The restaurant was closed the following day and I was leaving that afternoon. What potent ingredient had been in the aperitif which caused the world to change before my eyes?
A seemingly innocuous ruby concoction which rendered people’s reflections invisible and gave me a voracious appetite for the steak tartare.
50 word story written in response to Teresa, The Haunted Wordsmith‘s Genre Writing Challenge. I’m not quite sure that I pulled it off, but it’s just a bit of fun!
Based on a strange evening I once had in Seville. I’ll tell you about it sometime.
He was dressed in an orangutan suit. It must have been itchy as he scratched himself rather a lot. Or perhaps it was part of his act. We thought it was just a prank, but then we discovered he was an undercover insurance agent, tracking a gang of kleptomaniac chimpanzees.
Henry cashed in his dividends and purchased an exclusive package to an upmarket campsite deep in the African bush. He got all the gear, the khaki shirt and pants, the wide-brimmed hat and he was on his way. He knew exactly what was what. He’d read a guide book. Or at least, he’d looked at some of the pictures.
He arrived and was greeted warmly by his hosts. After the briefing, to which he paid limited attention, he decided to go for a walk, all by himself.
Caught short, he squatted by a Khaya tree. As he perched precariously, a long, sinuous tree snake with bright yellow eyes wound its way down the trunk. Clearly offended by what it saw, it opened its jaws and fastened onto Henry’s tender regions.
Henry howled. He jumped up. He ran for the camp, clutching his pants.
But the venom circulated rapidly. It spread throughout his bloodstream into the tissues and the nerves. Henry collapsed in front of his luxury tent.
Later he was flown home in a polished box made from Kanya wood. The irony would, no doubt, have been lost on the hapless Henry.
Written in response to Paula Light’sThree Things Challenge PL45 with a little nod to my own recent close encounter with a boomslang!
And for those of you old enough to remember: enjoy!
Mina comes every year to this ruined church on a windswept cliff, after the sun has set over the bleak moorland.
It might seem a strange place to remember her wedding anniversary, but to Mina and her Sisters it is special, for once they were all the Brides of Dracula.
50 word story, written in response to The Haunted Wordsmith’s ‘Main March Madness’ No. 31 – Wedding Anniversary.
Is it the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? The Nameless Civil Servant asks himself as he lifts his head above the parapet and surveys the monumental mess before him.
He, the Great Man of Words, the Top Negotiator, the One who Won.
He had been. Once.
Years of precepts and precedents, chalked up challenges and crumbled contrary arguments. But now none will do. Now there is no way forward and there will be no winner.
The only way is back, he thinks. He glances back over his shoulder at the long-travelled road, its twists and turns. Maybe, he thinks, maybe.
Could he create a bridge, a bridge from the lobbies of enlightenment which would cross over the wall and into the abyss? To eliminate the wrongdoers and the naysayers.
He shakes his head.
This is a new beginning. Over which he has no control.
Jerry: Repeat after me. There’s nothing under the bed.
Jules: There’s nothing under the bed.
[Pause]
Jules: But there is, I tell you.
Jerry: We looked. We looked again. There’s nothing under the bed.
Jules: Just because you can see them, it doesn’t mean they’re not there.
[Silence]
Jules: I see them all the time. I know they’re there. All over the house. Don’t you ever see, you know, something flash past, out of the corner of your eye?
[Silence]
Jules: Like ghosts maybe?
Jerry: I don’t believe in ghosts.
Jules: Okay. Maybe they’re from another dimension.
[Jerry sighs]
Jules: String theory. There was that article. Or something to do with Dark Matter.
Cepha observed the two galleons turn broadside. As greed and hatred erupted into sea-churning canon fire, she flung a tentacle into the pool beside her, summoning the sisterhood.
They came, they writhed, and the sea boiled. They pulled timbers apart with zealous suckers. Masts crashed onto splintering decks. Water gushed in.
For the humans must pay: creatures, so new to old Mother Earth, now plundered her riches and fought over them.
Cepha stirred the pool again.
Coins and trinkets emptied from chests were gathered up by eager tentacles, while sailors sank into the murky depths.
Wrapped in her fluffy pink robe she glides into the beautiful bathroom. Hot water gushes from swan-shaped tabs into a large claw-footed tub. The light is subdued. Rose-scented candles glow seductively, reflected in the slightly-smoked full length mirror with its glittering frame of hand-picked pink quartz tiles. She pauses and turns around. What has she forgotten?
Moments later she reappears carrying a large crystal glass containing her favourite mouth-filling red wine.
The white-tiled floor is glossy, and slippery with an unnoticed sheen of steam. She strides forward and suddenly…
She’s on the floor, prone on those pricey ice-white tiles. She hesitates for just a moment and then rises to her feet. She stands facing the mirror, but something’s wrong. Where’s her reflection? She focuses on the one missing tile on the far corner of the frame, still not mended, but when she looks back, her face is still absent.
Her gaze travels down the misting mirror. What’s that on the floor behind her? She turns and sees a pink robed figure. Spilled red blood mingles with spilled red wine. She raises her hand to her mouth to suppress a scream, but there is no hand, no mouth.
There is nothing.
Written in response to The Haunted Wordsmith’s ‘Main March Madness‘ 13 ‘A Ghost’
and with a nod to a scene from Michael Connelly’s ‘Dark Sacred Night’.
luna's on line 