My conscience won't let me have a second week declaring you winners all, but goodness you've made it really difficult to pick a winner. But since I have to choose I'll declare Chris's 'Ass is grass' the winner by a mere blade's width, and an even narrower blade putting Fergus' porcupine earrings above Mashie's 'Walking the Planck. And thank you all for your wonderful contributions.
Next week’s words are
deal, collection, toll
Entries
by midnight Thursday 23rd July, new
words and winners posted on Friday 24th
Usual
rules: 100 words maximum (excluding title) of flash fiction or poetry using all
of the three words above in the genres of horror, fantasy, science fiction or
noir. Serialized fiction is, as always, welcome. All variants and use of the
words and stems are fine. Feel free to post links to your stories on Twitter or
Facebook or whichever social media best pleases you and, if you like, remind
your friends that we are open to new and returning writers.
The Break (cont)
ReplyDeleteThe winners were the Norn, I said. They buried their dead one end, the Vikings the other, then built this wall. They felt sorry for them or something, said their end was Norway, but it isn't, and it's been forgot about.
Until now, Dad said.
I've got an idea. We collect the Vikings and take them back, to Norway I mean. There's a submarine out there, just outside Houbie, we could use.
Full of dead -
Germans. We could make a deal.
This isn't what I had in mind coming here.
Think of it as a toll, for not believing me.
Ok, sweetie, but how do we do it?
Ooh - I like the idea of hitching a lift on a submarine.
Deletegetting better as it goes!
DeleteA change of focus [136]
ReplyDeleteBehind the scarlet panic-button klaxon of alarm Pettinger heard the tolling of a funeral bell. The deal with Jake Cherriman -- widower of a woman Pettinger slept with before failing to apprehend her murderer -- doomed from the start.
Trading smuggled exit for negatives they’d failed to realise Cherriman’s involvement in the collection of Raptor’s dues equipped him to infiltrate Khakbethian politics.
‘Cherriman? What’s he up to?’
‘Go-between for Raptor and your remaining, currently reigning, brother.’
‘Teodor? But he’s only --’
‘Twenty-five. Old enough to wed --’
‘Wed? Who?’
Vladlina smiled a forty-seven- year-old smile. ‘Me.’
this is clever, this episode, with information coming in so many different ways - and how much info is in some of these lines? It speaks volumes.
DeleteUplift [Threshold 74]
ReplyDeleteThe deal, it appeared, was he needed me alive.
The single-gesture speed with which he bent, despatched the rattlesnake and lifted me, one-armed, to sit before him was breathtaking. As was the sudden and unexpected closeness of him pressed against my back, thighs either side of mine. Leaning forward, near crushing me, wrenching the horse’s head around, he thrust again between the close-ranked trees.
We survived. They gave up. We crossed the plain in the dark.
In the centre of the bridge, a figure waited. ‘Collection of toll.’
Ravenscar paused. ‘Toll is?’
He nodded to me, ‘Woman.’
Ha! what an ending! Now what???? how is anyone going to get out of this trap?
Deletewe went from over 100 (I think) to 3 this week... where is everyone? on holiday? I've had the same thing happen with my anthologies, virtually nothing has arrived! So I have been busy with other things, not forgetting the Captain who seems to want to walk in even murkier waters...
ReplyDeleteInfinity 106.
Methinks I might do a deal with the Devil himself to help me rid the Infinity of the terror and the toll of the Creature. I know well old Satan can be creative in his thinking and I would have to do a lot of careful talk to get what I wants but – it might be worth the risk. Then I wouldn’t have to walk so damn careful with my own crew –And it all be the fault of that thing.
I gotta be careful. It were wanting sommat more that got me the Creature in the first place.