Another way late fiction post, but here are my flash fiction from Wednesday Words in November 2023!
Such a Strange Time: A Wednesday Words Flash Fiction
November 1, 2023
Water crashed below into the tumultuous river as the soul hovered over the edge, a silver wisp lost in hesitation.
Screaming cut through the rush of water, and a dark soul pelted down the waterfall and disappeared into the mist, its pain and sorrow cut off and lost to powerful nature.
The silver soul watched, waited, but nothing resurfaced.
“Claimed by the waterfall,” a soft voice hummed, the sound of a thousand waves contained within each word.
The silver soul stilled. “Is that good?”
The voice chuckled, and the air around the soul dripped in warm humidity. “Such a strange time to be stuck. There is nowhere else to go but over.”
“And if I don’t go?”
Another scream, a mixture of sobbing and howling, swirled through the river and plummeted over the edge.
“No one escapes death.”
Pain twisted through the soul, replacing indecision with fear and memory. Of aching deep inside, a slow, decaying darkness taking over. Sobbing nearby, a final breath, then a river.
“I left someone behind,” the soul moaned. “I need to go back.”
The air tightened. “There is no back. Only forward. Jump, and let your soul join the others.”
“No.” Transparency shimmered into form. “No, not yet.”
The soul dove opposite of the falls, wiggling forward as if it were a powerful fish, but even it couldn’t beat the river’s currents. Water raged then won, and the silver soul cried out as it tipped over the falls.
Another soul claimed.
Fame is His Master: A Wednesday Words Flash Fiction
November 8, 2023
The man hummed with satisfaction as his phone rested on his chest, beeping as each new message flooded in. Likes, reactions, comments, sharing…all fueling the energy pouring into his body from the tiny electronic device.
Slaves, all of them. Piftful humans tied to the endless scroll, the desperate need for new content. The man didn’t even need to try that hard for his meals now. Not with the internet bringing him human emotions and energy almost effortlessly.
Except, this last rush of energy wasn’t enough. The man basked beneath his phone, listening to the slowing notifications with each beat of his heart. When the notifications stopped, the man opened his phone and posted another prepared video. Again, energy rolled over him, consuming him, but it didn’t last long. Didn’t make him feel full.
Grumbling, he opened the damn app and sorted through the business side of things. The tracking, the numbers.
The bars on the charts were shrinking. Little red numbers flagging a decrease in interaction. Odd. The man scrolled through the data. He’d never needed to try hard. Humans always flocked to his videos, unsuspecting that he wasn’t really like them. That he was feeding off their obsession.
His numbers had been decreasing for months. He checked the other social media apps, finding the same things. Research promised the same thing. The companies were throttling him for money.
Dammit.
The man had become complacent. And now? Once again he’d had to work for his food.
Fame was a bitch.
Once There Was A Story: A Wednesday Words Flash Fiction
November 15, 2023
The old woman tucked golden strands behind her granddaughter’s ear as she rested in her lap.
“Grandma, Momma will be home soon? You promise?” the small girl mumbled, half-asleep.
The old woman’s breath caught in the back of her throat. Could she promise her darling another lie?
Yes, if she had to.
And so she did, promising the small girl, her soul tearing a little more.
The girl finally slipped into dreamland, and the grandmother carried her into their bed where they slept clinging to each other.
When the girl started murmuring, her grandmother hugged her. Long did they carry into the night, and the next, a cycle of broken evenings as the small child desperately needed her missing mother, too young to understand death.
Years passed, and the girl grew. She no longer asked when her mother would return. She’d learned the truth at some point. It was an accident, her mother gone quick. The girl had even attended the funeral, but she hadn’t understood back then.
Eventually the role reversed. The grandmother’s strength began to fail, and it was the granddaughter who talked her through long nights of pain and memory loss. And with time, the grandmother no longer saw her granddaughter but her own child. She’d ask questions, pleading. And her granddaughter, crying, would reply, “Once there was a story,” and she’d tell her tale each day until her grandmother reunited with her mother, and all that was left was stories too painful to recall.
You Know the Beginning: A Wednesday Words Flash Fiction
November 22, 2023
Agatha stilled at the iron gate, letting the mourning ghost search the cemetery on its own. Eagerness tinged the ghost’s aura, adding threads of red to the grays and indigos. It flitted between headstones, following the tug of its long-lost lover.
This was her favorite, watching soulmates reunite. She kept to the shadows, watching the reds grow deeper and stronger as the ghost felt the pull harder until they stopped looking at headstones and rushed ahead, obsessed only with the connection.
Yet this ghost never sped up, never lost itself in the chase. The reds remained thin threads, and doubt crept through Agatha’s pounding heart. Did she misinterpret the signature pull of eternal love?
The ghost froze, its aura turning black, and its fear wrapped around Agatha’s throat, choking her own emotions. Its voice clawed through her mind, doubting they were fated lovers after all.
A crack ripped through the earth, spreading open the grass before a wind-worn gravestone, and a ghost tainted in a mixture of black and dark purple slipped through the crack before the grass knitted together once more.
“Is that…them?” Agatha hissed as both ghosts flashed through myriad colors as they stared at the other. Only when the colors stopped did they rush forward, crashing into a translucent kiss.
A warm voice vibrated through her. “For finding them, thank you.”
She grinned, watching their souls fuse and slowly fade into the next existence. “As long as you’re together now.”
The voice hummed. “A new beginning, together.”
Or That’s What I Thought: A Wednesday Words Flash Fiction
November 29, 2023
Maggie kept an eye on the child as he slipped between night’s shadows and tombstones. Prepping a reanimation spell wasn’t the best time to have small watchers, but she didn’t want to dissuade a child from his fascination, either. It’s not like schools talked about necromancy as a valid career choice, and Maggie hadn’t had an apprentice in decades. Kids just weren’t as interested in the dead anymore…well, the real dead. They craved it on their tv and video games.
Maggie set to work placing runes around the freshly uncovered grave, the lid of the cement burial vault broken and revealing a mahogany coffin deep within. Fall’s leaves scraped away, the runes gleamed beneath a full moon, and an energy sizzled through the air as if lightning were about to strike.
Static sent Maggie’s curls on end, and she knew it was time. She placed the final rune, glanced at the child peaking around a fat tree, and closed her eyes.
As she chanted, power swelled around her. Thunder rolled overhead, and the first sizzle of life streaked across the sky, rushing to her call.
Leaves crunched.
Maggie stopped speaking, the storm and energy freezing around her. When she opened one eye, the boy was only three paces away, almost touching the first rune.
“I wouldn’t touch if I were you,” she hummed.
The boy stepped back, leaves crinkling as he returned to watch from the tree.
“That’s what I thought. Watch a little longer, and then I can teach.”
For more enchanting Wednesday Words by other authors, check out the official Wednesday Words page!