Tag Archives: micro fiction

The Black Pearls

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The Strand, October, 1948

Today’s inspiration from the Time Capsule comes courtesy of The Strand, October 1948. I used captions of illustrations from several different stories in this edition of The Strand to start off a new story. The first five sentences as well as “a stealthy encroachment of chill into his bones” are borrowed captions.

 

The Strand, October, 1948

The Strand, October, 1948

 

*****

Morley sprang up, dark-veined with rage.

Even Slick was startled. “It’s an impossible job,” he said.

The room was ice-cold and dark.

The figure on the bed came suddenly to life. “Did you not hear me? Go,” he ordered, sitting up and pointing a bony yet commanding finger at the door. “Get the Countess. Bring her here.”

“You’d put us in danger again, Squinty? You can’t ask us to bring the Countess here,” said Morley. “What about her bodyguards? And her husband’s spies? They’re everywhere. And they’re well-armed. Didn’t we go through enough getting hold of those pearls for you?”

“I said, bring her here.” Squinty sank back into his pillows.

Morley’s veins throbbed. The Countess! The rustle of her silken dress. The smooth slope of her bare shoulder. Her creamy neck. The string of black pearls around it! Each pearl a perfection!

Oh, how the very memory of those pearls caused a stealthy encroachment of chill into his bones.

“The Countess! The Countess! Always the Countess!” snarled Morley. “Why don’t you think of us for once?”

“You?” Squinty gave a feeble laugh. “Think of you?”

Morley ground his teeth, or what was left of them. He cursed the night he’d run into Squinty in a low-down tavern on the wharf. If only he could have foreseen how he’d end up paying for those free drinks!

*****

I particularly enjoyed a section in The Strand called “Useless Information.” Did you know, for instance, that “The first Victoria Crosses were made of bronze obtained from Russian guns captured during the Crimean War”? Or that “In flight the wings of the common house-fly make more than 300 vibrations per second”? Or that, because of an earthquake “In 1158 the river Thames ‘was dryed uppe, that all London might walk over the same dry-shod'”?

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Shrewd Dude – From The Horse’s Mouth

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Woodbine Racetrack Program 5 June 1976

Inspiration from the Time Capsule: This week I pulled out the Woodbine Official Program from 5 June 1976. Our first summer in Toronto, our first time at the races there. I wondered if we’d put a bet on the horse called Em and S seeing as my husband’s name begins with M and mine with S.

What wonderful names the horses have – Henry the Hammer, Bye Bye Paris, Indigestion, Sharp Sherry, Creme of the Crop…

*****

 

Henry the Hammer was a Shrewd Dude. He knew the fuss over Little Stanley would Blow Over. There was simply No Logic to all the outrage. It was probably Indigestion. They’d all had far too much Continue reading →

The Red Coat

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Brenda sits on the edge of the seat. She can’t lean back and relax. She knows she’ll have to move fast when the moment comes.

She longs to order another coffee but that would mean going to the counter and turning her back on the other tables in the café.

She’s far too warm. The weather report had said a maximum of -14, so she’d bundled up in her down coat. She has to keep it on, zippered right up, even though the café is over-heated. She has to be ready.

Only a couple of minutes left on her parking meter. She can’t leave. She’ll have to risk getting a ticket.

Then it happens and it’s all over. It must have been when she glanced at the newspaper the guy at the next table was reading. When she looked up, the woman had disappeared.

Brenda leaps to the door, rushes out, looks up and down the street. But there’s no sign of the red coat, the long swinging black scarf. Only the traffic warden, tucking a parking ticket behind the windshield wiper of Brenda’s car.

That hadn’t been the first time she’d tried to follow the red-coated woman. You’d think a red coat would make it easy.

*****

Thursday Blurt 2017

Defend Mars

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Philip sat up in his armchair, punched a fist into the air and yelled “People of Mars take up arms and defend your planet.”

Jane turned the page of her glossy magazine and sighed. “Get out of here. It’s Saturday evening and I’m just not in the mood for…”

Philip got to his feet. “Jane?” he said. “J…J… What’s happ…happening? I feel…I feel…” Continue reading →

The Gatherer of Worries

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img_6459

There was once a woman who gathered worries as others gather flowers, beer steins or antique cars.

She lived in a pretty house with a pretty garden full of pretty flowers and scrumptious vegetables. She loved her beets and marrows and dahlias, but most of all she loved her worries. She couldn’t get enough of them.

She’d even borrow worries from friends, beg for their cast-off worries.

Word spread and soon people came from far and wide to give her their worries.

She kept the ones she liked best under her bed, in a rectangular wicker basket. Those worries she didn’t care for she burned on the bonfire on Saturday mornings when the wind was blowing in a southeasterly direction, away from her house.

She only gathered women’s worries. She made this decision reluctantly, but as she told herself, she did know her limits. Anyway, the men were perfectly capable of looking after themselves.

Every morning she sifted through the worries in her basket and decided Continue reading →

The Shine

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Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

The Shine came on Tuesday and left late Saturday evening.

But how many days or weeks had passed between that Tuesday and Saturday?

Some claimed it had been years, decades or possibly centuries. “Think of Snow White,” they said.

Others pooh-poohed any idea that more than the usual Wednesday, Thursday and Friday had slipped by.

“Look,” they said. “No flowers faded while we were in the Shine. Someone has Continue reading →

Crow Soul

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crow

I see its shadow first. The shadow of the one with the big humped shoulders. The misshapen, distorted shadow flits across my open newspaper like a dark breath.

Then comes the cawing – a raucous cacophony. The sky is full of crows.

While the other crows circle and shriek, the hump-shouldered crow sits in the tree beside my chair, silent. Its eyes are blank and dull, its feathers mangy and moth-eaten, showing bald patches on its stomach and head. We stare at each other. I’m the first to look away.

The flock of crows takes off into the woods. Only the hump-shouldered crow remains. I Continue reading →

Swan Girl

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2016

Berwick-upon-Tweed

Her hair was a disaster, matted, dull and tangled. But her fingernails were immaculate – long and smooth.

Her top was like a shroud, draping shapelessly over her shoulders. But her skirt was as glorious and brilliant as a wedding gown.

On her left foot a worn running shoe with scarcely any of the sole remaining, on the right a Continue reading →

The Bride Quest

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embroidery

Alexei was a good husband. At least, he was ready to be a good husband.

He could hew wood with his axe at a speed that put every other man in the village to shame. He could light a fire quicker than you could draw a breath. He could stack firewood, build a table, a chair, a bed. He was ready.

It was time for him to begin his Bride Quest.

What he wanted was not just any wife, he wanted a wife who Continue reading →

Ice Boy Wants Out

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ice sculpture in Place Jacques Cartier, Montréal, March 2016

Ice Boy wants out. Enough of living in an ice cube. There has to be more to life than sub-zero temperatures, icicles and snow.

He wants change, something different. Very different.

He wants sun and warmth. He dreams of a desert island – sand, palm trees, a tube of SPF 30 suntan lotion, a straw hat. Soft twangy music. He’d get himself a grass skirt, dance a little. Shades. He definitely wants shades. The mirrored kind that turn from blue to green to magenta and stop other people knowing what you’re thinking. A cocktail of course. He’d have to have a cocktail. A red one in a curvy glass with a yellow umbrella perched on top.

Ice Boy chips and scrapes and wriggles all night. His fingers are raw, his fingernails broken, he’s exhausted. But by morning he’s gone.

*****

This is Blurt#38 in my Year of the Blurt! My new year’s resolution was to write one Blurt – a quick, spontaneous story – each week through 2016. Thanks for visiting.

Ice sculpture ‘cut out’ – Place Jacques Cartier, Old Montreal, March 2014.