh with as much passion as he could muster.
At once it awoke. Its waking was terrible to behold: it writhed and coiled furiously about, as life returned to limbs a thousand years asleep. At last it was finished, and turned to greet the prince with the nearest thing to a face it had.
"It was you who woke me," it intoned, with madness coiling snake-like along its speech.
"Er," said the prince, consulting his scroll again. "Hang on. Weren't you meant to turn into a princess?"
Four Words
Challenge #4: write a story in which a first-person narrator witnesses what they think is the end of the world.
This is how the world ends:
A quiet morning, a rainy day, a glass of orange juice. Your hand on mine, heavy. Your voice:
"We need to talk."
My shoulder to cry on shoves a beer under my nose. "Hey," he says, "it's not the end of the world."
But he doesn't realize: it is.
The Worms
She tried to take a breath, but couldn't. Darkness was pressing in on her from all sides, so heavy that it stilled her ribs.
She tried to open her eyes, but the weight on their lids was so great that she could not stir them. Darkness, darker than dark, pinned them into place.
She tried to twitch with a finger, but darkness held her from moving.
It was only when she felt the worms wriggling through her wrists that she realized she was dead.
Borrowed Strength
Challenge #5: write a story of exactly 527.5 words; a circus must be an integral part of the story.
(For this challenge (only), I counted words that consist of two other words joined by a hyphen as 1.5 words apiece.)
Rona knows that she has no choice.
The king's men are close behind her. They have horses; she does not. She'll never make it to the bridge before they cut her off. And she can't afford to be caught, not now. She must cross the ravine, and if that means walking across the prayer-rope, well - she has no choice.