Fiction

Waiting

While I would have loved to continue with The Dark Calling this week, I simply had too much to do today. I refuse to rush those pieces, so I’m opting for a quick flash fiction story, instead.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there’s something wonderful about flash fiction. In some ways, the shorter it is, the more challenging it is to write. The story below has a 100 word limit. Painting a meaningful scene in 100 words is tough. There’s no space for long exposition, no allowance for verbose dialogue, and no room for a winding build up of suspense. These kinds of stories are flashes in the pan.

Of course, a bright enough flash can leave you dazed, half blind with your ears ringing.

I suppose that’s what I like about flash fiction in general. The limitations push me as a writer, forcing me to be conservative with my words while still trying to take you, the reader, on a journey. This one is nothing more than a brief scene. It’s a tease, really. That’s all it can be. But I like it, still. The implications are eerie, and that tends to be my favorite kind of horror.

The prompt comes to us courtesy of The Prediction:

100 words maximum, excluding the title, of flash fiction or poetry using all of the three words above (‘loom’, ‘dish’ and ‘tale’) in the genres of horror, fantasy or science fiction.

waiting

She was at the loom. Her hands rested in her lap.

On the adjacent table was a book: Ulrich Wenzel Peglow’s Tales of the Queer and Mystical. It was open to the account of Fräulein Giesel. She’d read the story at least 30 times–the weaver woman who could spin fire and wind and ice.

It was said she’d turned, but to what? How? What darkness had she woven and by what magick?

A dish slid off the table of its own accord. She didn’t move. She could sense the specter there with her.

“Hello, Giesel,” she said. “I’ve been waiting.”