I came across a quote, “Love is friendship set on fire” somewhere out in the world, and tonight it just brought this scene to mind. While just a bit of flash fiction, I think I might have to come back to this character, as she seems to have much more to say.

Some days I can forget you. Some days I can forget the fact that from the moment I saw you I knew you were going to be the greatest love story of my life.

Some days I can forget how you saved me without even knowing what you had done, picked me up and set me up on my path with your smile. You didn’t even know who or what I was and you reached out to help. That’s just what you do.

Some days I can even forget how you ripped out my heart with your smile, wrapping your arms around her. I smiled along with you as you walked down the aisle to her, steeling myself by saying to myself that this was just what was meant to be.

Some days I can forget watching the two of you, wishing that I’d spoken up before you’d made your choice. Before you’d even had a choice presented to you. Before my fear of rejection took precedence over my possible happily-ever-after.

Some days I can remember you telling me how she ruined you, made you less of a person until you couldn’t take it any longer. Some days I can forget walking, drinking, as you poured your heart out in your words. I was made mute, keeping my heart bottled up because I was just starting to heal so many years down the road.

Some days I can forget how I lied to you, saying that I once had a crush, but it was no more. The bar stool became a vise, squeezing the lies out to make myself feel better, to pad up my heart from you before you ripped it to shreds again.

Some days I can forget how the wounds seeped open in my heart as I saw the new girl on your arm. I scalded my tongue with coffee to keep the lies from becoming the truth at the worst possible moment. I tried to be happy for you, starting to repair your own heart.

Some days I can forget how I walked away, letting you live your life without me. Some days I can forget how the heart doesn’t really heal, it just puts a layer of scar tissue to help you get through the days that you can’t forget any longer.

Some days I don’t even pull out your pictures any longer.

If only one of us could be happy, I always wanted it to be you.

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Superhero / In a Vehicle Traveling Down the Highway / Weapons of Mass Destruction

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The Last Will and Testament of the Whip

This is how I die. In the back of a car barreling down a highway, unmasked, wondering exactly how much blood is left in my body to pump out. The shreds of the bandage across my abdomen looked as black as my suit even under the random streetlights we passed under as we sped into the night.

“I would have never guessed the great and powerful Whip was you.” My killer said as she gripped the steering wheel. “I mean, really, Jane. You’re a mouse.”

I sighed. This had been the same sentiment she’d had on a vocal loop since the beginning of our drive. My mask hung like fuzzy dice from the rear-view mirror. Somewhere along the ride, I started having trouble recognizing her face reflected in the mirror, but I could keep my focus on my mask. Her eyes replaced the darkness from the holes for my eyes, and I could not look away.

I don’t think she realized that I no longer had the energy to refute her comments. I was inches away from giving into the blackness that was creeping into the edges of my vision, and I really didn’t care what her opinion of me was any longer. I couldn’t even feel the bite of the zip ties that she’d wrapped around my wrist, why did I care if she was in a state of shock that my quiet alter-ego Jane was really The Whip, Protector of MetroCity. The Whip was bleeding out in her backseat, that was all that mattered any more.

“Why are you so quiet, Jane? I can feel that you at least have a few more hours before you don’t have to listen to me ramble on and on.” Her eyes flashed violet in the rear-view mirror and I felt a surge of energy that took over from the numbness settling in.

“I… I don’t have anything… left… to say.” I hear myself say, yet I don’t really feel anything but the foreign energy coursing through my body. “You won.”

“Oh, I haven’t won yet, honeybun. I won’t say that I’ve won until I find your secret stash of weapons, and I hope you realize that you cannot go gently into that good night without my permission, regardless of how you’re feeling.”

“No… more… weapons.” I get out on my own. “Gone.”

“Don’t lie, honeybun. It doesn’t suit your face.” A jolt of her energy flew through my body, causing me to convulse. All of the places where the numbness had set into my body screamed out in agony. I prayed for the first time in my life. Prayed for death.

“You took those weapons of mass destruction out of the Middle East and stashed them somewhere the stupid Nulls couldn’t get to them, didn’t you?” She jerked the steering wheel as she turned to look at me. The rough texture of the emergency lane sent lances of pain through my body until she turned back and re-adjusted the car onto the highway lane.

“I… thought…” The pain made actual speech impossible.

“You thought what?” Another surge of energy flew from her into my body. “You thought you could change your ways and become a Saviour of Mankind?”

Yes, I thought. I heard my voice answer as well, but it seemed even more separate from me than before.

“Well, honeybun, it doesn’t work that way.” She moved the rear-view mirror to check her makeup, then pulled it back to center on me. “See, you’re the villain. I’m the hero. MetroCity is mine, and I need those weapons to remind all those… Nulls who the fuck rules the roost in my city.”

Her rant over for the moment, she returned her attention back to the road, leaving me alone with the ghost of her energy and my own mixture of pain and numb. MetroCity may have made me a villain within their media, but their heroes weren’t anything to write home about either.

I felt the car slow as she pulled off of the highway and onto a disused secondary road. She still thought that I’d leave the weapons somewhere that would be where my alter-ego would go anywhere near, because that is what she’d do.

For a Hero, she wasn’t terribly intelligent.
As I contemplated this, it slowly dawned on me that the pain was gone. Every inch of my body felt as if it had been stripped away, and all that was left was emptiness. The blood had slowed down to just a small trickle from my stomach.

I glanced up at the rear-view mirror and locked eyes with her just as I felt everything slip away. Her face, confused for a moment, distorted into pure, unadulterated rage just before everything went black.

– Fin –

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What’s the challenge this week, you ask? Just this picture:

My contribution is below the fold. I will say, this ended up much differently than I initially thought it would. I ended up writing a lot more than the 1000 word limit, so I had to do some pruning, but I think it works well.

Doll Heads

Mother was a hoarder. She always preferred the word ‘collector’, but Ethan and I would always call it what she actually was. Hoarder, psycho, complete nutjob… depending on whether she was in earshot or not, of course.  Mother wasn’t just a hoarder, she had a mean drunk temper, whether or not she was actually drinking.

I remember when I first read the word ‘mercurial’ when I was in a kid. I ran back home from the library to tell Ethan I had finally found the thing that Mother was, but didn’t pay enough attention that she was in the living room while we were making dinner.

“What did you call me?” she said, too quietly, from behind me. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in the Clinic, with fourteen stitches on my forehead and a concussion.

When I turned sixteen, I jumped ship. Ethan was already out of the house a year at that point, and I tried to move in with him. His psycho girlfriends were almost as bad as Mother, though he had the ability to get rid of them. We never could get rid of Mother.

I tried by moving across the country. Waking up with cold sweats night after night, Mother in a falling-down house in Ohio, myself in a cheap walk-up in Seattle, the distance just made her voice in my head a little bit crisper.

We thought that she would live forever, on sheer crazy. Ethan called me one night with the news I thought I’d be elated to hear.

“She’s dead.” he said without preamble. I dropped onto my couch, barely keeping the phone to my ear. “Can you come home?”

Home? I thought. I couldn’t speak. This is home. Not that place, covered in all of Mother’s various projects and shit from her beloved strays. Those nasty animals that I always knew she loved more than us.

I cleared my throat and told Ethan that I would be back in town as soon as I could get a flight out. I had to hang up before I changed my mind. Ethan needed me.

He met me at the baggage claim. It had been a few years since we had seen each other, but there was no mistaking the tall blond man who hid his damage behind a stellar smile. I, on the other hand, wore my damage on my sleeve, which was why I think he noticed me first.

“Missy is already at the house.” He said without greeting. He took my bag without touching me. I don’t like to be touched.

“She’ll have the place organized in no time.” I stopped walking. “Why did you have me come out?”

“She was your mother, Ellen.”

I shook my head, knowing that I was putting him in a corner.

The ride out to the house was silent. Ethan didn’t seem to mind when I put on the radio and surfed through the channels.

He pulled up to the house that still surfaced up in my nightmares. Ethan got out, but I couldn’t bring myself to open the car door.

Ethan made the decision for me by opening up my door.

“Come on.” Ethan whispered.

The smell hit me as I opened the front door. Stale cigarette smoke mixed with rotting paper with a dash of cat piss for good measure. I was confused for a moment, thinking that I was late and that Mother was going to kick my ass in just a minute.

No one was going to kick my ass today.

“Ethan honey? Did you get her?” Missy called from the back of the house. I saw her handiwork already in the house, with all the scattered trash that would normally be through the house was stacked and bagged. There was a semblance of organization to all of Mother’s things, which was never present while I was living here.

“Well, there you are. Come on and get something to drink.” Missy came into the hallway. Outside of her hair going completely white, Missy was the same slip of a woman that she had been my whole life. Ethan called her Miss Tornado when we were kids, and it still suited her.

I followed her, still not ready to speak, back into the kitchen. This is where Missy had started, as everything had a place and there were already items tagged and ready for the estate sale. Missy handed me a glass of iced tea, as I looked over the collections.

The porcelain doll heads caught my eye. Those god-damned doll heads, roughly fired long ago when Mother had decided to make her own dolls were jumbled together with other toys in the corner hutch. While I first found them incredibly creepy, the more Mother lost her mind, more affinity I felt with them. They were parts, strong enough to be made whole but they never would be able to in this house, this life.

“Missy, I need those doll heads.” I said, setting my drink on the scarred old kitchen table.

Missy stopped for a moment, as if to argue, but looked at me, slowly nodding.

“You take anything you need to, honey.” She placed her hands gently on my shoulders. “Anything you need.”

She left me alone with Ethan. I looked at him once, then turned away from him and back to the doll heads. I grabbed the dishtowel, gently placing each porcelain head into the cloth.

I only had to navigate the screen door with its still sticky latch, holding the doll heads in the cloth like an infant. Ethan followed at a small distance behind.

I opened the dishcloth on the ground, and picked up a doll head. I caressed it for a moment before taking aim at the outbuilding, throwing it with all my strength at the wall. Ethan jumped at the sound, taking a step towards me. I turned to look back at him, then picked up another one and threw again.

The post Flash Fiction – Doll Heads appeared first on Amber Hansford - Fantasy Author.

So, when I found Flash Fiction Fridays (many thanks to the Great Mr. Chuck Wendig for introducing me to this site) I thought, Well, hell, I can do this…

…. And then I forgot about it. Until I saw this image for Cycle 30. And the beginning of what you will find below the cut popped into my brain. The Cycle was already done for submissions, but I felt that I needed to write this down before it left my brain as a good exercise, along with a real reminder that I need to pay a bit more attention to the due dates of some of these flash fiction pieces.

So, here’s my not-really-a-submission for Flash Fiction Friday – Cycle 30. Feel free to pick it apart, but if you’re going to critique, remember that trolls will be deleted. I follow a strict No-Feeding policy when it comes to trolls.

And when you’re done here, go on over to read the real submissions on their site.

Comes the Dawn

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