“Long Lost” – flash fiction

This is a flash fiction I wrote a few weeks ago, in a sudden burst of inspiration.  This is a scene from a much bigger, discombobulated storyline that I have no plans of formally developing anytime soon.  The characters have backstories, names, personalities, but I think a touch of ambiguity helps to make this ficlet palatable to the rest of the world. 😛

 

She’s the first thing he sees when he finally opens his eyes, the faint traces of pain hazy through the medications.  “Hello, Dad,” she says quietly.  Her words are laced with sadness and longing.  There’s more she wants to tell him, but now’s not the time – will there ever be another?

He greets her weakly by a name that’s not hers.  But she holds his hand and lets the conversation run to mundane things, things that hadn’t happened to her.  She’s making up the answers as she goes along.

Someone tells her it’s time to go – the voice is impatient, gruff.  The gruffness conceals years of jealousy, and pain.

She excuses herself, promises to return later.  A lie.  “It was nice seeing you,” she says, glancing over her shoulder.  It was nice meeting you, she wants to tell him.

The medications are potent.  He drifts back into a dreamless, restful sleep.

Some hours later, he receives another visitor.

“Hi!”  Her familiar eyes shine bright with relief.  “You’re feeling better!”  She’s holding back – she can’t tell if it’s a good idea to hug him around all the tubes and wires.

Faintly, he returns the smile.  “Good to see you again,” he says, studying her from the cot.  “You changed your hair.”

She runs a hand through her hair.  “What do you mean?  It’s always been like this.”

His scarred brow furrows in puzzlement.  “Hm…  It looked different when you came in before.”

“Before?”  Now, it’s her turn to be confused.  They’ve had him on a lot of drugs since….  “You must’ve dreamed it.”

He grows silent.  Somehow, that doesn’t seem right.

Story scrap: “Premonition”

The other day, I decided to freewrite something.  The end product is a short piece that I suppose could be a prologue to a much longer sci-fi fantasy story.  I don’t know how far I’d be able to take this one, since I’m not particularly good at fantasy stories.  I’m calling this one “Premonition,” about a girl who can foresee future events, some calamitous, some not.   The question is, what is she supposed to do with this information?  Is the future – and the past – writ in stone, or can her actions in the meantime make a difference?

 I saw the flames as they licked the tops of the tallest trees, destroying not only the dry, autumn leaves, but the creatures that called the forest their home.  I saw the wreckage on the highway, the crumpled heaps of two cars and an eighteen-wheeler truck.  The truck was relatively intact, the bright banner advertising a soft drink company still emblazoned on its side.

My mother’s body was being wheeled away from the scene on a stretcher by two paramedics, a sheet covering her from head to toe.  Her bloodied arm dangled limply off the side, exposed; somehow, the charm bracelet she’d worn for as long as I could remember had survived better than she had.

The orange blanket around my shoulders did nothing to quell the chill going through my body.  It wasn’t just the shock of the crash.  It wasn’t the throbbing pain in my shattered leg.  It wasn’t the droning of the tactless police officer to my right as he asked me questions I couldn’t answer.

I’d seen this exact event before.  If only I could have stopped it from happening.

 

It’s definitely in need of extreme polishing, but it’s a start. 🙂

“Stuck in an Elevator”

I mentioned earlier that a Figment user has been sharing her daily writing prompts with us.  Today, I was inspired to write a short piece based on her latest prompt: Put two people who hate each other in an elevator for 12 hours. What happens?

Naturally, it had to be about Cece and Jack. 😉  Enjoy the fireworks!

---

 

I stepped inside the elevator, feeling self-conscious in front of the mirrored walls.  I tried not to stare at the sole other occupant, a strange fellow in a navy trench coat and hat.  He was all too familiar; if I was lucky, he wouldn’t feel the same way about me.

“Captain Jack Harkness,” he said in an oily voice, extending his hand to shake.  “Who might you be?”

Yup, in his timeline, he didn’t know me yet.

I decided to ignore him.  That was the best thing to do.  The last thing I wanted to do was disrupt the time stream.  The second-to-last, have to talk to the most annoying man in the world.  Somehow, I couldn’t picture him being the posterchild for his town as a boy; what about him appealed to them?  If Jack Harkness told me to move to a place, I’d go anywhere but there.  And I wanted to be anywhere but this elevator.

The elevator began its slow descent down to the ground floor.  Chin up, Ryder, I told myself.  You’ll be at the parking garage with Bessie and the Doctor in no time.

When you’re in the vicinity of Jack Harkness, expect the unexpected.  Naturally, the unexpected happened: the elevator froze.  Literally.

Judging by the sound of the Norwegian-accented voices that started singing “Let it Go” as the temperature started to drop, those weren’t Idina Menzel and Demi Lovato behind the mic — or the controls.  It had to be Ylvis.  They’re infamous for pranking elevator passengers.  At least they weren’t singing “What Does the Fox Say?”

“Well,” said Jack, eyeing his own reflection in the mirror, “I guess this means we’re stuck in here.  All alone.  With no one else to talk to.”

I slumped against the hand rail, groaning.  Here I was, stuck in an elevator for who knows how long, accompanied by none other than–

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me your name now, will you?  Otherwise, I’ll just make one up and call you that.”

–Captain Jack Harkness.

“Is ‘Rose’ okay with you?”

“Day Care”

This is a short Sherlock fanfic/flash-fiction piece I never got around to fleshing out.  As noted, I have seen no more than two episodes of BBC’s Sherlock, and I don’t wish to see any more.  Despite this, I do enjoy putting Sherly and John in situations that would most likely be deemed “boring” by the former and, understandably so, “awkward” by the latter.  This is one of them.

(by Allison Rose)

---

“….And these are my niece and nephew,” Mrs. Hudson was saying, an arm around each child’s shoulder.  “Mark and Linda.”  They were both eight years old, with light brown hair and inquisitive green eyes.

From where he reclined on the sofa, Sherlock glanced at the boy’s shoes.  The T-rexes on his socks that peeped out above his muddy trainers suggested that Mark was an aspiring paleontologist.  Linda, on the other hand, was a little harder to place.  Her dainty but mismatched socks (one knee sock had a different elastic band at the knee) contrasted greatly with her canvas high-tops, and the logo of a Beatles T-shirt peeked out from behind the straps of her flower-print jumper.

“John’ll take care of them,” Sherlock replied in a bored voice.  John just smiled shyly at the children from the armchair.  John Watson, a former army doctor, was awkward around women and even worse around pre-adolescents.  Sherlock would enjoy watching the man make a fool of himself.

Mrs. Hudson looked a little uncertain of her own decision to let the tenants of 221B Baker Street watch her charges for the day, but desperate times called for desperate measures.  “I’d best be off to meet Tish,” she stammered, heading towards the door and swinging her handbag over her shoulder.  “She’s always late, but I must set an example for her….”

“Goodbye, Auntie,” Mark exclaimed cheerfully.

“‘Bye, Auntie,” John echoed rather stupidly.

“She’s not your auntie,” Linda muttered sharply.

“I’m sorry, what?”  John asked.

“I said she’s not your auntie,” Linda repeated slowly, as though she was speaking to a young child.

“Oh.”

Sherlock chuckled sardonically — a rare occurrence — and sat up, propping his feet on the coffee table.  “You’ve got your hands full, John.”

“Yes,” John sighed.  “I suppose I have.”

“SpiderHobbit”

The title is pretty self-explanatory.

(by Allison Rose)

---

Pippin stared out over the edge of the building and gulped audibly.  You can do it, Pip!  he could hear his best friend, Merry Brandybuck, whispering encouragingly in his head.  But he could also hear Gandalf saying, You’re a fool, Peregrine Took, which didn’t really help matters much.

The New York City skyline looked like he could reach out and touch it, but alas, it was just an optical illusion.  One unprepared step over the edge meant certain death — to any ordinary hobbit, that is.  On that day he’d wandered into the zoo and picked open that cage with the pretty blue spider, Pippin’s life had changed forever.

Forcing down his fears, Pippin held out his hands and let the filmy white thread zap out and grasp the top of a distant skyscraper tautly.  It was strong enough to hold any man’s weight, which meant Pippin was all set and ready to go!

 

Down below, a crowd of people gathered in the city streets to watch the spectacle going on above their heads: a little man in a bright red and blue costume glided through the air, holding tightly onto strong white cords that seemed to right out of his wrists.  Could it be?  Could it really be–

“SPIDERMAN!!!”  a girl shrieked, right as the unidentified high-flyer in question soared only inches above her head.

“No, no, I’m not,” a distinctly Tookish accented voice replied from beneath the expressionless mask.  “I’m Spiderhobbit!”

As if to prove his point, Spiderhobbit overestimated his leap and flew straight into the side of a building.  The last thing Peregrin Took remembered before the blackness overcame him was a large, bearded man on horseback charging down the street, irritably calling out his name, and some nerdy guy with big glasses standing over him, chuckling.

“The Life of Who” (Flash Fiction)

On a whim, I wrote this the day after the BBC aired this year’s Doctor Who Xmas special.

I’ve never seen or read The Life of Pi, but from what I’d seen of the Academy Awards a few years back, I had a feeling I knew exactly how the story’s protagonist felt when he discovered he wasn’t alone in that lifeboat.

I looked about myself, taking in my surroundings.  Blue ocean, everywhere.  Not even the tip of an iceberg protruded from the flat, empty horizon.  We were lost at sea.

As a low, rumbling growl sounded from the only other terrestrial mammal present, five thoughts coursed through my head in rapid, lightning-fast succession:

1) I should’ve gone with the others when Jack offered to drive them to the mall.  (Seriously, you’ve access to anywhere and anytime in the world, and you have to go to the mall?!)  Maybe then I wouldn’t be here.

2) Sharks like blood.  If I hadn’t stayed behind, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten that paper cut.  Or was that a fixed event in time anyhow?

3) Tyler shouldn’t have fixed the Chameleon Circuit.  The wooden rowboat look doesn’t suit the TARDIS.

4) Why did I let the Little Master put that deodorant bottle in the oven?  I could’ve sworn it said ‘AXE’, but it could very well have said ‘ACE’….

5) Well, the Doctor’s definitely a ginger now.  A large, quadrupedal, striped, carnivorous ginger at that.  And this time around, he definitely isn’t craving apples.

How did that guy from The Life of Pi survive?

“Student Driver” (Flash Fiction)

Written for my dear online friend, Celestine Foreman.  We sometimes wonder if she’s really Susan Foreman, Doctor Who’s granddaughter, fob-watched.

Student Driver

(by Allison in the TARDIS)

---

Professor River Song watched as her granddaughter – er, step granddaughter – moved her hands through the jumble of controls in the TARDIS’s dashboard.  Sweetie had taught her all those years ago … before he’d known about the brakes.

River, Susan/Celestine, and the TARDIS. (The artist apologizes that Celestine looks like Jennifer Lawrence.)

“Oh, this isn’t fair!”  Susan, who now called herself Celestine, wailed.  “These controls have been rearranged since I last used them!”  She kicked futilely at the TARDIS in her frustration.  “And I named you, TARDIS!”

River chuckled.  “He doesn’t call her that anymore, sweetheart.”

Celestine looked momentarily hurt.  “What does he call her?”

River told her.  Celestine blushed.

“I bet that’s why she doesn’t like him anymore, always bursting fuses and gaskets like that….”  Celestine began petting the control board endearingly, her mood completely different.  “Poor, poor TARDIS.”

The Doctor was stretched out in a hammock that they’d tied between two railings for him, fast asleep.  River wanted to show Celestine the ropes without his interference.  A bit of Romulan ale in his afternoon tea did just the trick.

“Now, Celestine,” River began, clearing her throat and smoothing down her mop of curls, “it’s time I show you how to control this thing … properly.”

Celestine’s brow wrinkled.  “What do you mean?”  she asked, perplexed.

“Well, I suppose we ought to start with the brakes….”

---