Today I returned to the characters from The Becoming. The Stand, no relation to the King novel, is 659 words. Here’s a bit from the opening:
The dog’s howls were the first sign. Any minute Annara would hear the second–their screams echoed across the mountains. She should be running, but there’s only so much running one person can do. The hunt would never end. The outcome couldn’t be changed but she could change the terms. This could be her fight instead of theirs.
I sometimes forget we live in a world where one can choose whether to be human or something more. The desire had never struck me as appealing. But things change. As I sat in the waiting room I knew I had changed, or rather the disease had changed me.
“Bonner, Emma?” The nurse standing in the door frame looked like a runway model. Hadn’t she been morbidly obese last week?
Joints I didn’t know I had cracked as I pulled myself out of the chair. This time tomorrow I would be hiking the Grand Canyon without the need of pills or rest stops.
“The doctor will be by in a few minutes. Remove all your jewelry and take a seat on the exam table.” She smiled like she knew what was coming next. I’m sure she did.
Pamphlets on the wall about heart disease and cholesterol had been replaced with advertisements from Unigene Corp. Live your life in a New You! A happy family stared back at me. The husband looked like a Clark Kent, the wife was clearly Wonder Woman with a mop, and the child looked almost normal except for the blue tail holding a bottle Cola Cola. A chill shook my entire body.
Two gentle knocks preceded the last moments of my ordinary life.
“Good morning, Emma. Have you made a decision yet? Will it be Xena or Lara Croft?”
***
© Amanda Makepeace
I needed a change of pace after a stressful few days. Alternative Medicine was inspired by a frustrating visit to my Rheumatologist last week. I often joke about wanting Santa to give me bionic limbs for Christmas. In this very short story I took the idea a step further. 
I hope to have the last two parts to Other Worlds sometime this week!
Billions of nanoids rose to the surface of Erin’s hand. Each one emitted an electrical hum. As the hum gained strength the tree began to glow and pulse. A rectangular outline took shape around her hand.
“The source.”
“Did you find it?” Darren’s chest heaved as he spat out the words.
“I don’t think this is a tree all,” she said.
Erin pressed against the outline. The bark receded into the tree, revealing a sunken compartment and the source of the blue light. She pulled out a small crystal sphere.
“Um, Erin? What are we suppose to do with that?”
The rumble of Pragmir growls shifted the earth beneath Erin’s feet. She had managed to avoid these ferocious carnivores so far, but not today.
“Erin. We can do this.”
Darren’s plan was pure insanity, but she knew it might be the only way for her to reach the tree and the source in time.
“No dying today,” she said, and flashed him a quick smile.
Darren darted straight at the beasts, then veered left at the last minute—they took the bait.
Erin rushed forward, placed her hand upon the bark and let the nanoids do their job.
***
More to come…
I’m still playing catch up after my weekend of FUN. Instead of posting them all together, I will publish them separately. Here’s a continuation of Other Worlds from last week.
Fifteen minutes on Earth translated to one hour on this world. This thought kept Erin going as she and Darren raced through the Talusian rain forest.
“Do you know where we’re going?”
“The spectrometer is already picking up readings from the tree. It should be one hundred yards in this direction,” said Darren.
The tree was the source of the rift between Earth and Talus. Erin had been sent to destroy it, a simple mission had turned into a year-long expedition.
“I see it! Oh, no,” she said.
The Tree was surrounded by dozens of Pragmirs, carnivores as large as elephants.
Today’s story is a treat, well, maybe. It’s not yummy or sweet but I am sharing the entire flash fiction story instead of just a teaser. I’m not settled on the title, The Rabbits. If anyone has a better suggestion please share it in the comments!
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The Rabbits, 507 words (rough draft)
The rabbits were back, digging with a fever around the garden fence. A film of crimson stained the fur around their eyes, nose and mouth. The county would never be able to eradicate MRHD from wild rabbits. Modified Rabbit Haemorrhagic Disease was everywhere. RHD itself had been around for years, often used as way to control booming rabbit populations in the wild. When animal activists put a stop to that the government resorted to other methods—genetic modification.
“Mom! There are rabbits in the yard.” Tessa tore into the kitchen. Terror gleamed in her eyes.
“I know. They’re trying to get into the garden again, but I don’t think they’ll have much luck,” I said.
We both watched the through the blinds of the back door, my daughter clinging to my arm. A flash lit up the yard and a wail, not unlike a fox’s call, pierced our ears. Smoke hovered, like a winter fog, over the bodies of ten rabbits.
“I’ll get the bags,” said Tessa. She returned with two large white bags with medical biohazard warnings on the front. Every home had a set, courtesy of the county.
“Let’s make this quick. There could more of them out there.”
Attacks from infected rabbits were rare, but not unheard of, especially in rural areas. We stood on the deck scanning the tree line for ten minutes before I decided it was safe. Those ten minutes were torture for Tessa, who couldn’t stand still for even one minute. The smell of charred rabbit, drifting up from the yard, didn’t help either.
“Put your mask on.”
“I am.”
“Tessa. Don’t start this now. I’m not going to put up with it today.” Fourteen year olds. I couldn’t blame her angst though, not in today’s world. The masks were not to protect us from the smell of burning rabbits or contagion. They were to protect us from the air around us, air riddled with contaminates.
We began work picking up the carcasses with oversized tongs. Some of the rabbits still twitched from the electricity trapped in their muscles.
I’d finished picking up my half but Tessa didn’t appear to be doing anything.
“I don’t like doing this anymore than you.”
“Mom, shh. I think we need to go inside.”
“You’re not going anywhere till all of these rabbits are in the bag.” I walked around the fence, checking for holes. When I reached Tessa I realized this wasn’t more teenage rebellion. “Tessa, what is it?”
She stood rigid, hands shaking. I traced her eyes to the corner of our property and I too froze. There in the shadows, under the diseased Crab Apple tree, was a coyote. Blood oozed from his nostrils. His chest heaved in violent shudders.
I reached for the handgun at my side. John had been right. My crazy ex-husband had been right. It was only a matter of time before MRHD jumped to another species.
“Tessa, get behind me.”
I raised my Glock, another gift from my ex, the same moment the diseased animal charged.
****
© Amanda Makepeace
Today’s story is a micro-fiction piece of 100 words. Last night I semi-randomly chose three words I wanted to feature in today’s story (tree, pills, leather). I also set a challenge of writing only 100 words, no more and no less. Challenges like these are always fun, at least for me.
****
Erin washed the pills down with the last half of her lager and waited. As her eyelids drooped she thought of the nanoids travelling through her bloodstream, toward her brain, latching onto her receptors. A steady hum tickled her ears. It was now or never. This would be her last chance to find the tree.
“Took you long enough.” Darren’s towering form loomed over her, one eyebrow arched, his lips a subtle mischievous smile. “Look at you! Leather this time.”
“I don’t have time for games, Darren.”
She had fifteen minutes to find the source and save their worlds.
****
© Amanda Makepeace
Story #2 is complete! I wrote more flash fiction today (667 words). This story centers around characters from a novel I’ve been playing with for the last couple of years. I say playing because I haven’t committed myself to writing it even though it’s frequently on my mind. It’s a book I need to write. I’m just not sure if I’m ready. Ironically, when I began writing this morning I didn’t realize it was them, pushing their way into StoryADay. Here’s a teaser from the opening:
The world didn’t end in war, famine, or natural disaster. There wasn’t a virus or an invasion of little green men from outer space. We were the ending and the beginning, our biology, our genes. Evolution changed our lives and destroyed our world. It split us down the middle. Us and them.
Then there is me. The anomaly. The aberration. I’m not one or the other, but something new.
Story #1 is finished! I wrote 552 words for my flash fiction story, The Messenger. I love this story; which means I’m not going to post it. Sorry, folks! I will post a teaser from the opening though:
Never trust a troll living in a drain pipe, in your basement.
My father’s words echoed in my head, but I didn’t turn to high tail it out of the basement. I didn’t even try to cover the drain when I saw the grimy green fingers push through the grate. Trolls always brought to mind lumbering giants who could be turned to stone by the day’s first light. They were monsters with clubs who bashed in children’s skulls like an after dinner game. Not tiny creatures living in wet, fetid pipes underneath suburban homes.
I may revisit another part of this story during the month of May. Flash fiction is, after all, only a glimpse with a twist at the end.
“…I began to make lists of titles, to put down long lines of nouns. These lists were provocations, finally, that caused my better stuff to surface. I was feeling my way toward something honest, hidden under the trapdoor on the top of my skull.
The list ran something like this:
The Lake. The Night. The Crickets. The Ravine. The Attic. The Basement. The Trapdoor. The Baby. The Crowd. The Night Train. The Fog Horn. The Scythe. The Carnival. The Carousel. The Dwarf. The Mirror Maze. The Skeleton.
I was beginning to see a pattern in the list, in these words that I had simply flung forth on paper, trusting my subconscious to give bread, as it were, to the birds.”
From Run Fast, Stand Still… Zen in the Art of Writing.
Bradbury goes onto to say he continued to make lists and from those lists he would choose a noun, and from those nouns would germinate a story. This type of brainstorming is very appealing. I find that stories can hit us in the most inconvenient moments. It might be the slant of light blanketing a group of children waiting in line for an ice cream, or a conversation you overhear, a news story, or better yet childhood memories. A line, a character, a scene will flash in my mind and I jot it down for later. I make a list.
