Flash Fic Challenge: Gone With the Moon

 Gone With the Moon

“It’s a complete mystery,” the stablemaster told me, between bites of a banana. “We found this stray dog wandering around in the night and managed to shut it in an empty stall, away from the other animals. Only when we went to check it the next morning, it had completely vanished! No sign of it anywhere, and the stable door still locked!”

“I see,” I told him. “Nobody got bitten, I hope?”

“No, we were very fortunate.” He set the rest of the bananas aside and proceeded to show me the side stable that the animal had vanished from, with its complicated lock that needed two hands to work, and the split door still bolted. “It was docile, so we only bolted the lower half. Even if it got over the door, that doesn’t explain how it got out of the stable.”

“No,” I agreed, “it doesn’t.” I left it at that, decidedly not pointing out that it had been a full moon last night. Guess what this werewolf did, once the moon set and I had two hands again to unbolt a door and work a lock?

Flash Fic Challenge: The Mysterious Aversion to the Obvious

 The Mysterious Aversion to the Obvious

Sometimes, I swear, the practice of treating what should be obvious as a giant mystery really gets my goat statue. Emma Stone and the Mystery of the Roomful of Hats. Please. You can't think of a really blatant reason why a medusa like me might want to cover her 'hair' when out and about in a so-called 'normal' part of town? You think people like me never have to get groceries, or visit other people, or move through space from one location to the next?

Gee, do you think we just appear in a single room when it's convenient for you, and don't exist otherwise?

Or it's Emma Stone and the Mystery of the Giant Penny. Which, granted, is partly on me. Call me a fool, but I did expect people to actually use their eyes and notice that my bike has painted wheel--covers. Yes, they are painted like pennies, it's a reference to the early pennyfarthing bicycles, but honestly.

Use some common sense. Actually think about the world instead of jumping to wild conclusions about everything that's even a smidge outside of your concept of 'normal'.

Or don't, if you're feeling lucky. I can always take off my hat and sunglasses and make sure that you're actually as hardheaded as you act, if that's what you prefer?

Flash Fic Challenge: Surfing the Net

 Surfing the Net

There was what looked like a small surfboard wedged into the bars of the kids' merry-go-round. A man's body lay beside it, face down.

Where had he come from? Nobody knows. Where was he going? Nobody knows.

Only an investigator, slowly circling like a crocodile, considering the scene from all angles.

The man spluttered in a breath, and rolled over with a groan, revealing a pale but otherwise ordinary face.

The investigator froze. The man was supposed to be dead!

The man saw the surfboard, swore softly, and turned to scowl at the investigator. "Family prank," he snapped. "I'm not dead, I just look it when I'm asleep, and they think it's funny to set up fake mystery scenes."

The investigator considered that. It sounded true enough, and without evidence, there was no way to prove it wasn't. "And the surfboard?"

The man gave a small, bitter, sharp-toothed smile. "I'm in I.T. It's a pun on surfing the 'net."

"We would like a statement from you all the same. For our records, of course."

"Of course," the man echoed flatly, and heaved himself to his feet. "Come on then, let's get it over with."

 

Flash Fic Challenge: Guns and Roses

 Guns and Roses

The raygun clutched in the dead man's hand was my first clue that something weird was going on. It looked too real. And yes, plenty of people get angry at the folk crewing the tollbooths and road rage happens - to sometimes tragic effect - but the tollbooth operators don't usually shoot back.

Or if they do, it's with bullets, not rays.

The second clue of something weird going on was the roses growing all over the place. Really odd places, like out of the operator's chair (and out of his arm, but that was one for the mortician doing the autopsy)

Once the raygun had been checked over for prints, I pointed it cautiously at a patch of bare ground and pressed the trigger with a gloved finger. There was a streak of red light, and then another rose appeared, growing out of the ground where the ray had hit.

Well, that ought to make finding the culprit easier. Just follow the roses.

Flash Fic Challenge: Race to the Top

Race to the Top

I know it's a wide open field now, but what made me really interested is why the favourite pulled out, and I'm pretty sure it wasn't that he had to dash down to the shops for a new beard trimmer.

Let me back up a moment. We have a roof running race every third year. This one, everyone thought that the winner would be obvious. He's quicker and nimbler than anyone I've ever seen, and he can get across even the worst set of tiles like a scuttling lizard. But like I said, he dropped out. Vanished. Vamooshed. Left the field of competition wide open, and I could scrape up a bit of hope again. Or try to, because too many of them were looking at me now and I couldn't be sure that whoever nobbled him wasn't going to come after me next.

Which was how I found myself following his trail across roofs and walls and fences until it finally dropped to ground level in a tangled workshop district, next to a tiny abandoned space - one of those nooks and crannies that all its neighbours think one of the others owns, and is actually not owned by anyone.

He was waiting for me when I got there, his arms protectively round a couple of tiny kids.

I put my hands up and out at once. "Not going to hurt you. Just wanted to check you were ok."

He grinned, and the shadows danced behind him like errant wings. "Go win the race," he told me. "It really isn't my scene."

I gave him a confused look, because who wouldn't want to win the roof-race if they could?

Turns out, those weren't shadows behind him. They were real wings.