Flash Nano 2024 -5 Nov. The five senses: sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste

 

The 7:05 church bells rang. The church was just down the street, and Maddy used the bells as an alarm clock each morning. She never understood why they rang at 7:05 and not 7:00.

From the kitchen the automatic coffee maker was releasing its aroma as it perked.

She snuggled under the warm duvet. How she would love to stay there longer, but suddenly there was pressure on her chest and warm tongue licks from here seven kilo rescue mutt Pal.

She patted his soft fur, “I suppose you want to go walkies.” Pal jumped down and circled.

She threw on her sweats, headed for bathroom – after all, she couldn’t pee on trees and bushes like Pal. She needed a few sips of coffee and sipped slowly trying not to burn her mouth in the process before going out with the dog.

Once outside, Pal headed for the park across the street.

Maddy loved the park in autumn with its colored leaves and musty smells. She called it leaf-kicking weather.

She thought of the Law and Order show she had watched last night. In the opening, a woman walking her dog had kicked some leaves and found a body. From there Liv and Elliot had located the woman’s killer.

Pal started barking. Maddy thought he didn’t like leaf kicking, but he was barking at the leaves piled next to the path. A pile to kick the same way she’d done walking home from school, twenty years before.

Her foot hit something.

It was a body, a young woman, a red slash across her neck.

Maddy’s screams brought other early morning dog walkers, who called the police, not Liv and Elliot of course but a man and woman about the same ages as the actors that played Liv and Elliot on Law and Order.

Back home in her apartment, her hands shook, as she tried to drink a cup of coffee, now cold.

The police had questioned her, but there was little she could tell him.

That night, after a hot shower, she crawled into bed under the duvet. She never watched Law and Order again.

Flash Nano 2024 No. 4 A reocurring noise

 

Paul Murphy was a cop in a town of 5,000 people. The town had a center with a grocery store, a doctor’s office, a lawyer’s office and a hardware store that serviced the farmers that lived outside the town.

Paul with his wife Andrea lived on the edge of the town in a Cape Cod style house. Andrea had been a city girl that was not sure how she ended up as a small-town cop’s wife. She’d met him at her cousin’s wedding and was drawn to his blue eyes and blond hair. If he had not been an addicted reader like she was, they probably would never have ended up married.

There were many things that intrigued her about her new life. Used to traffic, congestion, garbage on the streets and her crowded studio, which was all she could afford in the big city on her salary as a college lecturer with little hope of promotion, the quiet of Paul’s town, a village really like one out of a TV serial, and especially Paul’s vegetable and flower garden seemed exotic.

Thus, she married Paul, without really thinking it through, what it would mean to give up her work, friends, the chance to pop into a music or choose between all kinds of movies.

After their honeymoon, Paul had been on the day shift for a month. Then it was his turn to switch to the midnight to 8 a.m. shift. She had stayed up to kiss him goodbye, hand him a sandwich which she made in case he was hungry later, adding some cookies, she’d made as part of her new job as wife, and crawled into bed.

At 2:27 according to the clock on her bed, she’d heard a scratching downstairs. It was the first time  -  or so she thought. She might have slept through an earlier noise when she was curled up in Paul’s arms.

It could have been a branch against the back door, but the sound moved to the bottom of the stairs. Should she be a coward and call Paul. Her head said no, but the scratching grew louder. She called.

Paul drove up in the cruiser. He looked throughout the house but saw nothing that should concern Andea.

Two night later it happened again. Then almost every night for a week.

Paul became annoyed at the middle-night calls. “You’re a cop’s wife. You need to be braver.” His solution was to buy her a gun and show her how to shoot.

A neighbor, who had befriended her, said, “Maybe it was a ghost. Andrea didn’t believe in ghosts and even if she had, a gun would be useless against ghosts. She stopped calling Paul, but lay in bed, the quilt pulled up to her neck with the gun in her hand.

The next day, she called her best friend back in the city, who offered to come and spend the night. Together they could track down the noise.

Paul welcomed Shelley before leaving for work. Shelley crawled into bed with Andrea.

“Maybe it won’t come tonight,” Andrea said. The two women fell asleep but at 4:22 the scratching woke them up.

They crept out of bed and down the stairs toward the kitchen where the scratching was coming from.

“Murderers and burglars don’t scratch,” Shelley said. “But rats do. Look at the size of the sucker.”

The rat was larger than the Jack Russell Andrea had had growing up.

“Shoot it.” Shelley said.

Andrea raised the gun, but the rat decided to leave before she could aim and fire.

The next day Paul sealed the hole that he guessed the rat had used to visit their kitchen. He chided Andrea for not noticing some of the bread she’d left out was missing.”

“I thought you ate it,” Andrea defended herself. Maybe garbage and city congestion wasn’t so bad after all.

 

 

Free Write - Election

 

This week, two of the writers were at a conference in Portugal and the third was back in Switzerland. One American and two ex-Americans made Rick's choice of topic, obvious--Election. Per usual, we each wrote for ten minutes from the prompt.

Rick's Free Write

They were reporting the election results on streaming TV and, of course, the government-run social media site, Verity. But no one paid much attention. The results had been known months ago, perhaps years before. The ruling party received 98.6% of the popular vote, and the president was re-elected again.

There were token votes for the ‘opposition’ candidate, who was only on the ballot as a pretense of ‘democracy,’ to fool the gullible into believing they had a voice in their fate. Some days or weeks after, the candidate would die from a mysterious food poisoning or a fall out a window.

It hadn’t always been this way. The country once had a robust democratic process, generally won by one of the two major parties, and there were several third-party choices as well. But the ultraconservatives had eked out a victory for their cult leader, largely by pseudo-legal manipulation of the system and an oligarch paid-for judiciary, and once in power he (and his heirs) had no intention of giving up the reins, and perks, of autocracy.

That was 20 years ago, 2024, and from then to today the once-United States of America is unrecognizable.

 D-L's Free Write

Erica waited in line to vote standing behind two males. 

"Bob has to win," Jason said. "Can you imagine if Jenny wins? He shook his head then turned to look at Erica. "You better vote for Bob, or we will tell Mason."

Erica smiled. She needed to break up with Mason. He had pushed her too hard both physically and mentally. He'd forbidden her to see certain of her friends. Enough of that treatment, she thought.

The line inched toward the classroom where the class president would be elected.

Later that day, the results were announced. Jenny had won, not by a landslide, but by three percent, the same percentage that the girls outnumbered the boys.

Julia's Free Write

OK, it’s that day, the one we’ve all been either looking forward to, or dreading.

She had just entered school at age six – yes this was years ago – and during that very first week she heard the word for the first time: 3 syllables. Her teacher’s PICKING her to be the one posed with an apple in her hand towards the teacher, to be the photo in the local newspaper is still a reminder of simpler times.

Later as a young teenager, her SELECTION as the 8^th grade class representative marked the fact that her diction was good: of all the mumblers, she was the clearest.

As an older, on the verge of adulthood, teenager, her NOMINATION as editor of the school newspaper seemed unmerited, but then she did love to read.

In university she made a life-changing and determining DECESION to study abroad a year.

Her CHOICE of country, totally unplanned.

And so we come to the Meriam Webster’s definition of ELECTION

The one taking place today will determine the world’s future.

Nano2024 A Narrow Escape

The prompt for the second Flash Fiction for November was The day the mirror shattered.

The first time Eleanor was in Peter’s house, she felt as if she were in an art gallery or a palace, although the house was only three stories with a winding staircase.

On her first visit, he’d cooked her a meal of orange duck, the tenderest veggies that she’d ever eaten. Desert was a concoction of sherbet, meringue and the type of chocolate whose flavour stayed in your mouth for hours because you wanted it to. He said he’d made everything himself.

After they ate, he gave her a tour of the first floor furnishings, telling her the history of each piece and commenting on how the colours had been selected as much as the history of the piece.

In the hallway as he helped her on with her coat after calling a cab, he showed her a mirror. The finish was marred with black spots. The frame was gold leaf with delicate curlicues. “My best piece. It came from Versailles.”

Over the next few months Eleanor and Peter dated going to the best restaurants, the theatres, museums. He introduced her to his friends, mostly businessmen she had read about on the financial pages. She suspected half their wives were the second Mrs. based on the age difference.

At first, she loved that he wanted to buy her clothes before each outing rather than accept what she had chosen. Then he took her to the hairdresser to change the style she’d worn for so long, and although she liked the new shorter style, Peter was beginning to make her uncomfortable.

Some months into the relationship, she noticed he didn’t want to hear anything about her work as a college archaeology professor, about the dig she’d been on last summer. “It’s too bad you won’t be able to go back this year,” he said. She had already been planning on it. A little voice told her to discuss it later.

When she picked up a marble statue of Venus, he jumped from his seat, took it from her and put it back in the measuring equal distance with his hands to make sure it was in the same even spot as before. “Everything is where it should be. Don’t touch anything.”

“I think, I need to go home. I’ve work for tomorrow’s lectures.”

“I thought you were staying the night.” Each word was followed by a pause.

“I don’t like plans changing.”

Eleanor thought about it. No matter what she suggested for an evening, what plans, she suggested he changed them. That same little voice told her not to end the relationship at that moment.

“You should have told me earlier,” he said.

She started to put on her coat, but he grabbed her, shoved her. Her head hit the Versailles mirror. The force knocked it off the wall, the shards landing both on the cabinet and floor below.

When she put her hand on the back of her head, it was wet from the blood.

“Look what you’ve done.” Now his voice was a whisper. “How will you ever pay for it on your silly salary.”

She didn’t answer but ran out the door. She knew she’d never be back. At the hospital she needed five stitches. The emergency doctor picked glass out of her scalp. She kept one of the pieces, a reminder of her narrow escape.