All posts tagged: fantasy

Beltech Mortuary #DVersePoets #Prosery

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Upstairs a door slammed. Then another, and another, until finally the cast iron monstrosity at the top of the stairs shuddered open. ‘Quickly now grab me a jar!’ The jumped the last three steps. Ellsmore jolted awake and darted for the draining board. He fumbled with the jars but turned in time. The surgeon eased his hands over the open mouth and opened them slowly. It thunked against the glass. ‘Real bad ‘un this one,’ said the surgeon and wiped his hands on his trousers. Ellsmore closed the jar. The thing shivered. ‘What is it?’ The surgeon scowled. ‘There are moments caught between heart beats. They make us, us. This one, made a very, very, bad man.’ Ellsmore swallowed thickly. ‘If you cut it out, does that make him a good man?’ ‘Well that depends.’ ‘On what?’ ‘On the moments I didn’t cut out.’ ‘

Elements Are Without Mercy By Nature – #DVersePoets #Prosery

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The outcrop was low and Emile had to crouch for it to work as a windbreaker. Crouching made her thighs burn, but so did walking, and crouching in a low crag meant she could almost feel her face again. She unhooked the water-skin from her belt and weighted it in her hand. Tried to judge how much she would need to get her down the the mountain. More than she had. She put it back and swallowed her thirst. Ignored the wind stripped skeletons propped against the same crag, one holding onto the withered trunk of a sapling to stunted to reach beyond two foot. She closed her eyes to the wedding bands. These memories were left here with the trees, broken, dead, or dying. Emile stamped her feet and braced herself. She was not going to join them. She’d promised herself more. I’ve been trying to turn my attention back to my novel Darkened Daughter, and in doing so I’ve been working on some new characters to incorporate to the redraft. Yesterday I played …

#SundayPhotoFiction: Stranded

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Isabelle watched the foam settle as the speedboat winked out of view, scurrying its way back to the city. The old man hadn’t been keen to take her, counting her money twice before letting her aboard and then lingering for longer than necessary when she leapt out into the shallows. Her skirts were damp, but she’d kicked her shoes free before getting off the boat. Her feet had dried while she waited. She checked her watch and scowled. The glass was cracked, had been since earlier that morning when a cyclist outside her apartment careened into her. It was her own fault. If she’d not spent so long on land, she might have noticed him before he had chance to get close. Instead she’d been thrown from her thoughts by the bite of handlebars into her ribs. The wind picked up and threw the waves higher along the beach. Isabelle waded out, shivering as the water closed around her ankles. ‘Please,’ she cried. ‘I’m sorry. I have learnt my lesson!’ Above her a seagull cried …

Off The Edge Of The Map

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‘Leave me alone ya bastard!’ Henry’s words bounced off the cave walls harmlessly, much like the driftwood had, and the empty whisky bottle had months before. Despite the projectiles, his reflection continued staring up from the shallow pool at his feet. Slightly warped and vaguely true to likeness. ‘You’re the one who wanted to chase after princesses,’ it pointed out. ‘I was quite happy on a street corner with my lute.’ ‘You and your lute were shite,’ Henry spat. ‘We barely made a crown a day.’ ‘Perhaps,’ shrugged the reflection, ‘I wasn’t stuck on an island alone though. I could take a break whenever I wanted, speak to whoever I wanted.’ ‘But you didn’t.’ ‘But I could have.’ ‘But you didn’t.’ ‘I almost did once.’ ‘No you didn’t!’ Henry spat in the pool and sat down beside it. ‘Happy, fucking, ever after,’ he muttered. ‘Still blaming you,’ the reflection replied. Writing Prompt From The Story Shack If you’d like to read something a little longer I’m working on redrafting my Safe Haven series. In the …

Every Kiss In Buenos Aires

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The child was no more than eight years old, he was fair haired, dark eyed, and prone to long bouts of silence that could stretch for months at a time. Amanda knew this because it had said as much in the file she had been given. The file that told her nearly nothing about the boy at all and contained a single pass key to zap her through any security door that got in her way. When she met him he was staring out of the glass doors of the day room at St. Augustine’s Hospital for Children. It wasn’t much of a garden in Amanda’s opinion. A single square of perfectly cut grass and three neat slices of exposed soil, pinpricked with pansies of varying colours. The only interruption to this order was the stone fountain in the centre. Three foot in height,  the round, shallow bowl played host to three starlings. They chirped and splashed and played and eventually they flew away as a nurse opened a window and disturbed them. They boy …

Monsters Love A Church: Solitary Creatures Part Three

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‘Three days, three bloody days. What exactly do you think you’re playing at? How on earth are we supposed to find this thing and kill it in that sort of time frame?’ Sammy thumped the truck’s dashboard with an empty fist and swore as the plastic cracked. He buried his hands in his lap and scowled down at them. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d left Syms’ hole two hours before and Edwin could see the storm clouds hanging around him. ‘Calm down,’ said Edwin. He checked the rear view mirror and flicked the indicator on before turning off the main road and onto one of the narrower country lanes that wound through the countryside. ‘It’s not like we’ve got to cross the ocean to find this thing and we’ve worked with tighter deadlines in the past. We do the same thing we always do, roll up, find out what’s what, stick the bad thing, move on.’ ‘That only works for things like lone vampires and low key fey gone rouge,’ said Sammy. …

Seeking Eyes

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Kristin hated herself, which made her invincibility downright infuriating, but right at that moment all her anger was directly well and truly towards someone else. ‘Like I said, it happens more than you think.’ The man in the high viz jacket scratched the back of his neck and rocked his considerable wight back on his heels. ‘These sort of places, well they can be a bit…’ he thought about the word for a few moments. ‘Temperamental.’ ‘You think?’ Kristin spat. The ground in front of them had opened up to reveal exactly nothing. Ziltch. Diddly squat. She focused on projecting her fury down into that emptiness and not on to the idiot standing next to her.  How many men had they lost down there? Six? Eight? ‘Well we are looking for something that ain’t suppose to exist,’ he shrugged. ‘We’re unlikely to strike gold the first time.’ ‘I told you. We’re not looking for gold.’ ‘If you insist but I’ll have you know, you ain’t likely to find much else out here. A lot of …

Chaos Walking

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The clock on the wall seemed to have stopped, the second hand sticking between ten to and nine to, sporadically twitching like a stick insect taking an inordinate amount of time to die. Lilly gripped her palms together harder, trying to ignore the slick, sticky feeling of sweat squishing between flesh. ‘Is this what you’re life is like then?’ she asked. She didn’t look up but she felt Henry shift slightly in the hard plastic seat next to him, his back poker straight as they waited. Did it hurt? she wondered. What was it like getting shot if you knew you couldn’t die?  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘My life isn’t usually this… chaotic.’ He lapsed into silence again and Lilly went back to watching the second hand on the clock fighting to break free. Chaos, that’s what this was, no that was what Philip was, a walking talking ball of chaos.  ‘Did he kiss you?’ Lilly looked up this time. She could just about make out the blood stain steadily seeping out from beneath the cover of Henry’s jacket, …

Within The Shadows Monsters Lie In Wait

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When he moved the shadows moved with him, clinging to his features like a second skin beneath the hood of his jacket. She watched him crouch in front of her, lips parted slightly as he tucked two fingertips beneath her chin and tilted her face up to look at him. She scowled. Her left eye was a swollen mess and her bottom lip was busted and twice it’s normal size. There was blood on the side of her face, dried and cracking every time she swallowed. Still he kissed her. She bit back, catching his lip beneath her teeth. She tasted blood, not her own this time, his. He jerked away and she saw something moving. Her balance shifted and she was going sideways, falling. Her ears rang, an open palm against her cheek, skin. She felt her skin sing, reddening into a print of his fingers. ‘I thought you cared for me?’ he growled. He wiped his sleeve across his mouth, the fabric vanishing into the shadows. Inside her skull she could still feel the world ringing …