Flash Fic Challenge: Take Your Cue

 Take Your Cue

Tam chalked his cue tip, and then took aim. The cue ball struck the red cleanly and then veered off towards the cushion. The red ball rolled almost directly to the pocket, hesitated on the edge, and then seemed to deliberately bounce itself out of the corner.

Tam glared. "Keep this up," he told them, his voice as hard and final as the click of handcuffs closing around wrists, "and I'll send you off to the piano factory, to be cut up for keys."

The snooker balls quivered as one.

Tam re-chalked his cue and tried another shot. This time, the ball went in.

Flash Fic Challenge: Whosoever

 Whosoever

The sword waited.

Someday a hero would come seeking it again. It didn't matter to the sword that it was at the bottom of the ocean and might have to wait a long time. Magic kept it from rusting and from dying and from changing. The runes along its blade gleamed softly.

Whosoever draws this sword from this [mud] shall be rightwise....

Rightwise target for the sword to take over. To slide silent tendrils of mental control into the wielder's mind. To encourage mistrust. To encourage swiftness to anger. To persuade into more wars and more fights and the resulting higher dependency on the sword itself.

To quietly erode any other support, turn friends against them, create too many problems to solve any other way. To destroy kingdoms. To destroy lives.

Up on the surface, divers splashed cheerfully over the side of the ship.

Below them, Excaliber waited, the runes along its blade gleaming softly.

Flash Fic Challenge: Going West

 Going West

The two gunslingers paced off the distance for the duel with the Tower of London looming in the background, paused, and then turned to glare at each other down the barrels of their guns.

There was a rising hum of tension, not at all dissipated by the sudden stir in the still, hot, air.

Then a voice yelled, "Cut!" and everyone relaxed while director read the note that the messenger (who had opened the studio door and caused the breeze) had brought.

One of the gunslingers dug a toe into the artificial grass.

The other eyed the painted backdrop of the Tower with a wry smile. "When they said 'Go west, young man, I think they meant a bit further than England."

Works published in 2021

 Balcony Gardening - poem

Golden Goose - story

Create My Own Perfection - story

Tulips - story

Taste Explosion - story

Sunset Warning - story

All Ticked Off - story

Not to be Sniffed At - story

Sing Me a Song - story

Fine Feathers - story

Loving Lines - story

Let Down Your Hair - story

Testing Grounds - novella

Guns and Roses - story

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.

Testing Grounds is Out!

 Happy Book Birthday to Testing Grounds!

Queer friendship, secret identities, and Warrior training:

On the 1st of Dec, a novella brings to me:

12 old scars

11 dodged questions

10 types of weapon

9 Warrior braids

8 different titles

7 bad memories

6 young women

5 things to climb

4 Warrior teachers

3 squad members

2 old friends

and a week at Testing Grounds

https://books2read.com/u/3RJoEj

Flash Fic Challenge: Let Down Your Hair

 Let Down Your Hair

It was time. 'Zelle put her hairbrush away, gathered up her mountain of hair, and took her place at the bow of the ship, where the figurehead stood in a water navy. Static crawled across her as the protective mage-shield snapped into being around the crew's quarters. She leaned up into the magic and shook out her hair. The static drew it out into a perfect halo: a golden, gossamer fine, sail to catch the solar wind.

With that in place, she herself shifted, her body settling back into its statue form as if she had never walked and talked and laughed with her crew. As if she had never been anything but the ship itself.

One that was named, certainly. Lifted by the wind like a living thing, eager to dance across the asteroids. But hardly more than a feisty container for those she carried. (Those she carried knew better, but the paperwork didn't)

Her crew cast off, the wind filled the sail, and the Rapunzelle was on its way once more to the Spring festival on Mars.