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Apocalypse [Flash Fiction]

Kit posted a writing prompt, so I decided to create a weird piece of flash fiction out of it. Not one of my best, but I’m tired and my legs are burned from standing outside in the sun all day at work. Also, the dialect is purposefully weird, and you’re not supposed to necessarily pinpoint the accent. I know dialect can be annoying, but I felt that if I was going to write a little apocalypse flash fiction piece, I might as well put it down the way I see it (and hear it) in my mind. Enjoy the weirdness and feel free to dislike it (does that even make sense? I really am tired.).

It happened in a searing wave. When grandpappy told me bout it, he got all red in the face, like as if ’twas happening right then while he was saying it. Mam can’t hardly remember any ‘fit, cause she was so small. Da’s older than her – he and Mam say that there was ten years tween them, but years don’t mean any old thing anymore. A year used t’be when the planet went round the fireball once, but time’s all different ways now that the fireball exploded.

Grandpappy told me’n Sean that there was a people a long long time ago that used to love the fireball and called it God. Sean laughed at Grandpappy and tol’im he was stupid cause everyone knows that the fireball was the Devil and tried to kill all of us once. God saved us and made the few docs that lived invent D-Bits so we get our fire vitamins reg’ler. But Grandpappy jus’ looked at Sean laughing and was really sad. He gets this look on his face, Grandpappy does, and I can see that me’n Sean aren’t as good as he wanted us to be. He tells us that were all sorts of stuff when he was a kid that we can’t have now, but I say that it’s better this way. God don’t need books and big buildings and stuff – the Dark is good enough for any prayer meeting and Grandpappy should know that. Mam and Da yell at him sometimes, and Mam calls him something but she never tells me what it means. I guess it’s real bad? She says he’s a Nathiess and says that she’ll be burned if her kids’ll be too. Grandpappy tells her we’re stupid, but I stopped cryin’ about that moons ago.

He might think I’m stupid, but Grandpappy lived when the fireball blew and that means God wanted him to care for Mam so she could marry Da and have Sean’n me. It’s enough to live after what happened to the planet, everyone knows that. Even Grandpappy.


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The Perfect Room

To begin with, it would be large and airy, with tall windows at regular intervals along the wall, to let the daylight in. Curtains, easy to pull and adjust, would hang at these windows, so there would never need to be a glare of the blinding sun at any hour of the day, but only soft light filtering through the cloth.

Comfortable seating would be the next essential in this room. Comfortable couches and saggy arm-chairs would need to fill the space of the room, just beckoning and waiting to be sat on, sprawled upon or even fallen asleep on. The seating must be the type to make even the heartiest and most energetic feel as if they’d like to sink into the pillows and take a little nap.

Next, the lighting. While there must be some sort of strong central light, it shouldn’t be needed most of the time because of the many small lamps, hung with crimson or orange shades so as to cast a comfy, romantic glow. There must be a big, heavy, wooden desk with a good and upright desk chair to go with it.

Lastly, and most importantly – books. The walls are shelves, leaving not one empty space for a picture or hanging. The books are both the adornment and the purpose of the room. Their smell fills every nook and cranny and their soft murmurings are ever present, demanding quietly that you pluck them out of the shelves and lose yourself in them.

This would be my perfect room, and if I ever get enough money to own a house, I’m definitely going to try to create it.

An Introduction to King Gregory

A man was walking through a field. It was sunset, and the tall weeds were waving in the breeze, except where the man had trampled them. He was rather squat, and was making a lot of wheezy noises as he walked, his big rucksack weighing heavily on his back and sweat dripping into his eyes.

The field seemed to whisper around him as he walked, and his movements became increasingly twitchy as the darkness increased. He jumped at small sounds that ended up being crows landing in the field, and he gave an audible gasp when a fox ran past him.

When night had truly fallen, he still had another couple miles of field yet to cross. He seemed, however, to decide against walking in the dark, and settled, with much grunting and swearing, in a space that had been cleared by previous campers in the field.

Another hour later, and the man had succeeded, if rather pitifully, in preparing some form of edible dinner. He sat by the small fire he had managed to coax into being and ate the heated broth he had made with some old bread. He looked deeply unsatisfied and disgruntled, as if not quite used to living like this.

He was, in fact, very used to living this way, as he had been on the run for over two cycles of the moon. The only real reason he was so displeased on this night of all nights was because he had gotten some news, a few hours before entering the field. He had passed a small village, one of those places where everyone was related and Auntie Shay was somehow everyone’s aunt, and while purchasing some well needed supplies at their tiny inn, he had learned that a rider had come four days previously to the town to announce that a new king had risen: King Gregory was killed and his brother, Malcolm, had sorrowfully needed to assume the throne.

Gregory, sitting in a field with some moldy bread and lukewarm broth, was still seething at this unjustified and most disgusting lie.

Miracle Baking

The sky was iron grey all day long, and the wind was sandy and much too warm for a January afternoon. The air was strangely silent as well, as if all the voices in the world were stifled, waiting for something to happen, something to erupt. If this were hurricane or tornado country, or even commonly quaky, I’d say that it was as if everyone was waiting for one of those natural disasters to occur.

And yet, it seemed that the air began to thaw, the sky literally brightened and became blue for a few moments before the sun set and it turned a brilliant pink and red. The reason seemed to be an oven, in an apartment, on the fourth floor of a building. In that oven sat a trey of chocolate chip cookies, baking slowly, spreading warmth and a smell so mouth watering that you could stand a mile away and salivate.

Never underestimate the power of a cookie to make everything seem better – even the weather.