Flash Fiction: Brothers in Arms

This was written for the 17 July Flash! Friday competition. The prompts for the week can be seen here, and included the photo below.

Brothers in Arms

Books were gathered in the town square. More were added as residents threw down volumes that fell with pages fluttering like dying moths in the flames. Everything had to burn. The choking smoke would wipe the slate clean. The pile grew; stories, poetry, history, science, the word of God. All had to be destroyed. From the ashes a new world would arise. A utopia. A world of peace. So they say.

Riot Police. CC2.0 photo by Thomas Hawk.

A man tried running away with a few volumes clutched in his arms. Guards tackled him and he fell, his head cracking on the flagstones. Books fell to be scooped up and thrown onto the still growing pile. The historian was dragged to his feet and guns with live ammunition pointed at him. He put his hands in the air and surrendered to the inevitable. He saw behind the guards a figure flitting through the shadows. Some volumes would be saved.

The caught man looked at each guard in turn. The face behind one of the rifles was his brother’s. His finger was on the trigger. Doing his job just like the others. Without question, without thought. Without knowing how many times this scene had played itself out through time.

He closed his eyes and waited for the bullet. He did not want to see who fired first.

Writing News!

Today is 1 July, which means Camp NaNoWriMo kicks off today - and I have 31 days in which to write 20 000 words as a warm-up to November’s NaNoWriMo.

In Other News

Here are the links to some of the articles I’ve written in the past weeks. You can go to my website to see all of the articles I’ve written.

End the Stigma Surrounding Chronic Illness

What is Self Mastery and Why is It Important?

A Weakened South African Rand – How Will the Weak Rand Affect SA Consumers?

Winter has arrived

Father’s Day for All Father Figures

Other Scribbles

Apart from the above articles, I wrote a short non-fiction piece (which was accepted) for CANSA/KANSA’s anthology which is to be published later this year. I’m not sure if it will also be available in e-book format, though. This piece is probably the most personal I’ve written; as it deals with my mother’s cancer and her death. (As always, I write about happy topics.) Luckily it turned out to be more bittersweet than simply sad. This piece was also written in Afrikaans.

And yet more news!

At long last not only my website, but also my Facebook page is up and running. I’m still finding my feet with the latter, however, though I’m sure I’ll learn how to make the best use of it quite quickly.

I’ve also been away on vacation for the first time in a couple of years - just what the doctor ordered. And just what was needed to get the creativity flowing again.

Flash Fiction - The Souls of Trees

This story was also written for Flash! Friday - you had to include a farmer as character. It’s also midwinter over here… It's also for this story which I posted Loreena McKennit's The Mummer's Dance.

The Souls of Trees
The buyers stared at the last of the acorns enclosed in the pen.  Rising from each was a wispy, humanoid figure veiled in green light. They flickered as they danced to hidden music. Only the chosen could hear the music this far from the forest.
“Got them new from the forest just yesterday,” the tree-soul farmer said.
“They look…” one man began, teeth chattering. His words curled pure white in the air. The farmer struggled to read his lips.
“Sickly,” the second added.

Photo by Fritz Bielmeier

“They become strong when planted,” the farmer said, opening the pen.

The figures danced around them to the music that charmed people into the woods with fairy lights, will-o’-the-wisps, and wilis that made you forget about a world beyond the forest.  But the town needed their light to survive winter. They were hope.

“I’ll take this one.”
The farmer sent the fluttering figure to sleep with a few words and wrapped the acorn in a cloth.

He took the last acorn for himself and planted it in the corner of his room, where it flickered and danced and grew into a strong sapling. Where it lit the long dark of winter. Where it sang to him of spring every night until he fell asleep.

Flash Fiction: Defeated Draugr & As If We Never Met

These stories were written with the photo and “defeat” as the prompts. "Defeated Draugr" received an honourable mention at the 30 May Flash! Friday competition.

Defeated Draugr

We uncovered the grave while digging foundations for a tower that would reach to the stars. Layers of dirt weighed the barrow down and we dug greedily, talking of mounds of buried treasure among the defeated dead.

Layer by layer we removed time’s dirt until we found the sealed barrow entrance. A red light flickered from behind the doorway. Drawn by the promise of gold – or money paid by collectors – we broke away the rotting doorway of wood and stone.

Yellow light shone from the tomb. Inside among golden treasure, on a stone pedestal, were two figures; a man sitting with a shrouded woman in his arms. He was crying, unaware of the corpse lights or his own death.

“She said she would never leave me,” he moaned, rocking slowly. “She said she would wait for me. And now she does not wake!”

Yellow light flickered around the corporeal ghosts caught forever inside the tomb’s imprisoned time.

“She said she would never leave me,” he cried in vain.

We left the gold, jewels, and the dead lovers and built for them a new door. We were unable to tell others what we’d witnessed. There was no language for such deep sorrow, no hope for forgetting that voice defeated by time.

 

Construction of the Statue of Liberty’s Pedestal. CC2.0 photo by National Parks Service, Statue of Liberty ca 1875.

As If We Never Met

As the tower stretched towards the moon, we started thinking ourselves gods that could shape earth to our wishes. I, however, felt very small and mortal every day when you walked past my front door. You were an angel in a world of wood, mud, and bricks. You never saw me at the window, too scared to speak.

At night I stared at the moon, wondering if you would live there with me in the perpetual silver light. I’d work myself to the brink of death if it meant that I had something to offer you. That we could be together.

The building grew slowly and each day I stared at my angel passing. Until, one day, I waited until you came and then went out the door. But I could only smile like a silly teenager. No words would come to me.

The building crumbled on the day we finished. I fell when I ran, cracking my head on fallen masonry.

I awoke in the hospital; my voice not my own, speaking a strange language – a medical marvel to be studied.

You saw me the day I returned home. I introduced myself, but you did not understand me and kept walking.

And I wished we’d never met.