“Break”

(larger version)

My new flash fiction is up on Weaponizer. A bit of an exercise in writing violence and grittiness, far from the humorous tone of my first flash fic for Weaponizer, “Here We Go Again” (clever, huh? Linked both stories on the same post, hahaha, I’m a self-promoting cunt).

Hope you enjoy “Break”.

Weaponizer

I have had a flash fic published in Weaponizer. It’s called “Here We Go Again” and I intend for it to be the first submission of many. My all-time favorite story being “Preacher”, of course my first story for Weaponizer had to be about poking fun at Christian beliefs.

Due to lack of time, I am not into the habit of reading online fiction myself (ironic, yes, I know), but the website is so well-designed, so comfortable and the fiction seems so genuinely good I’ll find myself some free time for it.

Thanks to Bram E. Gieben (aka Texture) for publishing the story.

Hope you like it.

Flash Fic #16 – Meanwhile, On Mount Olympus…

Zeus was bored.

The nymph kneeling in front of him looked up. “Mmmfffh –” she remembered to empty her mouth and tried again. “Something wrong, my lord Zeus?”

Zeus looked down. “Eh? Who are you?”

The nymph got up. “I see your mind is elsewhere.”

“I’m sorry, my dear. Indeed, I’m a bit distracted. Also, your technique needs work. Try getting it deeper into your throat, and there’s no need to work the shaft so often. Also, licking the tip doesn’t do much for me, I can’t see your eyes very well from nine feet away –”

“I understand, lord Zeus. You won’t tell Hera of this, will you?”

“What? What difference does it make at this point? I’m famous for fucking half of Olympus. The other half is male.”

“Sure, she won’t do anything to you, my lord…”

“Ah, yes, I forget her vengeful nature. Oh well. Let me help you not get horrendously tortured and slowly killed by Hera the only way I can.”

Zeus produced a thunderbolt and electrocuted the nymph to death.

“You’re welcome.”

He got out of his private chamber and back to the party Dyonisus was throwing.

“Zeus!” he said genially. “Where have you been, old mate? We’ve been laughing our asses off at Prometheus. We keep yelling ‘look, an eagle!’ and he goes into shock.”

“It’s not funny, dad,” said Heracles from behind Dyonisus. “Hasn’t the guy suffered enough?”

“Son, you could never be a leader,” said Zeus. “You have a heart of butter.”

Heracles raised his eyebrows. “Because I don’t think anyone deserves being chained to a rock and have an eagle tear at their liver every day for all eternity?”

Zeus rolled his eyes. “Okay, I admit I had a bit of an anger problem back then, but Prometheus is a bit of a cocky bastard…”

“Bah!” exclaimed Dyonisus. “No boring, sad reminiscences! This is a Dyonisus party! Go have some bloody wine, for fuck’s sake!”

“Zeus!”

Zeus turned around. To his annoyance, it was Hera.

“Zeus! Have you been cheating on me again?”

“Yep. How did you know?”

“Your dick is out.”

“Ah, shit.“

Zeus rolled his penis up and tucked it back inside his robes.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve been distracted today.”

“Honestly, honey! Have I been doing something wrong?”

“No, no, nobody can suck like you, it’s just my need for a bit of variety –”

“I mean our relationship, Zeus.”

“Ah, that. Well, you do have a tendency to… be a bit mean.”

“Indeed!” bellowed Heracles from the other side of the room.

“I need to take out my frustrations!” she said defensively.

“Punch the fucking pillow or something, no need to screw with everyone…”

“Or send fucking serpents to kill me, you bitch!” bellowed Heracles again.

“… you’ve got too comfortable resorting to mass murder as a way to relax. I can massage your feet or play the harp for you.”

Hera smiled. “No matter how many times you cheat on me, Zeus… I just can’t stop loving you.”

“I know,” he said, slapping her butt. “Now excuse me, darling, I have to go take a look around, see if nobody’s causing any trouble. Even for a Dyonisus party.”

The first one he saw upon departing from Hera’s company was sitting on a chair, drinking wine in large gulps and leaning himself grumpily on his trident. The trident had a human impaled on it. The human was still alive and didn’t dare to let out a fucking peep.

“Poseidon,” said Zeus. “I… can tell you’re in a bad mood.”

“Really,” said Poseidon, giving the trident a little shake and making the human grit his teeth in agony.

“What happened, brother?”

“Just having an existential crisis,” said Poseidon. “You know that pun, ’semen’ instead of ’seamen’? Some dick did it again and it was kinda of like the last straw, you know? So I impaled the dick and here I am, having some wine and trying to convince myself I didn’t get the shittiest realm of all.”

“What do you mean?” asked Zeus, confused. “Hades got Underworld.”

“Yeah, Hades gets to torture dead souls all day. What do I do? Go fishing? Ride a whale’s back? Torture dolphins?”

“I see your point.”

“It’s so boring, brother. I’m grateful when there’s an oil leakage. At least I see something other than fucking water for a while. Can’t we… you know… switch places? Just for a century or so?”

“Oh, sure,” said Zeus sarcastically. “Let’s give Hades something other than Underworld and watch the whole fabric of existence crumble.”

“No, switch with me, brother, just you and me, I’ll –”

“No dice,” said Zeus, turning away to leave.

“I’ll suck your dick! I’LL EAT YOUR ASSHOLE OUT!”

Zeus didn’t turn back. But he was momentarily tempted to.

The next one he met wasn’t one to smile much. Or at all.

“Ares?” said Zeus. “How’ve you been?”

“Hey, Zeus,” said Ares, his immense muscles contracting and ejecting one of the many knifes that had been stuck in his flesh during his last battle — probably the fifth he fought just that day. “I’ve been shitty.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“Warfare on Earth sucks, that’s why. Soon it will just be unmanned machines fighting out battles over oil in the middle of empty fields with no civilians to die in the crossfire. No bloodshed, no death, just sparks and explosions. Warfare is turning into a fucking Michael Bay film.”

“I’d say you need to move ahead with the times, man.”

“Fuck that!” he said so suddenly his muscles ejected a knife out into the eye of a passing centaur. “First they came up with gunpowder. Okay, I can get behind that. Sure, you’re not a man if you do your killing from a distance, but I came to like firearms from the sheer skill it took to kill a man with something this tiny. And then came the bombardments, then napalm, choppers, tanks and things just aren’t fun anymore.”

“Ares, move with the times or you’ll be left behind,” said Zeus.

“Kill myself is what I’m gonna do,” he belched.

“Well, say hello to Hades for me, then.”

“Do it yourself. He’s here.”

“… fuck.”

Zeus moved through the crowd, looking for Hades, but he was suddenly blinded by an incredibly strong light.

“FUCKSAKE, APOLLO!!” he yelled. “I’VE TOLD YOU YOU CANNOT BRING THE FUCKING SUN WITH YOU!!”

“But who’ll take care of him while I’m gone?” whined Apollo.

“Dammit, just tell him to spin around the galaxy, it ain’t that hard!!”

“Okay, damn, calm down,” said Apollo. “Go, Sunny, I’ll catch up with you later.”

The light disappeared and everyone blinked to get their eyes to work again. Not everyone was successful.

“Every fucking time, Apollo,” said Zeus. “Excuse me, I’m busy. Enjoy the party.”

Zeus kept moving and spotted Eros in the middle of a crowd. Eros had a camcorder. And he was filming two nymphs having sex.

“Dammit, Eros,” said Zeus. “You can’t shoot porno here.”

“You’re one to talk,” replied Eros. “Only difference is you’re camera-shy, baby. And this is for my new movie. Olympusex, I call it.”

“That’s terrible.”

“No-one understands my genius,” complained Eros, getting an extreme close-up of an ass.

“Have you seen Hades?” asked Zeus.

“At the buffet,” said Eros distractedly.

Zeus went to the buffet hurriedly and indeed, there was Hades eating all the tacos.

“What are you doing here, Hades?” asked Zeus.

“Brother,” said Hades with faux-enthusiasm. “Your dick’s out.”

“Shit, this keeps happening,” muttered Zeus, tucking his penis back in again.

“I’m enjoying the party, like everyone else,” said Hades.

“You can’t come to Olympus.”

“Why not? You’re here, Poseidon’s here and he’s got a human impaled on his trident. In fact, he just ate the human’s leg.”

“Poseidon is going through a rough patch.”

“I live in the Underworld, Zeus. Do not talk to me about rough patches. I am behaving.”

“You always behave until you get drunk.”

“I am not drinking.”

“You always say that. You wait until I find you in a party, you convince me you’re not drinking, I turn my back and you start. And before I know, you’re raping all the guests.”

“I turned over a new leaf,” said Hades.

“You turned over so many new leafs you look like a fucking tree at this point, Hades.”

“What? That doesn’t make any sense, ‘leaf’ does not refer to…”

“Whatever. Out.”

“Very well. I have other business to attend to anyway, and this is your house, after all… BUT,” he raised a finger in warning, and said no more, turning his back and whooshing away.

Zeus rolled his eyes to himself. “Over-dramatic cunt,” he muttered.

“Hey! Zeus!”

He turned. It was a nymph he hadn’t fucked yet.

“Yes, darling?” he asked.

“You have an erection,” she noticed.

“You’ll get used to that. What is it?”

“Atlas is having tremendous back pains, my lord. What do we do?”

“Tell him to lie down and put the world over his chest for a while, but don’t let it fucking fall or I’ll have him hold up Jupiter.”

“Yes, lord.”

“And when you’re done, come talk to me again, come meet me in my private quarters.”

“Do you have anything you’d like to talk to me about, lord?”

“No, I just want to fuck something.”

Being a god had been fun for the first billion years, he thought.

Flash Fic #15 – The Curse Of The Mother-In-Law

Laina entered the poorly-lit tent and was immediately greeted by a gutural, gravely voice.

“Welcome, Laina.”

She was surprised the woman knew her name, but then remembered she was supposed to be a clairvoyant. She certainly looked the part: old, mysterious, a voice like she had smoked a factory’s chimney for half her life, eyes hidden in shadow by the dim, trembling candlelight illumination.

The clairvoyant smiled softly and gestured toward the padded red chair in front of her desk. Laina obliged and sat, and on closer examination the clairvoyant seemed to be the missing link between humans and toads, especially when she smiled with that remarkably wide mouth.

“What are you here for, child?” she asked.

Laina raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you know?”

“Well, yes, but if I act like I do this will be a very one-sided and boring conversation, so indulge me.”

“I suspect my husband has been messing around with other women.”

The clairvoyant reached out her hand with the palm facing up. Laina frowned, but placed her own hand over the clairvoyant’s, who immediately nodded. “He most certainly has been messing around with other women, oh yes. Been enjoying himself quite a bit.”

Laina gasped.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the clairvoyant. “I’ve never had much tact. When you can see how everyone around you will die you kind of lose touch with humanity. I’ve been seeing a therapist. But anyway,” she straightened herself in her chair. “I could offer you a little extra something to deal with this husband of yours.”

“My ex-husband, you mean,” snarled Laina between gritted teeth.

“Oh, don’t be so hasty! You can teach the cunt a lesson before you make him swallow the divorce papers.”

“I’m listening.”

The clairvoyant grinned. “It is called the Curse Of The Mother-In-Law.”

Thunder roared outside, although the sky had been clear and starry when Laina walked into the tent.

“For it to work, you need to have an ugly mother,” said the clairvoyant.

“But my mom’s dead.”

The clairvoyant grinned even more.

“Perfect.”

***

“Are you sure she doesn’t suspect?” asked Linda, having a spoonful of pudding.

Peter smiled smugly. “Half of Laina’s jewelry, clothing and stuff was given to her by me. She knows how hard I work for all that, so she never questions it when I tell her I need to do overtime.”

“But every day?”

“Well,” said Peter with a conceding lip contraction. “Yeah, we probably should see each other less, but I just miss you so much…”

“Aaaaw,” said Linda, offering a spoon of pudding to Peter, who ate it in a quite outstandingly erotic manner and called the waiter. “And your friends don’t come here? Nobody you know?”

“Nah,” he said with a dismissive frown. “And really, what’s life without a little risk?”

***

Half an hour later they were in Linda’s bed, snogging passionately on the squeaky mattress.

“Oh, put it in! I want it NOW!” she bellowed.

“Horny today, are you?” teased Peter.

“NOW!”

He happily obliged, but as soon as he stuck it in he felt her genitals go incredibly cold and dry. He looked up.

He was fucking a rotting corpse.

His mother-in-law’s rotting corpse.

“JESUS FUCK!!!” he yelled, jumping backwards off the bed and falling on the carpet.

“What happened?” said Linda bewildered. And it was Linda, not his mother-in-law’s cadaver. It was Linda in all her beauty and nakedness.

“I, er, I…” panted Peter, his mind racing to rationalize the incident, dismiss it as something stupid and go back to the wonderful sex. “I, er, I…” his mind was failing horribly at it.

“Peter, what?” she insisted.

“Nothing,” he said finally. “I thought I saw a spider.”

She frowned. “You’re afraid of spiders?”

“No,” he said hastily. “I was afraid for you.”

“So you jumped off the bed?“

Fuck, he though, then quickly added, “I’m joking, I am a bit scared of spiders. Old childhood fear.”

“Oh, no matter. The bed’s spider-free. Come back to me,” she said with a naughty grin.

“Gonna be a black widow?” he teased playfully.

“I promise I won’t,” she teased back, biting her lower lip, and he went back to bed, kissed her, opened her legs…

His second scream woke the neighbors.

“What the FUCK, Peter?!” screamed Linda, looking up at Peter, who had climbed on the cupboard.

“AAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAH!” he replied eloquently.

“Peter! Come down! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

His screaming eventually turned into panting, his eyes staring straight at Linda, who looked perfectly alive and beautiful, unlike the dead body he’d just fucked for the second time and that was now gone.

“Look,” said Peter. “I… I don’t know… you won’t believe me…”

“Oh, you BET I won’t believe you unless you give me a very good reason not to be fucking my brains out right now!“

Peter had expected she’d say something a little more sympathetic or sweet, but her horniness combined with a suddenly inneficient sex partner had somewhat screwed with her temper.

“I’m…” said Peter, hesitating. “When I stick it in, I stop seeing you and I see my dead mother-in-law.”

He couldn’t be sure whether the expression on her face was extremely puzzled or extremely offended, so he quickly added, “I don’t know why!! I just suddenly see her, I even feel the cold of her skin, the…”

He felt a bottle of perfume break against his forehead and realized it was “extremely offended”, yes.

***

Half-asleep, Laina felt the mattress of her couple’s bed sink a bit. Her husband had just sat on the edge.

“Mmm, it’s so late, Pete…” she moaned.

“Sorry I woke you, long day at work,” said Peter.

“You didn’t, I was awake,” she replied, quietly seething at the “long day at work” lie.

At that moment, they were both wondering something. She was wondering if the curse had worked, which would explain why he sounded so bummed and frustrated. And he was wondering if the problem had gone away, if it wasn’t just his imagination, perhaps his conscience playing a (very, very, very) sick joke on him.

And really, he had gotten an erection twice that night without ever getting the much wished-for orgasm. Right then he would have happily boned a keyhole.

So he started kissing his wife’s neck. Something he normally didn’t do, so the curse had probably worked to some extent. Laina smiled to herself as she said with a voice full of cold, sweet revenge:

“Not today, hon. I’ve a headache.”

Peter looked at her bewildered. They hadn’t had sex in months. What did she mean, not today?

“I’ve been working so hard, darling…” he insisted, stroking her arm.

“No doubt,” said Laina, and Peter noticed an ambiguous tone in that. “But I’m almost asleep and my head hurts. I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” he said in a voice that didn’t disguise his frustration. She smiled to herself even more widely.

As Peter laid his head on the pillow, he realized his forehead was bleeding.

***

On the following night, Peter found himself in a neighborhood he never thought he would find himself in: the red light district. But he had to find out quickly, he couldn’t bear not to know. After going past several prostitutes who made his mother-in-law’s corpse attractive by comparison, he found a scrawny blonde who looked nice enough despite her big silicone breasts that didn’t go well with her body’s slim proportions. But Peter would be goddamned if he’d say no to big tits.

“Hi!” he said to her. He sounded ridiculously cheerful instead of polite, the latter being what he had intended. “I am wondering if…”

“A hundred,” the prostitute cut him off. “And I want you to use a condom.”

“… sure. Let’s go,” said Peter, relieved she was the straight-to-the-point type.

***

In a motel room, he realized she was also the more-attractive-with-clothes-on type, and now that she was naked he was having a hard time getting, well, hard. He tried thinking of Linda, but the memory that came to him was the bottle of perfume flying to his forehead, so that didn’t help. He thought of Megan Fox and that was way more helpful, and before he lost the image in his head he stuck it in…

“OH MY GOD NOOOOOO!!”

… and stumbled back again, falling on his ass.

“Oh, okay, I’ll do it for seventy-five,” said the prostitute irritably.

Without saying another word, he left a hundred-dollar-bill on the floor and left, slamming the door behind him.

***

It’s Laina’s fault, he thought as he drove back home. She suspected. She had done something. It was her mother’s corpse, after all. The ungrateful, cold bitch. Laina, not the mother. Well, her too. They didn’t understand. None of them understood how difficult it is to be a man. How hard it is to say no to the advances of women and their beautiful, round, juicy breasts. He worked so hard, couldn’t he be cut some slack? Couldn’t she have just asked for the divorce? Did she have to do whatever it is she did?

***

Laina was reading a book when Peter arrived, slamming the door behind him, making the windows vibrate. “YOU!!” he said over-dramatically.

She just stared at him, eyebrows slightly raised.

“YOU!!” he repeated, panting.

Same.

“What have you done?!!” he yelled.

“I’ve been reading?” said Laina innocently, holding up her book.

“You’ve bewitched me!” bellowed Peter. “Every time I fuck I see your mother! Your dead, rotting mother!!”

“So you have been fucking other women, have you?” she said triumphantly.

“THAT’S NOT THE POINT!” yelled Peter, then realized what he had just said. “Well, okay, it is the point, but a point we can discuss after you…”

“There is nothing to be discussed,” said Laina firmly. “I want the divorce.”

“Great! Excellent! Perfect! You could have just said that, you know!” he bellowed exasperated. “But first I want this curse to go away!”

“It’s a clairvoyant. Get your car, let’s go see her.”

“A clairvoyant, I can’t believe this shit…”

“I told you they were the real deal.”

***

Peter and Laina stared stunned at the sign in front of the clairvoyant’s tent:

BUSINESS MOVED TO PERU.

Peter turned to look at Laina.

“Well?!“

Laina looked at him and smiled sadly.

“Whoops.”

***

Peter could never find a clairvoyant capable of removing the curse, and he never knew the name of the one who had cursed him in the first place.

Because he forgot to ask Laina before he murdered her.

Flash Fic #14 – Those Last Moments

The train was late. Or maybe time was just slower. He wasn’t looking at the clock, or at anything. His vision was blurry and his mouth sour with the taste of blood. A constant stream of it seeped from the wound on his chest to the hand clutched over it, following the rhythm of his heart, weaker by the minute. Every breath felt like his chest was ripping open, to the point of having pissed all over himself and the bench he was sitting on. Not that he cared.

The only sound he heard was his own painful breathing. Nobody around. Nobody to see him die. And that was fine by him. He didn’t want the train to come. He wanted the subway station to stay exactly like it was — silent, oblivious, lit by its cold artificial lights. In a few hours, that place would be packed with people going to their jobs, to look for one, to their schools, or — for the ones who worked the night-shift — to their homes.

But that would be in a few hours. Right now, the subway station was peaceful and he wanted it to stay that way. Even if it hadn’t been the first place he saw after being shot, even if he had made it to a hospital, or to a park, or anywhere else — he would have wanted to die in a place like this. Because he’d die anyway, and he didn’t want people over him telling him he’d be okay, or that he had to be strong for them, or begging him not to die as if he had a choice in the matter. He wanted to die like this — to have a chance to think about those last moments.  When you’re sure you’re about to die, all the curtains, the lies, the deceit you built for yourself fall apart and you see your life more clearly than you ever did. Shame it’s too late by then.

But it was worse for the guy who shot him — he didn’t get to think about those last moments. He just died before even realizing a bullet had gone straight through his brain.

He felt his feet slipping slightly and realized there was a pool of blood beneath them. Wouldn’t be long now. He let a chuckle escape and coughed enough blood to fill a cup as a result. He wondered who’d find his body. He wondered how often that person would tell this story to amuse or terrify his friends, or how often that person would need therapy. It didn’t matter to him now, and probably wouldn’t have before either. He didn’t care about people, or about anything. He had no regrets. He had no remorse. He had known he was a psychopath since his twenties and had embraced it. And now, he was getting what had been a long time coming to him.

A hitman dying alone in a New York subway station. Nothing could suit him more. He never had friends, only pretended to. He had always hated his parents. Always hated the happy little fucking people who just went through life with an honest smile. The ones who just fit in without any effort. The ones he had always envied. The ones who looked at a woman and saw more than just a quick pleasure, the ones who saw a person begging in the street and would feel the urge to help them — the ones who’d try to help him if they saw him sitting in that bench, watching his own blood seep out, liter by liter. The ones who cared. The ones he could never be.

He heard the echo of a train make its way through the tunnel. He didn’t want it to come. He wanted the silence to continue. He wanted to die in silence. He wanted to hear himself go.

But it came and thundered across the station. During those long, dragging seconds, he wished he wouldn’t die.

And it was gone, and the silence was back, even sweeter than before.

He could die now.

—

(This flash fic was inspired by a gorgeous photograph by Rachael Noel Fox, available on her wonderful photography book “DAD SOLD CRACK HERE“. The link has a preview through which you can easily find the pic, although it does no justice to the photograph in the actual, printed book.)

Flash Fic #13 – This One Has Zombies On It

I had no idea how they hadn’t seen me. Perhaps I was covered in so much blood they thought I was already dead, and the living ones were tastier. Not that they were still living. Steve had been reduced to a length of intestine, and I wasn’t even sure if it was Steve’s. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if the intestine wouldn’t come back to life, wrap itself around my throat and disgustingly try to choke me to death. Jeanne’s ribcage had been pried open and now looked like a meaty bowl, with her chewed-on organs floating on a pool of blood and zombie saliva. I was a bit creeped out by myself checking out her bare, blood-drenched tits anyway. I just had to, I kind of had a crush on Jeanne when her ribcage was still intact and her rack looked fine. Harry was the unluckiest one, because the zombies decided to start with his feet and went up, taking their time with every muscle. At two minutes, he should have been in shock, but his incessant screaming indicated otherwise, to the point of pissing off a zombie who ate half his throat before resuming the meal on his nether bits, so Harry just gurgled until death.

I was absolutely still throughout the whole thing. My face was the victim of Steve’s arterial spray and I fell on my arse, failing to get up or shoot my pistol. So I just went with it and pretended to be dead. I doubted I could have helped them with twenty zombies in the room and only eight bullets on my gun. When they were done eating, half an hour later, they left, one by one, not even glancing at me. I was probably very convincingly dead.

I raised my head and looked down — my shirt had been almost entirely covered in blood and what looked like a bit of stomach that had probably fallen from a zombie’s mouth. My pants were equally colored, and there was so much blood around that when I got up, my steps went “squish squish squish”. I hoped the guns left behind by the group were blood-proof. I picked up Steve’s AK-47, the one I had originally found but the fucker had sweet-talked for himself. I shook it a bit to get some of the blood off and, well, what else could I do with it? I put it under my arm and saw Jeanne’s pistol not far from her partially devoured hand. I picked it up and removed the magazine, which she hadn’t had the chance to use, and pocketed it. After a moment’s thought, the gun also went on the back of my pants, magazine reloaded into it, just in case.

And finally, there was Harry’s shotgun.

I picked it up, glancing quickly at Harry. His frozen, dead face looked like he was still screaming, but perhaps that was because his jaw had been ripped off. I almost slipped on it. I cocked the shotgun, for no particular reason besides looking cool, and shook some blood out of it. It had been fired twice, with four shells remaining. I examined the bloody mess that Harry had become, trying to see where his pockets were. I failed, or perhaps the idea of touching him just convinced me to fail before I even tried.

We were in an apartment complex. Enclosed space, so the shotgun would be a good bet. However, four shells wouldn’t do much good in the long run, so I settled for the half-a-magazine-loaded AK. And I wasn’t going to use it until absolutely necessary anyway, until then the pistol would have to do. So I slung the AK around my neck and thought whether I really, really couldn’t take the shotgun. Nope. So I left it, wondering if another survivor would come across it and have a moment of hope. Ha ha ha.

I left the room, nodding briefly to my fallen partners — yes, “fallen” has to be the biggest euphemism ever in this case — and looked down the sights of my pistol, pointing it straight ahead of me as I walked down the eerily silent corridor. Zombies weren’t into sneaking, so I figured the silence was a good sign. Only it made my steps sound relatively loud. And my breathing. And I got the impression even my heart was perfectly audible.

Then there was a groan coming from the staircase, and I could make out a faint shadow. It was the only way down, the elevator was no longer working. So I went over to the staircase, sneaked to the edge of the wall and took a quick look — three or four zombies, all still and very silent, except for the groaning one that seemed to be struggling against indigestion. Four bullets. Three, if I took the first one out with the knife. Two, if I managed to take two out with the knife. One, if I oh come on who was I kidding. The staircase made an u-turn to another set of stairs and then another u-turn, more stairs, and it went down in this fashion — there could be more zombies than I had ammo. And any loud sound would attract them all.

Mmm.

Steve had a flashbang with him. He kept complaining it was useless against zombies but potentially useful when we were fighting “the evil government troops and their conspiracy” in addition to zombies. So he carried it along with him, instead of pain pills or something more immediately handy. I went back into the room and glanced quickly at Steve, The Stubborn Length Of Intestine, proceeding to survey the room for the flashbang. Didn’t take long to see it on a corner. On my way to pick it up, I realized something.

Where was Jeanne’s corpse?

I felt hands gripping my shoulders from behind. Due to some incredibly convenient strategically-sound reflex, instead of trying to escape, I threw myself backwards, headbutting my opponent somewhere. I fell on all the blood and tried getting up, failing twice due to slipping like a fucking retard. Jeanne was on her feet, her forehead cut and blood on her eyes, trying to find me while leaning on the wall for support — her stomach was almost sliding out of her gaping abdomen.

Her stupid zombie brain took a while to figure out she could simply wipe the blood off her eyes with her other hand. In the meantime, I realized the pistol was no longer in my grip and in the heat of the moment, I didn’t remember I had one in the back of my pants. I surveyed the bloody floor and my eyes stopped on the shotgun precisely when Jeannie brushed her hand against her eyes and found me.

I leapt across the room and landed on my stomach, not as gracefully as I had planned but painlessly because I fell on Steve’s intestine, and slid over to the shotgun, which I grabbed and turned its sights to Jeannie, who was already on top of me about to bite.

The shot hit her chest — I mean, her back, since the chest was already open — and sent her flying against the wall. She bounced off of it and hit the ground like a big meaty sack. In my panic, I shot her head, which pretty much disintegrated at that close range.

After the shots, blessed silence — and then shrieks and groans reminded me I was in a building full of hungry zombies that had just heard two very loud sounds on an otherwise silent building.

FUCK.

No way was I going to risk the hahaha-I’m-just-pretending-to-be-dead strategy again, and my firepower was laughable. Without thinking further on the subject, I ran out of the room and there already were zombies heading my way, running and shrieking something that must mean “dinner is served!” in zombie. There was a window next to me, and I instinctively leapt through it, feeling every cut caused by the broken glass.

And then I remembered that window lead to the outside of the building, and I was on the 28th floor.

Some times, death is just random that way.

Flash Fic #12 – Off On The Wrong Foot

Nikki’s was one of those bars located down the stairs of some shitty alleyway. Me and Jordan pushed the door open only to be greeted by a heavy double-door, which was opened by a tall man in a tight shirt that showed his well-built figure, enormous muscles and large hands with spiky fingerless gloves. Jordan didn’t even bother to look at him as the guy searched us poorly, not too into his job. He didn’t check the back of my pants, the place where I’d usually be carrying my gun.

The stink of cigarette smoke made my eyes water. I tightened my face, squinting through the fog at the crowded bar. All the tables were taken and there wasn’t a single empty stool at the counter. There were people talking and drinking while standing up, leaving little room for maneuver.

Jordan didn’t even blink, as though the smoke was afraid to touch him. He walked up to the counter and surveyed the customers. The bartender was middle-aged and not too worried about her looks. The make-up was smeared and her skin, saggy. No owner in their right mind would hire her for that job, so I presumed she was the owner herself, Nikki. She looked at me, then at Jordan and her eyes lingered on him, reading “trouble” on his cranky, seven-feet tall figure.

Lipper said he’d be using a blue suit. Apparently he hadn’t arrived yet, even though we were fifteen minutes late. Jordan looked over at me, his head towering above the relatively short crowd, and shook his head, confirming the guy wasn’t there.

I felt a poke on my shoulder and turned. It was Nikki, eyeing me with an expression of disgust as if talking to a vermin.

“Don’t you two cause any problems,” she said with a roark voice that was probably the result of decades of chainsmoking. I turned my attention back to the crowd, observing the customers, then I felt the poke again. “I’m talking to you,” she said loudly.

I simply turned and held her stare. She stepped back, frightened, and wisely decided to take it as a “yes, I heard” instead of the “fuck you” I meant. As she returned to the counter, I traded looks with Jordan to see if he had watched me get the warning. Jordan nodded very slightly to his left, toward the doorman, who was flexing his fingers threateningly at me.

I heard a door click open nearby. It was the men’s restroom, and a man in a blue suit was leaving it. He was slim and hard-featured, with a wrinkled face covered partly by a badly-kept beard. He pushed his way to the counter without seeing me or Jordan. I could tell he was the careless type because anyone with any observational skills at all would have noticed a Jordan-sized man standing nearby.

I positioned myself behind his back, with Jordan joining me a second later. “Hello, Lipper,” I said softly.

He turned his head slowly, feigning confidence. “You’re late,” he said.

Then his face froze and he gulped. I looked down and realized, with satisfaction, that Jordan had tucked a nerve on Lipper’s lower back between his thumb and forefinger, and was squeezing. I added, “Don’t grow a pair, Lipper. We’ll have to kick it back into you.” Lipper resumed his breathing, which told me Jordan had let go.

Having had his tough man act ruined, Lipper didn’t seem to know how to start the conversation. Me and Jordan just stared at him, not willing to help at all.

“Look –” Lipper began, but didn’t finish. I smiled patiently.

“Lipper,” I said even more patiently. “Surely you haven’t called a meeting with us in this shithole for nothing, right? You have information, don’t you?”

Lipper seemed to remember what planet he was on. “Yeah, sure! It’s about Carrie.”

“Carrie,” I repeated, more to myself than to him. I thought about saying we already knew all there was to know about her, but it never hurts to make sure one of your new sources is reliable.

“Yeah, Carrie,” Lipper said, gaining some of his confidence back. “She’s dead.”

This source wasn’t. I looked at Jordan. His left eye was twitching. Five years with him taught me how bad a sign this was. And I was proved right by the umpteenth time when he grabbed Lipper’s hair and slammed his head against the counter. And then again. And again. Lipper’s legs went numb, so Jordan hanged him upright by the back of his suit and kept slamming his head against the counter so hard two glasses of beer fell from it.

“Hey!” the doorman yelled, running toward us. Jordan slammed Lipper’s forehead one last time, let him fall off and turned to the doorman, who halted, scared, but too late — Jordan grabbed the massive man by the neck and lifted him off his feet. He was merciful with this one. After choking him for ten seconds, he headbutted the guy into uncounsciousness and dropped him on the floor.

Lipper was dead. I could tell by the bits of brain sliding out of his forehead and the pool of blood forming beneath his skull. The customers didn’t know where to look at — at the dead body, the knocked out doorman or the seven-feet tall murderer. So they settled for fleeing the bar, tripping over each other.

Seconds later, only me, Jordan, the corpse and the sleeping doorman were left in that shithole. Nikki had fled too, apparently.

“You actually cracked the counter,” I commented, looking at the broken, blood-covered wooden surface.

Flash Fic #11 – Vanity Unfair

Jenna needed a MySpace profile picture. This posed a problem to her enormously large self. She already had drastically low self-esteem, and her mates in school weren’t exactly helpful with their commentaries, which went from “you could hide a goddamn fridge in that thigh” to “call Greenpeace, we have a beached whale situation”. She had instantly broken two chairs by sitting on them, and any chair she regularly used lasted about three weeks until the metal legs bent to half the original length. She was the fattest girl in her class. She might have gone unnoticed if most of her female classmates weren’t as pretty as they were. And if everyone in there was blind.

Her mother, who also needed constant help to be unstuck from door frames, defended her daughter’s fat arse with medieval arguments like “she’s just very healthy!” or modern ones like “do you want her to be one of those skeletal fashion models?”, to which the husband usually replied, “no, I just don’t want to buy new furniture every goddamn week”. He no longer worried whether Jenna was in earshot. Ignoring him, Jenna’s mother bought her self-help books about living with your own fat and being proud of it. None of them came even close to suggesting a diet and were written by people who seemed to think eating a carrot instead of a Big Mac meant instant anorexia.

And now, Jenna needed a MySpace picture. She had filled her profile with famous and clever quotes by people she’d never heard of before googling “famous and clever quotes”; she claimed to have read Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, which she hadn’t and therefore assumed was a “wonderful fairy tale”; she described herself as “a sweet and sensitive person with attractive qualities”. But the space for a profile pic was empty, and she couldn’t live with that.

So Jenna took her camera out, as she did often. She liked to snap pictures of herself, what she didn’t like were the pictures. But she’d find a way, oh she would. She’d found a tutorial on the net for this kind of thing: angles, lighting and other stuff that favoured the subject. It didn’t seem very honest, but everyone else did it, Jenna thought. Even the pretty girls. So why not her?

She held the camera at arm’s length, raised it above her head, on a high angle, gave the camera a sexy look, made sure a light source was close to her face – in this case, a lampstand – and she snapped the pic.

It looked bizarre. The light source created a shadow in every crevice, wrinkle and zit on her face. The light was supposed to be strong enough and angled in a way it would outshine any of those and make her skin look perfect. But she needed to lower her face and raise the camera to hide her triple chin. And the lampstand was below her face and very heavy. So she kneeled and faced the lampstand, level with it. She put the camera right in front of her eyes, lowered her head and snapped another shot.

Now the shadow of her hand holding the cellphone covered half her face. She sighed irritably and corrected the angle, but her knees weren’t holding all that weight well. Jenna sat down on the floor – which startled the neighbor on the apartment below, and the one below his – and tried taking another shot. But no angle she chose, no matter how close or far from the light source, was able to make her imperfections disappear –

– until she finally took one that was exactly the perfect angle and perfect lighting, not a mark on her — but she’d forgotten to make the sexy face.

She dropped the camera on her bed, opened the window and leaned out, breathing deep and enjoying the cool night wind and the bright city skyline to calm down. Maybe if she learned Photoshop instead…

… wait, she could switch the light source, she thought. There was the lamp on the ceiling fan. It was already above her, so it would be perhaps easier to get the angle right. She grabbed the camera and climbed on the bed after three attempts. She eagerly raised the camera –

– and the camera’s cord caught on the ceiling fan, which yanked it from her hand, spun it around and hit her square in the face. She stumbled backwards off the bed, managing to stay on her feet –

– and fell out the opened window.

On the next day, there was a crater in the middle of the street. When they removed her body from it with a crane (and after the crane was removed from the crater by two bigger cranes), they found a car under her. It was quite embarrassing when they found the ceiling fan with the camera still spinning, firmly trapped by the cord.

Flash Fic #10 – Medical Discovery

“We’re not sure of what this is, Mr Kenneth,” the doctor said, after a long silence trying to find a satisfying explanation and failing. He pulled a few sheets of paper from an envelope, selected one and put it over the desk, facing me.

It showed a normal-looking brain, with a black spot growing from the left hemisphere, a veiny thing extending its tentacles all over the organ.

And that was my tomography.

I choked. “Is that a tumour?”

“If it is, it’s a completely different kind of tumour, one we’ve never heard of,” the doctor said, pulling two other sheets of paper from the pile and putting them side by side on the desk. Two more tomographies showing the same brain, only the black spot’s “tentacles” were now in… different positions.

I couldn’t hold back a nervous chuckle. “It fucking moves?“

The doctor nodded, trying to stay professional. “Its tentacles penetrate your brain and result in nosebleeds, passing out and loss of memory.”

“It’s a living thing, doctor?”

“We’re not sure…”

“It’s humping my damn brain.“

“Not… well… yes, that’d be a way to put it.”

“And how do we stop it?”

The doctor didn’t know what to say. “It’s new, Mr Kenneth. Me and my colleagues have no idea.”

“I have a perverted tumour in my brain, doc. I’d say surgery is required.”

“We don’t know if it’s connected to your brain somehow, Mr Kenneth. It dies, you die, perhaps.”

“What is this, an ‘Alien’ flick?”

“It’s a tumour humping your brain. Anything is possible.”

I sat back in the chair, running my fingers through my hair. “So… what do we do?”

“We study it, we see what we can do.”

“And meanwhile it keeps raping my left hemisphere?”

“It’s not like we can buy it a condom, Mr Kenneth.”

It was a completely justified punch.

Flash Fic #9 – Probe

David Partridge was hurried into a room full of serious-looking middle aged men wearing suits worth more than themselves. They all looked at him impassively, maybe with slight curiosity, in a “what an interesting creature” fashion.

“Hello, Mr. Partridge.” said the strangest of all the men, a fat slob with fingers so thick each one probably weighed more than David’s entire hand. “You don’t need to know my real name. Call me Jones.”

“Uh… right.” David said, uneasy under so many snob stares.

Jones approached David as he spoke, his fat double chin flapping with every syllable. “We called you here due to your considerable abilities as a police investigator and an useful plus — a fascination, and good understanding of, astronomy.”

David frowned, puzzled. “Eeer…”

Jones raised his hand, dismissing the upcoming questions. “Follow me.”

They all moved past a door into an adjacent room with two-way glass — an interrogation room. David was the only one to gape jaw-dropped at what was on the other side of the glass.

It was a rock as big as him, shaped very irregularly, charred and placed on a corner of the room along with a desk and four chairs. 

As amazing as this sight was, David couldn’t help noticing there was no sign of a human being within the room.

“That,” Jones said. “is a meteor.”

David turned to look at Jones. “Meteorite. When it reaches the ground, it’s called a meteorite.”

Jones rolled his eyes, impatient. “Yes, yes.”

“So?” David asked. “I’ve seen your meteorite. Who am I supposed to interrogate?”

Jones motioned to the charred rock. “The meteorite.”

David stared at him.

“What?” he said. “Did you seriously call me out of my precinct and my important, life-saving work to prank me?”

“Get in the room.” Jones insisted. “Say ‘hello’.”

David snorted. “Sure, then you pull out a camcorder and next thing I know the most-viewed video on YouTube is the asshole detective trying to get answers from an inert piece of rock.”

“Fine.” Jones said, walking into the room and leaving the door open. He stood in front of the meteorite. “Hello.”

And to David’s amazement, a thunderous voice replied “Greetings again, creature.” Every word was accompanied of a light flickering inside the meteorite, through its pores.

“Do excuse me.” Jones said, walking out of the room. “David? Would you please?”

“This is –” David groped for words. “This is ridiculous. How hard would it be to make a fake meteorite, install some lights and sound amps in it? It’s from space and it speaks English? Please.”

Jones sighed. “Very well, Mr. Partridge. I did try to be reasonable.”

Suddenly, there was a nine millimeter in Jones’ chubby fingers — a customized one so he could fit his index through the trigger — and pointed straight at David’s forehead.

“Get in the goddamn room. I want answers from that thing.”

David was gaping in disbelief. He looked around for help, but all the middle-aged bastards also had nine millimeters, all pointed at him.

“This is insane!” he gasped.

All the pistols cocked at the same time.

“Okay, okay!” David yelled. “I’ll do it.”

Jones merely motioned his head toward the room. David walked into it, his trained detective brain trying to figure out ways to escape this situation.

“Greetings, new creature.” the meteorite thundered.

David hesitated, then decided the best way to deal with this was playing along.

He sighed. “Greetings. My name is David Partridge. And what would your name be?”

“My name cannot be pronounced in your primitive dialect, David, and your ear bones would not register the frequency of my native language. There is no translation for English, so for the sake of this interrogation, do call me Tim.”

David snorted. “I’m not calling a meteorite ‘Tim’.”

“What would you wish to call me?” the meteorite asked without a hint of annoyance.

David thought for a while. “Klaatu.”

“Very well. I am Klaatu.”

David considered the rock for some seconds before continuing. “And how do you know English, Klaatu?”

“As I said, your dialect is primitive. All it took were a few sentences for my internal computers to calculate all its terms and vocabulary.”

David furrowed his eyebrows. “That’s preposterous.”

The meteorite paused. “I am sorry to be so blunt, David, but what part of ‘talking meteorite from space‘ you did not understand? Or am I wrong to assume this is the first time an event like this has occurred?”

David smiled. “A comedian meteorite, to boot.”

“My people are no strangers to a sense of humor.”

“So you were sent by ‘your people’?”

“No, I developed all my internal systems and fabulous accent by myself while drifting past Orion and just happened to end up here.”

“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.”

“Clever human.”

“Why were you refusing to talk to the other men?”

“I wasn’t refusing. They didn’t say much to me. I fell on a desert next to this settlement you call Los Angeles, then was recovered by helicopters and was placed in this room. The first human to interrogate me is you.”

David sighed, rubbing his eyes, and decided it was time to go straight to the point.

“What is your purpose?“ he asked.

“Ah” Klaatu said. “Finally.”

A dramatic pause.

“I was created to monitor your planet and take the data back to my system of origin – where I would receive further orders.”

David frowned. “For how long have you been doing this?”

“Four hundred fifty seven years, seven months, three days, fifteen hours, forty four minutes and seven seconds in your measure of time.”

David paused to absorb this. “Where do you come from?”

“I do not know the name of the galaxy in your language. The distance, however, is approximately five million lightyears from yours.”

“This is impossible.” David said triumphant. “Nothing’s faster than the speed of light. The data you sent would take five million years to get to that galaxy.”

“Yes and no.” Klaatu said, with a tone of voice that slightly suggested he was enjoying schooling these puny humans. “There is nothing faster than the speed of light, correct. But there are shortcuts that can be taken — I believe you call them wormholes. I did not send the data — I traveled back to my galaxy with it, delivered it, received new programming and traveled back. It takes no more than three days.”

David was more and more convinced this was a well-elaborated prank. He was yanked from his thoughts by Klaatu. “I believe your next question is what am I doing here?”

David woke up. “Ah, yes. Yes. What is that?”

“I orbited your planet from a safe distance for many years, avoiding detection. My latest orders were to descend into its atmosphere and deliver a message, regarding your recent advances in space exploration.”

“What’s the message?”

“It roughly translates to:” he paused, then said with careful intonation “‘Fuck off. We do not want you near us. Stay in your shitty little planet until you’re extinct or we’ll speed up the process. Love, Little Green Men’.”

Silence.

David was staring at Klaatu blankly.

“Excuse me.” David said.

“My message is delivered. I can leave now. I suggest you all exit this room and the adjacent one or this will all have been in vain.”

“Whatever.”

David left the room. The middle-aged men were nervously discussing with one another, their passiveness and austerity suddenly gone.

“HEY!!” David yelled. “You think this is funny?! Taking my precious time to fucking prank me?! I could be saving lives right now and you — “

He was interrupted by the two-way glass shattering all of a sudden. They all turned to look at the interrogation room.

Klaatu was involved by a disc of light. All the shards from the glass were attracted to it and disappeared. The desk in the room was slowly dragging toward it.

The disc blew larger and the whole room seemed to bend. Klaatu disappeared, the desk and the chairs were sucked into the disc and everyone felt their feet leaving the ground. David yelled as he was yanked toward the disc, and managed to grab the corner of the window where the glass used to be. The old bastards weren’t as agile and one by one, they were sucked into the disc and disappeared.

Except for Jones, of all people, who had managed to grab a corner too. All his confidence had disappeared. He was screaming like a baby, hanging on for dear life.

But his stubby, sweaty fingers were no good at that. Off into the disc he went, screaming “Mooooooommyyyyyy!!”. 

David held on as hard as he could for what seemed like an eternity, and then the disc disappeared, and he fell to the floor.

He laid down, panting for a while. He felt a vibration on the pocket of his jacket. It was his cellphone. He put it to his ear.

“Yeah?” he muttered.

“Partridge? Carlyle. You sound like shit.”

“Fuck you. What is it?”

“Homicide on 7th Street. We need you here.”

“Sure. Be right there.”

He hung up and stood, looking around. The room looked quite tidy — except there was no longer a two-way glass, a desk, chairs, Klaatu and a bunch of old farts in it. Still, no signs of struggle. It didn’t look like anything had happened.

And as far as David was concerned, it hadn’t.

He stretched his neck and left.