The Optimist’s Club –or –Spread love like you’ve got a shovel ….. Flash Fiction

I went to an antique car show with my camera and spent a wonderful couple of hours taking pictures and talking to anyone I happened to see. During the course of the morning I was asked to lunch by a twenty three year old and a seventy two year old. I declined the twenty three year old because, well, I have socks older than him, but I took a shine to the seventy two year old and after he sweetened the invite by telling me he'd buy me a slice of pie [and I wasn't even wearing my I heart pie button] I agreed to the date and followed him to a diner about a mile down the road.

We went in for lunch and stayed for dinner.

We talked and laughed for nine hours straight. I had to get up twice to go out and run around the diner because my legs were stiff.

When we walked out to our cars, I reached up and gave Rich a hug. He returned it with a squeeze that pulled me off my feet and popped my back. He said I was the first woman tall enough to hug him properly since his wife died.

Now here's the thing that gets me. Three days later my phone rang and Rich's name came up on the display. He told me he'd call when he got home and settled, so I figured he was home and settled.

I answered it with a smile and a: "Well hello there, darlin', did you make it home ok?"

There was a pause on the other end. It went on long enough that I looked at my phone to make sure the call hadn't been dropped. Just when I was going to hang up and call him back, a man cleared his throat and said, "I'm calling for my dad….."

Turns out Rich made it home, but died in his bed the night he got back. Also turns out he knew he was dying when we were having lunch. As a matter of fact he'd known for a couple of weeks. His son said his dad had always looked on the bright side of things, and thought life was what you made of it. He was calling to ask me for my zip code. Said his dad had left an envelope for me on the nightstand.

People looked at me strange at the post office, but I didn't care. It was either stand there and laugh, or stand there and cry. The envelope had a thank you note in it. Rich said I'd been a balm to his soul. He said a lot of other beautiful things, but the thing that I'll always remember was the ps.

PS: Life is like a good cup of coffee, and I got to enjoy both until the very last drop.

I double demon dare you.....

I’m guesting over at the #amwriting hub today with a new fiction piece. Stop over and see me whydon’tcha?

 [Click here to be magically transported]

 

Bonus when you get there: I’ve got a BIG BOWL of caramel corn, and I hear Johanna Harness is giving away unicorns…..

Upside/Downside of being single in the age of enlightenment…….. Flash Fiction

 
Upside: Jessica made such advances in her personal growth that one day she morphed into a glowing ball of light. 

Downside: Sex became a lot harder.

 

Whiskey voice…........... Flash Fiction

Snakes, writhing around on the floor; seen only out of the corner of my eye. I know it's just lack of sleep. I haven't slept in what seems like weeks and the paranoia is setting in. If only the walls would stay in one place. And the refrigerator would stop singing karaoke. Or at least would stop singing Copacabana… and if my head would just stop the damn pounding…. if any one of those things would happen I know I could lie down and get some blessed shut eye.

"Where'd you get this one?" Arc asked Bixton12.

"He was in the cold and flu aisle of a place called 'Walgreens'--why do you ask?"

"I think we may have gone a bit overboard," he answered as he wiped a smudge from the observation glass with his tentacle, "he seems somewhat disoriented."

"It was probably the snakes, I know you like them, but well, the reaction can be unpredictable…."

"At least I didn't make them jump out of the peanut can this time, I do learn from my mistakes." Arc said, a wry smile twisting his beak a bit to the left.

Aw damn, here comes another sneezing jag. I hate the sneezing. Although if I could sneeze my fool head off maybe I could put it in another room and then get some sleep. Man, where did that thought come from? I must be delirious or something, maybe I should call an ambulance….

"Oh dear, he's thinking of calling for help. Well, I guess it's now or never, I thought we'd have at least another twenty four hours.." Arc said as he fiddled with a knob on the control panel.

A section of wall slid to the side and a humanoid of the female style dressed in what they had come to understand was standard care giving costume for this century stepped into the viewing room, startling the test subject. He backed away, but the "nurse" soothed him and got him situated on the couch telling him she was there to help and if he'd just let her take a throat culture she was sure he'd feel better in a short time.

Ok, now I'm sure I'm delirious. When Jessica Rabbit dressed as a porn star nurse makes a section of your wall slide away and comes in to hover over you with a smile, well, it's pretty apparent that Elvis has left the building and your mind has gone awandering with him…. Wait….What the hell is she doing with that hose? Aargh, argh….arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

"This is all you harvested?" Nizar said with a sneer, waving the small sealed vial under their beaks.

"Yes sir, you know that we've found that if we keep the subject after they've decided they need medical intervention the secretions go bad and are worthless to the true connoisseur."

"Well blast and balls, Arc, this is barely enough to even offer on the black market. You're going to have to do better next time."

His gaze traveled to the cowering Bixton12, pinning him to the wall with laser precision. Nizar turned on his talons and stalked out of the lab, leaving an incinerated Bixton12 in his wake. Nizar believed in raising the bar through fear and intimidation. Plus he hadn't had lunch yet and he was cranky. Arc would do better next time he was sure.

Nizar was starting to regret this whole business. He thought he might go back to peddling rhinoceros horn to the limp dicked bastards out there clamoring for phlegm. He didn't know how the idea of phlegm being sexy had caught on anyway. Must be something they'd seen on television….




 

As god is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again…. Flash Fiction

It was an ordinary day, one much like all my others, a day filled with small joys to be celebrated, smiles given freely to strangers, moments allotted just for the smelling of roses.

It was after five, so work was put away for the day, closed neatly in drawers and compartmentalized to wait for the morning. Moderation in all things; the watchword by which I lived my life.

Then I met him.

I was walking in the woods, glorying in the birdsong, delighting in the antics of squirrels and chipmunks; smiling at the memory of capturing and releasing a tiny toad once I'd convinced him I wasn't going to toss him down my terrible maw.

I rounded a bend and there he was. My brain lit up like I'd been struck by lightning. I actually felt dizzy for a moment. I leaned on a tree, my mouth tasting of copper, knees weak, ears ringing. He looked at me like he could see my soul. His eyes pinned me down, rummaged around inside and turned me inside out.

I felt rooted to the spot, filled to the brim with indecision. Did I stand or did I run? I'd been warned when I was seven that this could happen. But generations had come and gone without a single ripple in my world. I'd become complacent. Now fate had intervened.

He started for me, the air shimmering as he moved. I felt myself flood with juices. Hunger ravening, lust building, the needs I'd beaten back into submission for years bubbling to the surface.

When he got close enough to touch I knew there was no other option. Our auras meshed, the world stopped turning. I unhinged my jaw and swallowed him whole.







Three word Wednesday prompt : fate, indecision, option


 

Mommy’s boy….............Flash Fiction

She came to me twice in a dream. The first time was a week before I met her; the second time was after I left him. I didn't tell him about it because it kind of spooked me. In the first dream, she came to me in a robe that was just like the one my foster mother wore when I was a kid. Blue, fuzzy, high necked, with a no nonsense zipper up the front. A robe made for utility, not style. A robe a modest woman of advanced age could wear to the door and no UPS man would be aroused or appalled by a bit of wrinkled wrist or ankle showing; it zipped to the chin and did the job that armor did in the old days.

The night he took me home to dinner she came out of her bedroom wearing the robe from the dream. She'd been sick in bed for a week she said, out of her head with fever half the time.

I was a bit shook, but not really surprised. Shit like that was always happening to me. Dreams, déjà vous, flashes of insight about people that warned me off of getting too close. After a while you get used to it.

She didn't eat with us; she just came and went from the living room to her bedroom a few times. Twice she stopped by my chair and squeezed my shoulder with a bony talon. Both times she said something too low to be heard, but somewhere in the muttering were the words "remember" and "you promised."

By the end of the night my skin was crawling and I was itching to be gone. He didn't even get a goodnight kiss, let alone get to give the guided tour he was hoping to give me of his new mattress. Sex was so far from my mind by the time he dropped me off that my thoughts would have been ok'd by a nun. And that hadn't happened since the eighth grade.

Lying in bed that night I went back over what she'd said in the dream. Most of it was along the lines of taking care of Brian when she was gone. Hell, I hardly knew the guy. Why would she be tagging me to take care of him, and did she mean "gone" as in "dead" or gone as in I'm tired of cooking and cleaning for my forty year old son and I'm going to go live in a condo in Florida kind of gone?

But it's not like I could ask her. People tend to look at you funny when you quote something they said to you in a dream and ask them to explain it to you.

I didn't see her again until the wedding. She looked frail sitting there in the front row of the church clasping her rosary beads. She found me in the bathroom during the reception and thanked me for coming into Brian's life. She said she knew that he had decided to take me on when he moved them to the new condo and gave her her own room. Then she slipped a package into my hand and collapsed. It happened so quickly that I didn't even have time to reach out to her. She was standing, then she was on the floor.

The paramedics came almost instantly from the fire station next door, but she was already gone by the time they got there. When they strapped her to the gurney she looked peaceful and happier than she had when she was alive. Weird thing? She sat up and talked to me when they were carrying her out. I know that couldn't have actually happened, because the medics or the coroner standing there signing the death certificate would have noticed. But she gripped my arm as they took her out and told me to make sure I took care of Brian. She said she wouldn't rest easy until I promised.

So…..I promised.

---------------------

I left him this morning. We didn't have a honeymoon. The funeral took up the first three days, and the effects of the slow poison took up the next few. He never suspected. MSG hides almost any aftertaste and it makes the food taste just that much more delicious.

He should be dead by tomorrow or the next day. Hopefully it'll look like a heart attack. After all, the poor guy lost his mother and new bride in the same week. What heart wouldn't feel the effects of that?

The package she'd given me before she collapsed had detailed everything; she'd even provided the poison. She'd been with Brian for five years. She was twenty-six when they met. Apparently his boyish charm was kept lively by sucking the youth out of his sex partners. According to traditional lore, that would make him an incubus, but one with a twist, since Brian didn't want to father a baby. For him, that was simple logic, if you father a baby you won't be the baby of the family anymore.

----------------------

The clackety clack of the rails had lulled me into the first decent sleep I'd had since the wedding. She stepped lightly into my dream and sat down on the sleeper berth next to me. She was dressed in a white satin robe and looked radiant. She told me that the cops would be calling me in the morning. They'd found the body, but I wasn't to worry because she'd made sure I'd be in the clear. She handed me a newspaper and faded out into the ether on a gust of some exotic perfume.

I looked at the front page of the paper and saw Brian's twisted Prius wrapped around the girder of a bridge. The paper didn't detail how the accident happened other than referencing his blood alcohol level. But I knew in a flash of intuition that chinks in the subconscious weren't only there in dreams.

First kiss…..

The first time I kiss you I want you to be standing up. I want to press the length of my body to yours. I want to feel the goose bumps rise as I run my nails through the hair on your arms. I want to watch your head loll back when I breathe on your neck. I want to feel your heart pound; I want to see your veins pulse. I want to trace a trail from the hollow of your neck to the corner of your mouth with the tip of my tongue. I want to slide past your teeth and hear you moan when my tongue touches yours. I want to make you into a puddle. Then I want to lap you up.

First time, last time and all the times in between.

Designated hitter……Flash Fiction

Fear. That little trickle that ices down your spine when you wake at three am, chest tight, existential dread sitting on your ribcage, its dirty yellow toenails digging into your diaphragm, smiling that smug I know something you don't know smile.

There it is again. The scritch scritch that woke you. A small sound in a big world. But you don't live in a big world. Your world has been a tiny tight ball of terror each and every moment since the last time he found you.

Sliding trembling feet to the floor, heart pounding, you creep toward the door, Louisville slugger at the ready. He calls out in a sing song voice,

"Guess who….oo." But this time only one of you will be surprised.

The door swings inward, and you swing away….

Compromised ……………..Flash Fiction

It's amazing how adaptable the human mind is. Take the light in my kitchen for example. I've been in need of a bulb for months, but couldn't get out to get one, so I got used to the gloom. I can now cook almost by feel. And the dizziness, well, after a while, you get used to that too. Blood loss'll do that to you, complaining isn't going to get me anywhere, so why run my mouth about it? And the smell, that musty cupboard under the basement staircase smell, there wasn't anything he could do about it, so why kvetch? But I tell you what, I'm NEVER going to get used to walking into the bathroom and finding him there, wrapped snugly in his wings, hanging by his knees from the shower curtain rod and snoring.

Maybe when I finally get out to buy that light bulb I can get some of those no-snore strips too. It's going to be that, or a stake through the heart. A girl can only take so much.

Pest control……..Flash Fiction

The last straw was opening my lunch box and finding an apple core and an empty sandwich bag. Jeff was the worst roommate in the history of roommates. I saw him rummaging in the fridge this morning after I packed my lunch, but even while I stood under the cold shower cursing him for using all of the hot water and trying to get clear headed, calm and centered for the grueling work day I knew I had ahead of me; I never imagined he would eat my lunch for his breakfast. No wonder he was whistling as he took my travel mug full of the last of my coffee out the door with him this morning on his way to the unemployment office.

I've been busting my hump trying to get the prototype ready to show to the investors and now Hector tells me that the money men are having second thoughts. They say that before they invest that kind of dough they'll need to see human test trials.

I never thought of myself as an evil man, or even as an evil genius. I have historically had trouble with producing anything even remotely resembling a maniacal laugh, so I had imagined myself immune to sliding down the slippery slope toward the dark side. Until today. When I opened my lunch box and saw my missing tuna wrap something snapped in me. A giant Bwahahahahahahaha bellowed from the depths of my soul. At that moment I knew that Jeff was going to do a great service for mankind. Evil mankind admittedly, but mankind nonetheless.

All I had to do was lure him to the lab.

Luring Jeff to the lab turned out to be surprisingly easy. I just called and said I was working late and had a pizza on the way. He showed up to mooch my dinner about fifteen minutes later. Once I stunned him and strapped him to the table all I had to do was decide between imploding or exploding him. I knew that exploding would be much more visually dramatic, but imploding is technically harder and Hollywood hasn't done it as much, so it might be more impressive to the investors crowded into the viewing room behind the shatterproof glass. Plus, I don't really relish the idea of mopping Jeff's intestines off of the ceiling. And Hector is a strict vegetarian, so it doesn't seem fair to ask him to do it.

Monstrous Flash Fiction

Trick or treat….

Hunger like a million crazed hamsters digging their sharp claws into the lining of my stomach. Days since I’ve eaten. Hiding, creeping along the hedgerows, I watch them trip gleefully from puddles of light to enveloping shadow. Just one. One wouldn’t hurt. I’d eat it standing up. Everybody knows that if you eat standing up it doesn’t count. Any minute now, I can feel it. One will drift a little off the path. With any luck it’ll be a plump one, but not the little whiny one. He’d be sour. I want one who smiles, one who says thank you at each door. One like the little sparkly fairy princess. She’d be sweet. She wouldn’t put up a fuss. But she’d be missed right away. A child like that would have watchful parents. I’ll have to choose another. But not the little whiny one. There’s still time. I can wait. They’ll be out for at least another hour.

Heel…......Flash Fiction

The wind howling through the window broke into my sleep and replaced the ghastly sounds of tearing flesh. Panicked; I replayed the dream in my head, laughing a bit as I realized I was warm and snug under the covers.

In the dream I was dancing. My body too warm, the room off kilter. My brain seemed to itch where my neck met my spine. I left the dance floor, disgusted with a partner taking liberties. Outside it was cool and sharp. The full moon beautiful in the clear night sky. He followed me out. Running, running in the woods, branches tearing at my clothes, twigs slashing at my tender skin. Ragged breath, pounding heart. Prey and predator.

He should have kicked off his cowboy boots. That's the first thing they tell you to do when you're running for your life. Barefoot is best. Of course, I'd had the advantage once I was on all fours. They're unlikely to find the bits of him that were left.

I'll have to go back this morning before his car is discovered. Searchers would find the tatters of my red dress covered in blood at the edge of the ravine. They'd think the worst. But they'd be wrong. I'm safe. Safe and snug in my bed.

Ravenous again.

Go HERE to MadUtopia where you'll find Jon Strother's master list of the week's 83 #fridayflash offerings.

Swarm ……… Flash Fiction

They clawed at the dirt, pushed at the stones, groaning and scrabbling, freeing themselves from the earthy bedchambers grieving loved ones had provided. When the Governor called us in that first week, we stood at the fence and lobbed grenades into the cemetery; thinking it would destroy the things that crawled from the crypts. But how do you make the dead more dead?
Nothing stopped them. They swarmed like locust over whatever was in their path, leaving husks of automobiles and buildings behind. Flesh was easiest of all, and once assimilated, the bones of the freshly departed joined the masses.
They came. And came. Never resting. Relentless. Expressionless. Destroying anything that hindered progress toward some goal that lay in a straight line beginning at St. Basil's cemetery. Television coverage brought gawkers and thrill seekers. As they filmed or photographed, they were rolled over and consumed.
By the second week the skeletal march was a mile wide and four miles long. Lieutenant Christopher was somewhere in the pack. His men held the line at his order. The swarm had gone through his squad like a hot knife through butter. Not even a tank tread was left, anything softer than iron was consumed by the horde.
By the third week what was left of my troop trailed cautiously behind, watching from a distance as the swarm continued its grisly parade. We'd lost both the President and the Governor when the horde had raised itself on its own shoulders, like a macabre version of a cheerleading pyramid, and pulled their helicopter down.
Day and night the horde progressed; bones gleaming in the sun, glowing in the moonlight. The chirping of joints audible like crickets on a summer's evening amplified to a deafening volume.
By the fourth week religious leaders from all over the world were making their way to the only building left standing in the path that now looked like an ever expanding cone, the tip in Topeka, the base falling into the North Atlantic. Satellite photos showed the waters of the ocean churning white as the marching dead continued underwater on their grim journey.
The mathematicians tell us that if the ever widening swathe of destruction continues at its current rate, the earth will be completely devoid of life in six month's time.
Earth's only hope is that there is some clue; a book, an object, protective magic words of some kind secreted in this single untouched building that can save mankind from the skeletal future that seems inevitable.
We're making our way to the building to help. I'll do whatever they need me to do. I'll guard, cook, sweep the floors, hell; I'll stand on my head and sing Swing Low Sweet Chariot if it'll help someone trying to figure out how to save the world.
This looks like our last battle, and I'm much too young to die.




Thanks to Cathy Russell [ganymeder] for the Story Starter inspiration. Her start: Even daytime hours were fraught with peril, now that the dead no longer feared the sun...
I didn't actually use the line, but it jump started the grim frame of mind needed to write it.

Road trip……

Wanda Warmheart is out and about today practicing her King's English.

Wanda Warmheart's Witchy Ways, Avast my heart, Hardboiled and Alien in my tea are the titles of four of my flash fiction pieces enjoying an opportunity to be read in authentic English accents this month. From October 2-10^th a group of dedicated individuals headed up by Damien G. Walter will be whipping up enthusiasm for the pleasure of reading by gathering people together in and around Leicester, England at a myriad of events to celebrate the written word.

A literacy event called Everybody's Reading kicked off this weekend with author Bali Rai reading a story at half time to twenty thousand people at the Leicester vs. Scunthorpe football match.

Thanks to my lovely friend Hagelrat, an avid reader and a highly respected book reviewer, three of my pieces were featured at Un:Bound on Saturday and the fourth was featured yesterday at the main site of Everybody's Reading.

My hope is that I'll get to see film of somebody reading Wanda Warmheart's Witchy Ways to a bunch of school age kids in a cool English accent. It doesn't have to be anybody famous…..but hey wouldn't it be cool if Neil Gaiman turned up?

*gets out her genie lamp and rubs it frantically*

Click here for a full schedule of events from the Leicester City Council and the Leicester Library System

Staking a wild claim……..Flash Fiction

Tommy thought he was a vampire. The kids in the neighborhood just thought he was a weirdo. The word the grown ups used was delusional. Then one day his kid brother found him face down on the ground near the back of their garage. He'd landed on a wooden rake. The general consensus of the gang of kids standing around rubber necking was that he'd been trying to fly and had misjudged his ability to turn into a bat. The coroner came and took the body away.

I knew I'd have to leave town before they opened Tommy up for the autopsy. They were going to wonder how all that garlic got in his mouth and up his nose. I'd been hoping the sun would destroy my handiwork, but wouldn't you know it, a cloudy day had dawned.

Hardboiled ----Flash Fiction

Non smokers taste wonderful; clean and like soap, or salty with sweat from an honest day's work. A smoker tastes bitter, yellow nicotine oozing from every pore. His tongue, skin and cum all yellowish and sharp on the palate. But they're easier to catch, what with all that wheezing while running.

And afterwards, when you cut off his smoking hand and boil it in a pot, the water turns saffron, filling your lovely lair with the intoxicating reek of the addictive pacifier of the masses.

My landlady objects to the smell though, so sometimes I throw in a little tarragon.

 

The fiction police-----Flash Fiction

"Let me get this straight," Len said with a grin on his face, "some guy you met in your critique group wrote a disturbing piece of fiction aimed at you and published it on his blog. "

Holly nodded her pretty head and delicately forked some spaghetti and meatballs into her cupid bow mouth.

"You asked him to take it down, but he wouldn't, so you hired some company called The Fiction Police and they took care of it for you."

Holly nodded again and reached for a roll to butter.

"The guy got three chances to cease and desist. When he refused to cooperate, they did outrageous things to him like making his hair fall out, flooding his basement with ghosts and unpotty training his dog. Have I got this right so far?"

Holly's eyes sparkled at him as he waved the pamphlet she had given him to emphasize his point.

"And they can do all this because they have mythical beings on staff; like fairies, witches and honest lawyers."

Holly smiled at him and added some dressing to her salad.

"And now because I'm a writer, and you've run into some other writer whose bubble stood slightly left of center you want me to sign this contract in the back of the pamphlet before we go to the movies?"

Holly handed him a pen, "Yes I do. And I certainly want you to sign it before we get back to my place where you'll gather me ever so gently into your arms and kiss me goodnight."

Len looked again at her cupid bow mouth, used his writer's imagination for a bit, took the proffered pen and signed the standard pre-fictional agreement in the back of the pamphlet.

Zombie Clowns from Space -------Flash Fiction

It started with his foot, as these things often do. Tony awoke to a throbbing beneath the covers that was unlike the normal morning throbbing he had been used to all of his life. Well, had been used to since the age of thirteen anyway. He steeled himself for the worst and flung back the covers. It was just as he suspected. He had the beginnings of clown foot. He rummaged in his bedside drawer to find the official government pamphlet on what to do in the early stages.

Step One: To prevent widespread panic, do not roam the streets in your condition

Step Two: Call 1-800-Zombie-Clown

Step Three: Sit calmly in your bathtub/shower and wait for assistance or liquefaction to arrive

Tony was a rule following kind of chap; he found that it made life in general easier. In that particular way, among many others, he was very unlike his twin brother Reggie. His brother Reggie was as touchy as a shaved monkey and felt that anyone who told him no was to be crushed like a bug. Tony didn't know how Reggie's wife, Claire, bore up under Reggie's constant aggression.

Tony thought of Claire and her lovely calm eyes as he punched in the number on the pamphlet, spoke to the operator and then went to sit in his shower stall. It was a bit cramped, what with his rapidly expanding foot, but he managed to wedge himself in and sat calmly waiting, knowing that help would soon arrive. The government liked to contain these outbreaks quickly. They didn't want a recurrence of Poughkeepsie Walmart 2016. Tony shuddered at the memory of the public service announcement film footage. It opened of course with the meteor strike and then there was the horror of all of those zombie clowns lurching through the aisles throwing cream pies at one another, pouring laundry soap and other handy items down one another's trousers and generally being incredibly unentertaining. It had been such a relief when the tank commanders rolled in, bolted the doors and imploded the building.

Tony and Claire had met in high school that very week. Reggie, since he'd skipped a grade, had been away at college, but when he came home for the holidays he took one look at Claire and determined she would be his. Two years of full court press later, they were married. That night he gave Claire her first black eye. Tony's phone rang jarring him back to the present. There was a delay. Was there someone he could call to make sure he didn't leave the apartment? Tony called Claire. She came right away, assessed the situation and made him a cup of tea; adding three sugars since it was dire.

They read the rest of the pamphlet together in order to track Tony's symptoms. He seemed to be one of the slow transformers. Some went right to raging homicidal mania, then liquefied, some lurched about for a bit walking invisible dogs on stiff leashes, throwing buckets of confetti on unsuspecting strangers; eventually committing suicide in unoriginal ways.

For the public good, the Zombie-Clown Agency took no chances these days. They nipped any outbreak in the bud by euthanizing the stricken as soon as transformation was evident.

***

Some hours later, Claire signed the official form on the official clipboard for the official agent. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she recounted the harrowing events of the afternoon. Tony had dressed himself in full clown regalia and lurched to the roof. His brother Reggie had arrived in time to try to talk him down, but failed. A struggle had ensued, and Tony had leaped off the building, narrowly missing a bus of German tourists. The tourists had the whole thing on film. The agent watched the film which ended in a freeze frame of himself flaming the body.

Claire played a slightly different version of the events in her mind's eye, but she kept that version to herself. The agent didn't need to know that Reggie had burst into Tony's apartment and found Claire snuggled in Tony's lap kissing him in the shower stall. He didn't need to know that Reggie had called Tony a dumb ass, thrown a bottle of benadryl at his head, and reminded Tony that he had once swelled up the same way when he was four after a bee sting. He didn't need to know that Reggie had pulled Claire out of the shower by her hair. He didn't need to know that during the ensuing struggle Tony had shoved him and Reggie had hit his temple on the sink top. He didn't need to know that determined eyes had locked over Reggie's unconscious body in mutual understanding. He especially didn't need to know that they had dressed Reggie as a clown, manhandled him to the roof and Tony had tossed Reggie off. He also didn't need to know that Claire had three busted ribs waiting to be re taped under her sweater.

Claire came back to the task at hand, swiped her face with her sleeve, handed the official clip board back to the official agent and accepted his official condolences on the official loss
of her brother-in-law.

***

Tony woke to a throbbing under the covers. He rolled over to Claire and pressed it against her warm thigh. Claire opened her eyes and smiled sleepily at him.

Tony kissed her and cuddled her gently into his embrace. Soon he'd have to get up to go to grief counseling. Reggie's transformation from an abusive prick to a caring husband over time with professional assistance would be believable to those near and dear to Claire. After all, it's a shock losing your twin brother in such a gruesome manner; and would of course make you want to cherish those left to you and live life to the fullest.

For her part, Claire determined to thank the zombie clowns from space for arriving on Earth at least once a day. Simple gratitude, she had always felt, along with morning wood, were two of the best things in life.

Breathe -----Flash Fiction

Breathe. That was the first word James ever said to me. Just like that. Nothing else. Then he was just a solid wall of comfort sitting beside me while I sobbed.

That was James in a nutshell, loving, giving, open hearted. One day that heart simply stopped. Mid stride on the golf course. He fell hard enough to make a dent in the wet turf.

I buried his ashes in the park near the creek. Just lifted some velvety moss and watered him in.

There's no marker, it's technically an illegal grave. I didn't ask permission.

He walked that path almost every day for forty years, letting it feed his soul. I can't imagine anyone begrudging him lying underneath it now and returning the favor.

The dent where he fell eventually filled itself in. Time marching on.

Time marches to a different drummer for me.

Killer invitation…….Flash Fiction

He had the handwriting of a psychopath. That should have tipped me off right there. Looking back, there were other, smaller things. Your instead of you're, never capitalizing i, some rather sophomoric humor. But when you're instant messaging with someone, you make allowances. It's fast and furious; sometimes the fingers can't keep up with the brain.

When the invitation to meet came with those beautiful roses, I couldn't resist, even though part of me worried about how he knew where I worked.

This gobsmacked frozen moment in time is the reward I get for not paying attention to the signposts as they waved frantically at me from the online highway.

I'm so glad now that I didn't send the photo of me wearing that lacy black teddy. I felt myself flush head to toe at the idea. Looking at his earnest face as he sat clutching a carnation, the twin of the one in my hand, I knew it would have been the death knell of me and my career, and may have killed him as well.

I finally convinced my feet to carry me across the room to his table. I didn't sit down; I broke both the good and bad news to him as gently as possible and then fled with as much dignity as I could muster.

The bad news is I'll be blocking him from my email account. The good news is he got a B+ on the algebra quiz on Friday.