Flash Fiction : In the Sweltering Dark

For our summer flash fiction, I submit this 952 word short story.

In the Sweltering Dark

by Linda Robertson

Abigail roused to the sweltering dark, but she was not in her bed. 

Drowse fled away as realization struck: she was in a boat. Tear-shaped, it had only room enough for her, and barely that. As she slid onto a sitting position, she could not straighten her legs. Her pantsuit was dirty and there was sand and mud under her nails.

What in Hell is going on?

Pushing her gray hair out of her face, she scanned around but recognized nothing. The night-shrouded shores offered no explanation. Sweat beaded on her brow, but not purely from the stress of this moment. Despite the lack of sun in the sky, it had to be a hundred degrees here. A hundred and twenty. 

Thinking to splash some water on her face, she dipped a hand into the fluid but drew back instantly. Even the river seemed about to boil. 

How did I get here?

Thinking back, Abigail had trouble remembering. She knew her name. She knew she was an Executive Assistant to the Curator of Greek and Roman Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art – had been since graduating from Bryant Stratton thirty-two years ago. She had a cottage in a posh suburb. But she hadn't been home… and she certainly wasn't there now.

Eyes closed and hands covering her face, she fought to remember. 

Travelling. 

Snippets of calm, blue ocean shifted into a churning mass of green and gray. A gentle curve of coastline being ravaged by the swells of giant, foamy waves. White houses in the rain.

Mykonos. I was in Greece! A dream assignment and vacation in one.

There had been a storm. The charter boat bucked and heaved under her. She was told to go below deck; she hadn't understood the words but the captain pointed.

She hadn't made it.

Reliving it, she felt the wave grip her, lift her, and pull her from the deck like a monster. Just drops of water, she'd thought. Just drops...but gathered into millions, surging to the whim of a tempest's fury, and she was powerless. The Aegean Sea closed over her head. Gray turned to black. 

I'm dead.

Pulling her hands from her face, she opened her eyes again.

Yet I’m here. But where is here? If I’m dead…this is…no. No. It cannot be.

The speed of the river increased. Ahead, it split. One side flowed into a thick mist, the other seemed alight under the mist. Leaning, she steered the boat toward the light.

Nearing, she found that wasn’t mist on this side, but smoke. And the light on the water was flames.

Leaning again, twisting the boat beneath her, she willed it to change its course. But Abigail could not alter the bearing. Her path had been chosen.

Fear claimed her as she neared the flaming portion of the river. A more tangible version of death was about to seize her.

Hugging herself to keep as far from the flames as possible, the smoke enveloped Abigail and she floated among the flames. Every breath of this steamy air made her lungs feel more scalded.

In seconds, figures appeared to the left and right, near the shoreline. They were women, some ankle deep in the water, some knee deep. All moaned or wept.

At the sound of a nearby scream, Abigail turned sharply as another woman appeared, closer, and waist deep in the river. This one wore a tattered blouse with scorched cuffs, and her thin hair hung like so many threads. The burnt cuffs flaked away like ash as she reached out, broken nails scratching at the rail but finding no purchase. She cackled and cried, though it could have been mad laughter.

Drifting onward, the figures grew more numerous, many much closer to the boat. Their piteous cries filled Abigail’s ears and she covered them but could not block the sound. Her eyes squeezed shut again and seemed to continue burning from the smoke.

This couldn’t be happening.

She thought of her children and her husband, finally acknowledging the pain and loss they must be suffering, and her heart grew heavy knowing they would grieve. In his own way, so would her dog, Dante—

At his name, knowledge connected with thoughts and ideas and bound tight as she looked around again.

                                            

Phlegethon.

“I’ve committed no violent crimes,” she shouted into the smoky haze and drawing the attention of those trapped in the river. “I am not meant to be here!”

She felt and heard the scratch of something on the bottom and the boat lurched to a halt despite the current. Peering over the edge, she saw a wrinkled face barely above the surface of the lake. White hair fanned around her. “Help me!” The woman moved slightly to either side as if keeping the ebb of the heated water from flowing into the corners of her eyes and up her nose. Her arm, beneath the surface must have grabbed the keel. “Help!”

Being restrained in the river, the flames latched onto the boat. They licked up the sides, painting her view in orange and red. “Let go!”

From the river came only laughter. Not just the closest one; all the women began to laugh.

Abigail pulled off her shoe and threw it at the old face. Fire-water splashed across the woman’s eyes and she screamed. The boat began to drift again, but too late. The flames had set in and the heat redoubled at Abigail’s back—

Sitting up in her bed, Abigail gasped. Lightning flickered and thunder boomed outside her window. Aside from the pouring rain there was no sound. No light. Not even the clock.

The electric’s out. AC cut off.

And another hot flash crawled over her.

Summer Fiction Excerpt

It's summer time. Hideous, horrible, sweat everywhere and on every thing summer. When the sun is too bright and more than five minutes in its light scorches unprotected skin.

I'm not a fan. but you know who is? Vadrigyn, the fire-warrior protagonist from my debut Larcout. Even she knows fragile blood beings have no business under the brutal sun.

Here's tidbit of the opening for your pleasure:


LARCOUT Fire Born, Blood Blessed: Book 1

CHAPTER 1

Blood-beings could be chattel or they could be char. There were no other options for them in Agenwold. The four male gods had created these arid mountains as a prison for their sister’s fire-children, the Morsam. The Morsam, in turn, made Agenwold a prison for any male god’s child foolish enough to cross the Pogichan Sea. If blood-beings bothered to think before they fled, they would know freedom did not exist here.

Still, blood-beings ran without regard for their destination.

Vadrigyn os Harlo leaned against the warm mouth of a shale cave, watching her kin toy with their morning prey. The Morsam’s broad golden wings reflected the suns, blinding the bestial Nivurnian as he scrambled down the mountainside, sometimes on two feet and sometimes on four. The Nivurnian’s striped tail and tattered pants showed damage from the heat.

Blood-beings refused to admit the unfiltered intensity of the six suns ringing Agenwold posed a threat to their persons. The turbulent skies over their native nations had shielded them from the truth, yet even when exposed to the facts they clung to the lie.

“Vadrigyn, will you not save that man from the winged monsters?” The Nivurnian behind her spoke with soft deference.

“The entrance to my holdings is no secret. If he wished to be saved he would run toward us and not the sea,” she answered in the foreign tongue of her recently acquired chattel. They huddled in the darkness of the cavern, safe from the suns and bored Morsam. “He is like many of you blood-beings—fragile and willfully blind. He believes he can conquer the terrain, yet excludes the suns from his consideration. He thinks he can run faster than a fire-child can fly, yet he ignores the physical obstacles only he faces.”

An animalistic bray drifted up to the cave. Frustrated keens sounded from the swarm of circling Morsam. Her chattel shuffled back. She returned her attention to the fleeing Nivurnian. He no longer ran. His round furry ears peeked from a ring of boulders. His claws scraped at the unmovable stones to no avail. Another scream and he vanished from sight into a hunting trap—one of hers, to be precise.

Fool.

The stupidity of blood-beings amused her kin. Her kin’s stupidity provided opportunities for her. She leveraged those opportunities to amass more blood-beings. The cycle endured day after day, year after year. One day she would break free of the pattern, and break free from the mountain. One day she would prove to the gods that the burn of her essential fire was more than destructive, it was evolutionary. It was a fire that cleared away the old and fed the new.

Live. Learn. Burn.

Read more here: LARCOUT an excerpt

Rites of Spring Flash Not So Fiction

Here's my flash fiction:

He lived.

And because he's still around to adore when we seriously believed the old dude with the bad heart, liver disease, and bladder cancer would check out during surgery to remove a bleeding mass on his back, I am bailing on you to sit and hold the grumpy old man.

But look. Isn't his little spring green coat (hiding a wicked big incision) on point for the season?

Flash Fiction: Rites of Spring

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz
I wonder where the dragons is?
No snow to mark their prints
No ice to frost their flames
How are we to know from whence the dragons cames?

They say the horde will ride
Demanding tithes of gold
Taxes in the season of rain and mud and cold

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz
Do the dragons wonder where their hatchlings is?
Wrapped and tucked in blankets
Buried in the well
When they burn my village, I'll see them all in hell




*A riff on the original "Spring in the Bronx" by Anonymous

Cold Outside - Flash Fiction for the Frozen

     Fire painted the stone walls of the throne room red. Corva Frostmache stood before her mother's throne, surrounded armed men. Dortel, the self-styled lord of the clan, sat forward, studying her, a hint of triumph in his too wide smile.
     "The charge is sedition, Corva," he said. "How do you plead?"
     "You sit upon the throne of the clans, my mother's rightful place, and you ask that question? The Gods strike you down for the murder of the queen and for usurping her throne," she replied.
     "Enough." Dortel waved a plump sausage of a hand and sat back. "Put her out."
     Elmat, a wizened skeleton of an advisor, hesitated, looking between Corva and his lord. "Sir. The vote."
     "Am I not lord here? There will be no vote. Put her out."
     "It's the frost moon!" the older man protested. "The cold . . ."
     Dortel's self-satisfied smile turned Corva's stomach. "Mayhap the cold will cool Corva's temper and her attempts to stir up treason."
     Her fists clenched. "We are the Frostmache. Justice is our call."
     "You were the Frostmache," he corrected. "A new age has come. No more will our mothers rule our clans. The might of our arms will bring riches and new glory to our age. . . Damn your plucking at my sleeve, old man! What do you want?"
     "You sought my wisdom, sir," Elmat said.
     "Speak it, then!"
     "You are young, yet. Much has been forgotten. Legend says the Forstmache draw their power from winter itself. If you mean to stamp out the line, you would do well to cut this one down where she stands."
     "This is your advice? Fairy tales and the means to make a martyr of her?" Dortal demanded. "You're older than I thought. You would give a rallying cry to those mired in a past swept away."
     "By your brutality," Corva said.
     "I will not sully the edge of my blade with her blood," he spat. "Get out and die, witch. We'll seek your corpse for burial come the thaw."
     The huge, iron-banded oak doors boomed. Snow and razor sharp crystals of ice snarled in on the wail of the wind.
     Corva lifted her chin lifted and strode for the door the usurper's soldiers held.
     Elmat met her at the door, a frown upon his lips that deepened the furrows already plowed across his brow. He held out a hand.
     A single coal from the hall fire. That much tradition they'd observe?
     Corva sneered. "Keep your pity, old fool."
     His frown deepened and he thrust the warm clay holder into her hand. "It's cold outside."
     She nodded. "Your wisdom is wasted when you speak it to one who will not hear. Cold you say? I'm counting on it."

February 2017 Flash Fiction

Its Cold Outside


The days had darkened and the frozen flakes had fallen. The rain came, creating a mist as it threatened to wash away the layer of snow but Winter fought back. The temperature dropped and now the white world wore a glistening topcoat of ice.

In the darkened forest, the bare branches were bowed from the weight, but reflecting the moonlight, the trees glimmered like ghosts. Zaiera viewed it from her open window, raising the fur-lined hood to cover her head. She did not want to mar the unbroken beauty of this crystal-covered ground, but leaving footprints was unavoidable.

She lowered her pack, then moved to sit on the sill.

She was going. The best they could do was follow. But they could not stop her.

Flash Fiction: Baby, It's Not Cold Outside

Seven inches. There should have been a minimum of seven inches of fresh snow on the ground. Those seven inches should have been layered atop ten more, minus two for melt and refreeze. The weather frogs had promised. It was February, after all.

Instead, flowers had not only germinated, they'd begun to bloom.

The only seven inches he'd loll in this year was in his orthopedic bed. The canvas cover had worn to a softness that cradled his aching hips and shoulders. He winced as the degenerative disks in his lower back sent spasms down his left leg.

Next year then. Maybe next year he'd mush across fields blanketed in thick snow. The frigid winds ripping through his coat. The snowflakes clinging to his face, giving the world a lovely haze. The pure silence of a breathless wonderland waiting to echo his call. ...

Next year. Maybe. If the drugs kept the pain at bay. If the next stroke didn't take mobility from both legs. Maybe next year.

With a grunt and a grumble, the old husky shook in his harness and boots and went back inside.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

"Santa Claus is coming to town."

"Uh huh."

"Santa Claus is coming to town."

"Don't know how it's escaped your notice, Joe, but we're on Mars. Also. Your culture. Not mine. And while technically, the planet does have a north pole . . ."

"He knows."

I rolled my eyes. "When you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good. Yes. Yes. I know the song. What the hell is wrong with you, Joe?"

I shot him a glance, but kept a firm grip on the sample isolated inside the sealed chamber where we performed soil tests in a thus far fruitless search for signs of life. That would be a hell of a Christmas present, should I suddenly take up observing a holiday outside the purview of the Buddhist philosophy I'd grown up with in rural China. Finding life. Life outside of the increasingly odd expedition leader who'd brought me this set of samples from a tunnel bored deep into the flanks of Olympus Mons.

I studied the man. His breath fogged the clear glass shielding his face. Even so, I detected perspiration beaded on his pallid forehead and upper lip. His golden brown eyes didn't quite focus upon me. I frowned and gently set my soil sample back into the stand awaiting the test tube. I wrestled free of the thick gloves that provided my access to the flat gray-brown mud. Actual mud. That meant water. Water meant the remote possibility of life. Even in the lightless depths of the last place on this dead hunk of planet that might retain traces of life-giving warmth from the cooling core. I shook away my curiosity and speculation about the sample and approached my colleague. "You okay, Joe? You don't look so good."

"Oh, you better watch out. You'd better not cry." He reached for my air hose.

Ice dripped down my spine. I started and stepped out of reach. "I'd better not cry? Joe . . ."

"What do you want for Christmas, Mai?" Another slow move, this time for my faceplate.

"That's it." I turned for the door.

He stepped in front of it, trapping me in the increasingly small lab. "What do you want for Christmas?"

I blinked, recalling my stupid wishful thinking - that it would be fun to find life on the Red Planet. I gasped, stared at him, and couldn't stop the whisper. "Life?"

He nodded and stepped closer. "You'd better not cry. You'd better not shout. I'm telling you why."

I swung around an instrument table, scooping up a scalpel. Tiny. Ineffectual. Sharp enough to put a hole in his pressurized suit if he kept trying to get my air supply away from me. "Joe! Stop it! You're sick! Running a fever. That must be the problem. We've got to get you to the infirmary. You need treatment. Who knows what a simple infection - - " I stopped mid-sentence to listen to what I'd said. "Infection. My God. Life. Infection. Is that it? I won't find life in that sample in there because somehow you breached containment. You're hosting -- whatever."

"You'd better not cry. You'd better not shout."

I reeled. 'Don't shout.' He meant don't call out for help. My heart quaked and I couldn't get my breath. How could I not? Joe might die. And if he did, my first chance to catch a glimpse of an actual Martian organism would die with him. Yet if I alerted the rest of the base, a round of antibiotics or antivirals later, and I'd have lost my chance just the same. "If I don't tell anyone," I began, "will you let me take a blood sample? I want to see."

His teeth flashed in a grin. He caught my wrist in a tight grip that set my teeth on edge. Prying the scalpel from my fingers sliced through his gloves. Blood seaped through the cuts. My breath came in short, useless bursts. I yanked against his hold. No effect. He cut my suit and me where my gloves met my pressure suit. My blood welled up. I yelped.

"Santa Clause is coming to town." He smeared pressed his bloody fingers into the cut on my wrist.

The Origin of Elves: Flash Fiction

He could hear them. Their rages. Their threats. Their tantrums and tirades. The words flowed down sewers and rattled under bridges. They clinked along chainlink fences and skittered over concrete alleys. They flew on wings of rancor and fear into the darkness where sunlight never reached.

They came to him.

Every pernicious word uttered by a child lingered in the cavern, etching the name, date, and location on cold stone walls. Every new naughty child caused a hair to grow upon his lanky body. The more caustic the brat, the darker the hair. The crueler the crime the longer his horns. Whenever the whelps drew blood his nails grew, thicker and sharper.

He danced his talons along the balustrade and surveyed the workshop below. Thousands of tormentors, bullies, and  unholy terrors labored over toys, games, and technologies they would never own. Oh how they toiled, their grimy malnourished little bodies bent and hunched. Not a word dared to be spoken, not a tune braved their misery.

Only when they'd truly repented would they be set free. He was in no rush to let them go. Good laborers took time to train. And patience. He had an abundance of one and none of the other. Plus, as the population expanded, so did the workshop. He was always shorthanded.

Lo, the holy days were finally here, when the children of the world faced the consequences of their words and deeds. Time to replenish the workforce.

He shouldered his bottomless bag and plucked a hair from his chin. The magic of the season opened a portal to the first of many new Entitled Little Vicious Evil Shits.

Elves.

Beware Krampus. 

Tonight, he is coming to town.*

*Krampusnacht was last night, 12/5. Call it literary liberty. 

Flash Fiction: When Night Equals Day

At the Summer Solstice, we retreat. The days too long. The sun too painful. Everything is too bright.
Colors. People. Sky.
Everything is too loud. Insects. Rivers. Trees.
The earth burns and the air scorches.
We are unwelcome.

But at the Autumn Equinox, we are called. Come back, she whispers. I am here, she soothes. I grow stronger, she promises.
We are slow in our fear, but we rise. Emerging. Creeping. Approaching.
The ground is cool and soft beneath our feet. The air is sweet and kind.
We are cherished.

Under the stars, we dance with the night.

Lady of the Star Wind Flash Fiction



For my cover translation flash fiction, I have the great good fortune of pulling Veronica Scott's cover for LADY OF THE STAR WIND

 

 

Someone groaned. His vocal chords burned, leading him to believe he'd uttered the sound. Good sign. He wasn't sucking vacuum. Yet. Forcing his eyes open cost him what felt like a laser cannon blast to the head, but when his vision twisted into focus, the worst of the pain retreated to a sullen, persistent thump in his left temple.

Blue-gray bulkheads surrounded him. Centuries of space travel and no one had found a way to create space-worthy building materials in anything other than grim. The depressing bit was that it wasn't his grim, blue-gray bulkheads.

"Oh good," a feminine voice said. "You lived." She'd propped a shoulder against the door frame. Lush. Blonde.

He shook off his body's interest. More pressing concerns. "Where am I?"

"Aboard the cruiser Star Wind."

"Star Wind. Solar wind," he said. What the hell had happened to his brain that he tripped over translating a poetic ship's name?

She smiled. "Something like."

Focusing on the weapons strapped to her waist, he said, "A destructive force of nature."

"Unless you're armored." She looked him up a down, brows slanted in amusement. "Very few are."

Star Wind. Destructive. He frowned. "My patrol skiff was under attack."

She nodded.

"You rescued me."

"Of course I did," she crooned. "Because the great big payday tucked away in the piece of space debris you patrol goons were guarding isn't the least bit necessary to keep the Star Wind competitive in this cruel universe."

He clenched his fists. "Pirates."

"I prefer 'force of nature.'"

"So I'm a prisoner."

She snorted and straightened. Stepping back, she tapped the doorframe. The distortion of a force field splintered her features. But not her words laced with bloodthirsty amusement. "Oh no captain. We don't take prisoners. We procure entertainment."

Cover Flash Fiction: FATAL CIRCLE by Linda Robertson

FATAL CIRCLE -- Flash Fiction based solely on the cover of Linda Robertson's Urban Fantasy.

Keys.

The keys were upstairs on the dresser. Seventy-eight steps. Seventy-eight steps from the foyer to the master bedroom and back. Seventy-eight opportunities for one of the babies to hear the slightest disturbance in the force and scream his puddin' head off.

Then his brother would hear. And his other brother. And the other. And the other. Then the unholy choir would sound and the babysitter would bolt. Ears bleeding.

She could do this.

Thirty-nine steps one way.  Five bedroom doors. Stealthy like a ninja. Like a ninja wearing thigh-high leather boots that creaked every time she bent her knees. Bending one's knees was a requirement for climbing stairs. Forty-five minutes to lace them up meant she couldn't just whip them off. Five-inch heels made her ass look great, but the ruckus they made on the steps would sound like the Charge of the Heavy Brigade.

They were just babies. She was a grown ass woman. With keys on the dresser. Keys that stood between her and an epic date night.

"Wish me luck, hon. I'm going up."

Clean Fire - Flash Fiction for James A. Moore

We're playing a game this week at the SFF Seven, writing flash fiction inspired by a book cover belonging to the writer who posts on the day after us.

This means I drew Jim.

Hee hee hee.

Oddly enough, it perfectly fits the world of the series I’m currently writing, Sorcerous Moons. Maybe I’ll end up using this. Cheers, Jim!

 *************

Fumes from the fire hung heavy in the desert air, only slightly less choking than the ever present grit. Another day, another sandstorm. And, naturally, a hot fire to eliminate the last wriggling bits. Her iron battle axe cleaved through the foully animated golems easily enough, but it wasn’t worth it to stay there, chopping them into pieces small enough to render them completely harmless. They’d emptied the city of all life already.

Might as well burn it to the ground and move on.