Flash Fic Challenge: Still Here

 Still Here

Samuel handed his spare gragger to a small child that didn't have one yet and squashed himself onto the horsehair sofa next to Ben. “Ready to raise some noise?”

Ben laughed and flung an arm over Samuel's shoulders. “Always. You know me so well.”

Samuel grinned back. “It wouldn't be the same without you.”

In the quieter parts of the reading, you could hear the faint rattle of hansom cabs passing outside, and the clatter of hooves from the horses that pulled them. In the louder parts, by tradition, you couldn't hear anything but the swinging of the gragger noisemakers, the booing and stamping, and banging of hands against tables.

It could have been a thousand years ago, or a thousand years hence, Samuel thought, looking round the men's side. Greybeard elders and sturdy fathers, young men and boys, all as loud and enthusiastic, coming together as ever for Purim, drowing out the name of a small, petty, vindictive man who wanted them all dead because they wouldn't bow to him.

In a world where they had always been hated and perhaps always would be, defiance sounded like laughter, like joy, like celebration. We are still here, we are still here, we will not go away.

Hate us, hunt us, blame us, despise us, we still make time to BE us.

Samuel stamped his feet and swung his gragger and leaned into Ben's warm shoulder, looking forward to the hamantaschen later, because as the old saying went:

They tried to kill us. We survived. Let's eat.

Flash Fic Challenge: Getting a Clue

 Getting a Clue

“Tell me a story!” Katie begged, folding her hands under her chin.

Angela laughed. “So there was this man,” she began, as she set up the board for another game of Cluedo, “and he finds out he has a son, who was adopted out at birth. So he decides that he wants to get to him...”

Katie nodded.

“But then,” Angela continued, “he finds that the boy who he thought was his son was switched at birth in the hospital, and his real son is actually not the boy that he thought was his son.”

Katie nodded, and picked up her cards.

“So he's trying to find out where his actual son is, and who he is, and while he's doing that, he has to deal with several other people also trying to find his real son.”

Katie nodded as they began to play.

“So he keeps searching and then he thinks he's finally found the right boy at last, but so has everyone else that was looking for him and they all descend on the same small village at once to meet the boy.”

Katie nodded. “And then?”

Angela cackled and slapped her cards down beside the board. “It was Dr Shaggy Dog, in the Line Outside the Theatre, with the Bottle of Poison.” She looked at Katie. “Oh, with the boy? He told them all to buzz off so he could play with his friends.”

Flash Fic Challenge: Love After Death

 Love After Death

Everyone agreed that the house was haunted. It seemed to have a particular grudge against couples who sneaked in to have a bit of relative privacy for kissing - or more.

“And well,” Josephine mused as she wrapped her arms around Annie, their long skirts merging in the gloom, “'everybody' isn't exactly - wrong.”

Annie laughed and leaned back into Josephine. “Just those who don't know their history and would be doomed to repeat it.”

Behind the two women, some of the graffiti stood out.

One said, “Rubber.”

Another read, “Baby Buggy,” complete with illustration.

“Bumper!” exclaimed a third.

Annie and Josephine fell silent as a boy tugged a girl through the broken doorway. He wasn't listening when she turned her face nervously away, only lifted her chin with two fingers and leaned in for a kiss, small sounds echoing softly from the graffitied walls.

Annie tipped her own head back. “Tell me the old, old story. How does it go?”

“Once upon a time,” Josephine whispered, watching as the boy dismissed the girl's concerns and covered his own with bravado, “there was a boy with a charming smile and a girl who fell in love with him.”

Annie picked up the tale, stepping sideways so that she could hold Josephine's hand rather than be held by her. “He said that he loved her, and she believed him, so he took her somewhere private, and they made the beast with two backs.”

The women drifted closer to the couple, their clothing centuries apart, but heart and tale and purpose all identical.

“He only claimed he loved her until she got with child,” Josephine whispered, and no wall echoed her voice.

Only Annie echoed her. “She got with child,” and they both swept forward together, crying, “and then she died of it!”

The couple shuddered at their touch. The boy fled.

The girl watched him go. She didn't turn and look for the women, only said, “Thank you. He didn't want to listen. I won't intrude on your privacy anymore.”

Then she too was gone.

“And then,” Annie finished, “I met my sweet Josephine. May I?”

Josephine laughed and pulled her in for a kiss. “You may, always and forever, love of my death.”

Flash Fic Challenge: Round a Globe

 Round a Globe

“Pick your location,” my Rennie (my Parent, if you want to be formal about it, but most don't out here) told me, waving their hand at a row of what looked like snow globes, each on a black stand with a label. “Then we'll slot it into the VR machine and we can get this party started!”

To be honest, the answer was that none of them looked like somewhere I wanted to be. I would rather be clipped snugly in my bed, reading something or chatting with my friends on the other orbital habitats (probably both, given the chat-delays involved). Rennie had made it very clear, however, that they thought I spent too much time doing that.

I reached out and picked up the nearest snowglobe. The label read 'Western Ghost Town'. “This one, I guess.”

Rennie beamed. “Great choice, kiddo!” They slid the globe into the machine, and pulled down a harness of each of us.

When we were fully attached and the virtual reality took over, I found myself in a brown and dusty street.

“Isn't this fun,” Rennie insisted, like I was still eight or something. “Where shall we start....”

I shrugged. “Wherever.” If my parent wanted to drag me through this, they could put up with making the decisions. I was well occupied enough thinking about how I'd tell this to my friends.

Flash Fic Challenge: Bull in a Cake Shop

 Bull in a Cake Shop

Alice looked up as the bell over the cake shop door chimed, marking the entrance of a customer. It had been a slow day, and the foul weather hadn't helped. In the cold and the wet, most people drifted to cafes where they could get a seat and a hot drink along with their cake, rather than here, where they would have to protect their cake all the way home.

The customer was tall and broad-shouldered, muffled in coat and hat and scarf against the weather. He tipped his head on one side, eyeing the cakes, and Alice heard an amused snort as he clearly spotted the cupcake of the day. It was small and round, with blue icing, and the outline of a yellow rubber duck on top.

He pulled a hand out of his coat pocket and pointed to the duck cake. “I'll take two,” he rumbled, his english slightly accented but clear. “It's good weather for ducks.”

Alice smiled at the old joke and moved briskly to bag them up. “Anything else, sir?”

He tipped his head the other way, eyed the selection and picked a few from the collection kept for the odd college up on the hill, where some of the people had - specialised - tastes.

Nobody talked about the college. Everyone local knew about it though. The college took everyone who wanted to learn, human or not, wealthy or not, powerful or not, and turned out smart, sensible, well-educated graduates who didn't so much as blink at people who were different from them.

Alice had taken courses there herself as had her wife (who was also her business partner). Now, she rang up the order with a knowing smile, looking up under the hat, and handed over his bag and his change.

The Minotaur looked back at her, winked one large brown eye, dropped a hefty tip in the jar and vanished back out into the wind and the rain, closing the door behind him as he went.

Flash Fic Challenge: (Don't) Mind the Dumpster

 (Don't) Mind the Dumpster

Don't mind the rattling sound, it's just the dumpster out back. It's where we put the costumes that become – unusable. Yes, there's a chain on it, it's to stop the lid coming open, obviously. You wouldn't want wild animals nesting in there, would you?

Don't mind the thumping sound, it's just something falling over in the dumpster, it's what happens when you pile things in there haphazardly. Oh, is there a sleeve sticking out? That happens sometimes, I'll go banish it in a bit.

Never mind what those old costumes used to be, it's what they are now that counts, and that's “not allowed in here”. Too much personality, that's the problem. People used to know how to cleanse things properly. These days they just throw them in the washing machine, and that's absolutely no use for keeping these costumes usable as clothing.

Do you ever wonder why so many odd socks turn up? It's because they get worn so long that they get infused with personality along with the sweat and dirt, and then they walk off on their own. Same thing happens with the costumes we hire out.

Except that, when a full clown suit acquires personality, people will scream. Do Not Sniff the Flo- too late. Now you're soaked in blood. Just grab the other broom and help me shove it back into the dumpster before it tries to take over anyone else, will you? Then you can go try and clean it off.

(It never comes off, it just slides under your skin, and you end up like me.)

Just one of the hazards of working in this costume shop, you know?

Flash Fic Challenge: Let Us See

 Let Us See

Adam flattens himself into the field of lettuce and creeps closer, inch by muddy inch, to the house beside it where the forgers have their press hidden. He just needs to get close enough to see everything. All the entrances and exits. Where the guards stand and what routes they take. What vehicles come and go along the rough track.

Adam is no warrior, no fighter, only a scout doing reconnaissance. But the information he brings back - yesterday's and today's and tomorrow's - will be vital for the fighting team that goes in soon.

He flattens himself further, moves slower, ducks his head down so that the paler oval of his face doesn't give him away.

There's a new guard, standing where there was a gap in the fence yesterday. Adam hardly dares breathe, but his fingers ever so slowly ease an elastic band out of the box in his pocket.

When the guard looks away, Adam stretches the band between his hands and fires. The band strikes a brick on the far edge of the house, with a soft and muffled plink, but it's enough to get the guard's attention and send him away from Adam.

Adam waits, frozen, for a long moment, and then, inch by inch, starts moving again. He needs a new vantage point.