Category: Uncategorized (Page 43 of 44)

Cold

Really Cold

My eyes are so heavy; need to try.

Ow! Bright!

Slowly; try again. It’s so bright. I can see a lot of white, and it is so cold. Can I move? Touch your nose. Ok I can move that arm and I can see my hand. Try the other. Yeah that one’s ok too. My feet are cold. That’s good, I can feel my feet. Can I move them? Yes! Yes I can!

Sit up? Yes. Woah! Slowly; put a hand down behind you. Good. Now look around.

Snow. What’s that over there? Oh my God, that’s the plane! I remember. Harriet!

Got to get over there. There are no flames at least. Up on one knee. Feels steady. Up; careful! Just get used to it for a second. Now one foot in front of the other. Good.

It’s not that far. Only a few metres. Why is there a ringing in my ears? Must have made a lot of noise when we hit, I suppose. Oh look, my camera bag. Still intact. I guess the manufacturers were not exaggerating after all.

Nearly there. Is she here? Can’t see her; can’t see any blood either.

“Harriet!”

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

Stephanie could feel the cool grass under her hand as she stretched her fingers out in an uncontrolled spasm of pleasure. The new ring on her finger felt alien and yet, unsurprisingly, its presence was magnifying the joy she felt as James pulled her close and planted a myriad of kisses around her neck.

It would be safe to say that she was the happiest she had ever been in her life, in that moment. Ever since she and James had started living together she had hoped that he would ask her to marry him. She had been ready for some time, but she had put that aside to allow him the space to want marriage as much as she did rather than pressure him. She never once believed that he would take less than 3 months to make her dream come true. She smiled wryly to herself as she felt his hand begin to move up her thigh and under her skirt; he had given no clue that this was coming and just turned to her when they reached the top of the hill ‘will you marry me?’. She had said yes to that and then they were on the grass.

—

This Friday Ficlet was inspired by this picture from Flickr that is licensed under a compatible CC license to the one used on ficlets.com

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

Caitlin studied the menu, holding it in front of her face as Paul was shown past her table with his dinner companion. Why did he have to go and choose this evening to come to their restaurant? She had picked the one where they had dined together most often before she caught him banging the new girl. She had hoped that shame would have kept him out of here; clearly the soft-shell crab was far too enticing.

It was bad enough trying to look comfortable with eating alone in a restaurant. She had male friends who simply did not understand her discomfort at doing this – for them dining alone was a pleasure. They loved to be waited on without having to discuss car-pooling or office politics or any number of other quotidien concerns, and never had such luck when dining with their wives. To dine alone for a woman was almost to say ‘I am alone and I cannot cook’.

Once they were seated she peeked over the menu. He was holding her spindly cuckoo hand, looking into her eyes and laughing. Caitlin just wanted to cry.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

David turned the device over and over in his hands, staring at it intently as if somehow the combination of touching it and staring at it would unlock its secrets. He turned to look at the unconscious man tied to his solitary chair, willing him to come to, so that he could question this mystery visitor as to the purpose of the smooth black disc with two unmarked buttons in the centre of one side.

It was cold to the touch, but only in so much as it was not warm – it was not chilled, just cold. The light seemed to slide off it, without reflecting, and it was that particular shade of black that really is just a lack of colour.

The man in the chair, from whom David had liberated the device, groaned and tried to raise his hand to his face, struggling against the rope restraining it. David slid the disc back into the pocket of his gilet and stepped across the room to be in his prisoner’s line of sight as he falteringly opened his eyes.

“So, what exactly were you doing, climbing in through my bathroom window?”

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

Eric lifted his head up out of his hands. They were wet from the tears that were still silently streaming down his face. His eyes were red, raw from him trying to rub them dry and banish this outward display of grief, even though there was no one there to see it.

He looked across at the bed. The nurses had disconnected the drip and ventilator, pushed back the machines and dimmed the lights a little. He could tell that they wanted to extubate as well, but that would not happen until the post. Despite all of their efforts Jenny did not look at peace; she barely looked like herself.

Eric made himself really look at her. A voice in the back of his mind kept telling him that he would only have so many more chances to commit her face to memory, even this injured version of her face. He had expected to see her face every day for many more years to come. If he had known he would have paid more attention to it, learned it more closely. Now he would have only a few photographs to help him keep her in his memory.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

Selena tried very hard to not cry. It is quite hard to explain to people that there is no actual concrete reason for why you have suddenly burst into tears and she was becoming tired of having to go through this dance with random passers-by, co-workers and even members of her family. The thing was even if she could get people to understand that she was just generally unhappy and ‘thing x’ or ‘happening y’ had just somehow pushed her over the edge emotionally, they would still try to comfort her or fix it, or both. This was not actually helpful, because it made her focus on her sadness. What she needed more than anything was to be distracted.

Anyway, in that moment there was nothing she could do but choke back the tears, holster her gun and try to help her partner getting the perp into the back of the car. She tried to turn her eyes away from the little girl sitting in the gutter who was cradling a dead puppy in her arms – this was what had almost made her weep, though she did not know why it hit her so hard.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

Jason cradled his camera and took a deep breath as he took in the view. The sun was already starting to sink over the Isle of Sheppey and as such was no longer the bright disc that it had been just half an hour before. Now the sun looked for all the world like a glowing orange that a giant hand was placing very slowly onto the horizon.

The sun was finally low enough for him to look through the view-finder and try to compose the perfect Whitstable sunset. The gulls were wheeling in the light wind between Jason and the sunset; it crossed his mind that he could hope to capture a gull in flight against the fiery sky.

He breathed deeply one more time, checked that he was sat comfortably and then raised the camera. In the same way that he had been taught to shoot in another life he steadied the camera and took a long slow breath in, then started to let it out slowly, waiting for the shot to be right. A gull crossed into the frame and Jason held his breath. He made a final check and pressed the shutter release.

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

“Get up! Come on, you have to get up!”

My inner sergeant-major was not letting me just lie there, no matter what I might have wanted. My head was definitely bleeding, I could feel the tell-tale stickiness in my hair. I looked around at the carnage and almost immediately had to fight back the urge to vomit – there were a lot of dead people sharing this space with me and it was not pretty.

The carriage was clearly derailed and tilted at a difficult 30 degree angle. The lights were either out or dangling from their wires, like potentially fatal pendulums. The hole in the side, about half way along, looked for all the world as if someone incredibly strong had thrown a huge marble against the carriage wall. I steeled my nerve and started checking the other passengers to see if anyone in there with me was still alive. Nothing can prepare you for the real outcome of a bomb going off in an enclosed space and no one should have to see it. As I checked for signs of life all I could wonder was; how did I survive?

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

Joe lay back on his elbows and smiled to himself. The soft sand was piled up under the blanket and made a kind of chaise-longue for him. His eyes were fixed on Steph and their dog, Boomer, playing together on the wet sand. There was a fundamental beauty to seeing them so carefree and happy; Steph had her ‘real’ smile on her face.

Joe cast his mind back to the first row that had errupted from him saying that he wanted to get a dog. Steph had been adamant that she disliked, even hated, dogs and that there would never be a place for a dog in their lives. They were too busy, too socially active, too young, too recently cohabiting to even consider that kind of responsibility. She had gone on to be quite clear that her veto was partly predicated on the fact that she fully expected that if they did keep a dog, she would do all of the work.

Of couse it didn’t work out that way. Three weeks later Boomer was living with them and even though Joe tried to do all of the work, Boomer really was Steph’s dog.

—

This Ficlet, as with all of my ‘Friday’ Ficlets, was inspired by a photograph on Flickr. In the spirit of the Creative Commons ideal (these stories are published under a CC license) I will find a photo on Flickr each week that is published there under a Creative Commons License and write a story that occurs to me when looking at the picture. This week’s picture is here:

Photo by Sharkbait – Please click the photo to see the original version on flickr.com

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.

Dario looked down on the Rathaus square and wondered how many times he had studied this scene over the decades that he had perched here on Saint Michael’s sword. He lifted his gaze from the Weihnachtsmarkt and stared at the Tannenbaum on the island in the Alster – a shame, he preferred the fountain.

None of the people below enjoying Glühwein and Flammekuchen had any idea that what appeared to be a raven perched high above them was not so simple a creature after all. He took some personal delight in their ignorance.

The wind was whipping by, and Dario was cursing Julius’s desire to meet in Hamburg. Why not Venice, after all it was December; why choose somewhere so cold? He supposed that Julius had business near by that would not keep, at least he hoped that was so, not that Julius was amused by Dario perishing up here in the wind off the Elbe.

A large Barn Owl landed on the parapet below Dario, bobbed in greeting and then he heard in his mind;

“Hello old friend, I haven’t kept you waiting I hope..?”

—

You can see the original post on Ficlets.com by clicking here.