Elizabeth Finds Her Way Out: A Very Short Story

Acrylic, ink, charcoal, watercolour and paper.

 

Crow Takes a Bet

TW: violence and death, drunk driving

In 2020, my Critique Group challenged one another to write outside our comfort zones. Every couple of months, we select a genre and write a max. 2-page story for that genre. Our first challenge was to murder someone in 2 pages. What follows was my submission.

 

Image by enriquelopezgarre from Pixabay

Maybe Crow was losing his touch.

Loki’s stunt with the booby traps? Brilliant. The look on that man’s face when his own gun shot him was funny as hell, but it got Crow right worried. Clearly, Loki had been planning for years.

Below, Crow’s guy drifted toward a 1969 Dodge Dart. Crow had a sinking feeling. There was no way he was going to win this bet.

Veles’ bit with the combine harvester was as inspired as Loki’s: when the cop started mowing down that field, and no one noticed the perp until the conveyer jammed? Crow still ached from laughing.

The Dodge started on the third try. Crow groaned. There weren’t enough horses left in that engine to leave skid marks on the wet asphalt.

On the roof of the building opposite, Loki and Veles watched, arms crossed. They knew Crow was making it up on the fly. What was so innovative about a drunk driver?

But Crow had been busy, hadn’t he? Storms and drought and general misery didn’t just happen, did they? When his turn came, Crow was completely unprepared. So, here he was putting a drunk behind the wheel of a Dart and hoping for the best.

But the guy, damn him, was being cautious. Crow needed to do something about that. He landed on the roof and had a poke inside the man’s mind; there was an ex-girlfriend. Crow sent an image of the girlfriend. It worked. By the end of the block the car was going 23 k over the speed limit. Crow nudged the radio: it began playing ‘Layla’. By the time she’d got him to his knees, Dodge was doing 93 in a 50 and had missed two stop signs. Crow clutched the edge of the roof. This might actually work!

The car whipped past Loki and Veles, who were on top of a bus shelter. Loki checked his phone. Veles picked knots out of his beard.

Crow got mad, checked his admittedly sketchy memory of the rules of the bet, decided he didn’t care, and ZAP! Dodge turned last-minute onto the highway. He screeched along the asphalt, passenger side tires lifting…! Damn! The car evened out and Dodge – who’d spent the night complaining that broads didn’t like him – prepared to merge unscathed into the northbound lane.

Then CRUNCH. Tires squealed. A horn went off. Crow fluttered to the guardrail. Dodge stumbled out to inspect the damage. There would have been more, but not much can go wrong when a rusted-out Dodge Dart side-swipes a Smart car. Veles got a smug look about him.

The Smart driver was cold-sober and mad as hell.

“This is a MERCEDES!” he hollered. Dodge took one look at Smart’s sandals and remembered he hated leftist pinko commies. He threw the first punch, which was as much of a surprise to Crow as it was to Smart.

Loki whooped with laughter. Crow knew he was laughing at him, not the men. It turned out Smart hated drunks in ‘Lock Her Up’ t-shirts as much as Dodge hated commies. The second and third punches hit Dodge in the abdomen. The two men grabbed one another and wrestled pitifully.

“Boring,” Veles said. He tapped Loki on the shoulder. “You’re buying.”

“What?” Crow exclaimed. “I’m not done yet! No one’s dead!”

Loki started ticked off on his fingers. “Innovation. Surprise.” He looked at Veles. “What was the other?”

“Gore.”

Dodge threw a punch. Smart doubled over. “See? Gore!” Crow pointed at the blood trickling from Smart’s nose. Veles gave him a look that said, ‘you call that gore?’

Dodge, excited by the blood, grappled Smart to the ground. Loki shrugged at the men rolling in the road. Even Crow had to admit they were pathetic. Smart gave a half-hearted kick. Loki and Veles began walking away. “Hey!” Crow called. “I didn’t leave during your turns!”

The semi came over the hill doing 85. Rain streaked his windshield; the driver had been awake for 27 hours. He saw the Dodge and the Smart, swerved out of the way, horn blaring. If he felt the bumps under his wheels, he didn’t stop, and by the time he reached Windsor, the rain had washed all but a few strands of Smart’s ponytail off the grill.

Loki and Veles looked at the pancaked remains of the two men. Veles shook the brains out of his beard. Finally, Loki bowed extravagantly to Crow and declared him the winner.

No one was more surprised than Crow, but he accepted the win just the same.

 

DELUGE

A short story

Image credit: nasa.gov

Min put her breather to her face, puffing from the climb.

Getting old, she chided herself. Were she still seventy, she could have made it in half the time, and not needed the breather.

She’d timed it right. The clouds which had been gathering on the horizon since this morning towered high over the caldera and the dome, black at their base, a curled dark grey and lavender at their height.

This is it.

It wasn’t the first time Min had said that. Five. No, was it six? Six times in the last half year they’d tracked clouds like this. Six times Min had come out to watch. Six times she’d returned to the dome, kicking dry reddish dust with her well-worn, desert boots, telling herself next time.

Min lowered the breather, sucked in a thin lungful of Martian air. She could taste the water in the air. When was the last time she’d done that? Decades ago, before time and distance and muscle atrophy had banished her from Earth.

There was a low rumble. Min felt a thrill in her gut. More lightening flickered staccato-like and a fork of electricity tapped the desert floor. Another rumble, and the wind changed direction. Min’s coat flew open and she shouted with laughter. Not so long ago, standing outside like this, breather dangling from a slack finger, would have been unimaginable.

Fine red sand leapt upward, whirled toward her. The light went flat as clouds scudded overhead.

Then noise like tearing fabric. Min started, adrenaline surging, and the rain hit her. It was bitterly cold, that first man-made rain. More like sleet than rain, if Min were honest.

It passed in seconds. Puddles dotted the regolith, speckled red. Min checked the horizon. She was alone.

She chose the biggest puddle, and jumped.

This short story first appeared in Daily Science Fiction.

Same Old Story: One Premise, Ten Authors, Ten Different Stories

I've come across a number of writers unwilling to share their story ideas with other people because, after all, someone might steal their idea. While I understand the concern, it's never been one I've had.

I figure that you could give a room-full of writers the same story idea, set them free, and what you'd get at the end is a room-full of very different stories.

So one of my writer friends and I have decided to test that theory.

The idea is to get together in the new year, brainstorm a story idea, and give each writer a word limit (6000 - 8000 words) and a deadline (absolutely essential).

Then final result will be an anthology of what we expect will be ten very different stories based on the same story idea.

Stay tuned!

I'll post updates here as we go through the process.