4 Flash Fiction Stories
By Odysseus G. Osborne
LIKE A THIEF IN THE NIGHT - ESOTERIC FLASH
The room was dark but for a single candle glowing in the corner. Eyes not yet adjusted, the shape crept like a panther into the chamber. No noise came from that darker than dark shape, vaguely human child of the night. It came with a muffled curse. A small low table had been bumped and he’d issued an expletive, causing a stirring in a bed not far away.
“My Lord?”
Realizing shadows cover was blown and that the eyes of the sleeping person were tuned, that all things were visible perhaps inside, the creeper stopped and tried to see ahead to the four poster bed.
“I am not your Lord.”
With a scan and a quick inspection of some silverware, too big to carry off across the roof, the creeping thief became irritated and urgency prevailed with some clumsy steps to a cabinet sporting drawers. They rumbled open and the contents frisked through.
“My Lord. Is that you?”
The words almost vanished without being heard. They were those of an old man, feeble and rasping. Almost like the breeze, they came from nowhere and vanished into no-where.
“It was said, in the scriptures, that you would come as a thief in the night. I absolve myself of my sins in your name, my Lord.”
The thief shuddered and hung his head, realizing that some strange moment had been brought to being by the powers of heaven.
“I am not your Lord. I am....someone else. Something else.”
“My time has come...I am to join you in heaven my Lord?”
The thief had located a picture in a frame. Not valuable in itself, with a small portrait of a young family. A memory of old days. And a ring. A wedding band that was tarnished and old. A necklace with two silver hearts dangling from it. Two coins, essential, the thief thought. The rasping breath of the bed ridden old man grew weaker and then with a choke, the form shuddered and life vacated. Like a breeze that came from nowhere, the breeze of life went into nowhere. And the bed was quiet. The thief approached the bed-side and looked down at the old man with some sorrow. He had been a popular man, with a family and loves and sorrows. Always merry and generous and especially generous to those less fortunate. No doubt, some distant relative would appear from nowhere and claim the large but dilapidated house. And the old man would go to a simple paupers grave as relatives fought and grabbed for his small estate. But the essentials had been seized. Placing the coins over the old man’s eyes, Hermes smiled and saluted the old thief in his deathbed.
“Once you were mine,” he pondered picking up one of those new bibles pushed by the wandering desert folk. “I could get a few pence for this at the market.”
Hermes placed the book in one of the darker folds of his cloak and with a swirl, vanished into nowhere, taking with him the old man’s raggedy dreams, hopes and memories to meet Celestial Maat.
(Story inspired by the esoteric knowledge that the role of Jesus in Christianity is culturally borrowed from that of the Greco-Kemitic deity known as ‘Thoth-Hermes’, who as psycho-pomp delivers the dead to the day of judgment, known as the day of Maat, Goddess of the Gods.)
THE VILLAGE - 1930'S STYLE FLASH
There it was again, that seditious wink. And he couldn’t tell me why. An involuntary reaction to some dark chasm in his mind, where nothing existed. Came from the village after a business trip that lasted three days, struggling with personality disorders and quirky habits.
“Mr. Abington, here’s my number. If you get any serious side effects let me know quickly.”
Abington stood and left the office with a quiet calm and feeling of resignation to his new mindfulness. I sat there fidgeting with my pen and wondering. Abington was the fourth person to come into the office in a fortnight, each one having paid a trip to the village. This one would require a visit perhaps. It was about an hour’s drive north. Felt for the car keys in my jacket and grabbed for my hat. The drive was uneventful and nothing but the howling wind moved out there and the swaying grass, tall and bowing. So the roadside bar was a welcome stop. The village was just a mile or so up the road and it looked like this was a popular place to stop. Inside the bright lights were dazzling and the music thumped my ears as if I was a naughty kid being punished by grandma. And there was a cheesy dance floor with the colored tiles. After a half hour of root beer and cheese-its, a sultry chick snaked her way through the strangely postured red necks dancing white guy style in their jeans and ten gallons to place her hourglass on the wooden stool opposite. She was pretty and seemed like she was far too eager for a dangerous liaison. I downed my beer and simply met her with the frightened look of a squirrel in a flashlight beam.
“Wanna dance?” she smiled.
The dance became more and more sensual and time became indeterminate...hours passed and many J.D.’s tumbled down my desperate throat. This was the weekend after all, and there was no office for a couple of days. It got steamy. The nameless sultry chick tugged my drunken hand outside and then quickly to the barn behind the bar...an old farm that needed some heavy repair. Inside, warmed by the hay, the passions dammed behind years of mundane life exploded in a few moments. Torrid. Sweaty. Outrageous. Words could not describe the sensation of such an encounter. So a dreamlike night passed in the arms of the nameless woman with the pretty face...until morning came and it’s light lanced through the barns loose walls like swords. Clutching my head and feeling around for my clothes...and other items too, wallet...keys...hat. Under-pants. The hangover was remorseful. Shoes. I needed those. So I searched and found one sticking out of the hay. The other was nowhere. It took some searching. Got a systematic pattern underway moving through the hay pushing it aside bit by bit...there. No. Not a shoe. A marking. Under the hay, as more and more was pushed away by my shoe-less foot, was a large circular marking surrounded by magical and mystical symbols. At the heart of it, where the whole wrestling session had been, was a large goat headed god. A satanic symbol no doubt. The whole encounter soured right there and then. I got my shoe and then, slipping it on with a stomp left the barn with no desire to find further explanation. There was a guy about to tow my car off on the back of a truck.
“This is mine bud. No need to drag this one away yet,” I winked. “I’ve got to get home after all.”
“No problem,” The guy winked back.
DON’T FEED THE DUCKS! - MEDIEVAL FLASH
“What a fat thing you are!” I laughed as the goose came closer.
“I think they are hungry today!” said my lady, backing off and moving around the potential meeting point. More clambered out of the muddy pond and began to clack insanely, targeting us with a leer before making their gallant waddle.
“Now there are four geese and six ducks, two gulls and a robin!”
My wife grinned. “Fat, charging and noisy hissing geese can be a sign of illegal feeding perhaps.”
“It says, ‘Do not feed the ducks’. I wish people would listen. Really!”
Soon there was a riot of waddling, hopping avian in pursuit. Soon the reason for the chase was apparent. All bipeds were targets and the reason was maize. Big bright yellow corn ears; plucked and dried for the consumption of miscellaneous avian life, such as these, not to be fed, wild geese. And ducks. There ahead was the culprit surrounded by flapping feathered geese. They loitered in a wide circle a hundred strong or more, and waited their turn to push in to the old ladies proximity, their necks extended and bickering bullishly. The village pond was the home of a vast fleet of such winged warriors.
“I feeds my babies!” Mrs. Botcher laughed, “All of them! And I feeds them see!”
We nodded and shrugged. She cast the corn around in wide sprays, and the creatures gobbled and scooped, flapped and whooped. Do not feed the ducks. But who ever listened to rules. Day after day, the scene was the same. Fat old lady pursued by fat old geese. Clacking, hissing and charging all that came in their sight. They ate right from her hand. They had been sort of domesticated and would no doubt struggle without her golden corn. And so, life...and feeding...went on. And on. There was a commotion at the pond late one night. I took my sword and shield from the gatehouse guardroom and went towards the disturbance. Perhaps the mad old woman was there again, as she had been found innumerable times, shouting “Supper for my babies!”; completely drunk and incomp-rehensible, scattering corn around like they were memories of olden times. The track around the village pond was covered in muddy webbed footprints, a sign of another feeding riot. I called out into the darkness:
“Mrs. Botcher, are you safe and sound? It’s very noisy out here tonight! You could be disturbing the neighbors from their sleep!”
There, surrounded by hundreds of ducks and geese, was the fat old lady with two large baskets in her grip. I swooned at the amount of corn that had been held there: “Madam, you need to stop feeding the ducks! It’s not allowed!”
She waddled closer and put the heavy baskets down with a smile, full of headless ducks.
ALIEN GIN - SCI FI FLASH
R’iorc of Kentwa, Professor of the Great Library of Apple Star 3, sat in his cabin hidden from his com dashboard and hugged by the shadows. Outside, the comet CMT-595 was passing some two thousand segs away, a sight indeed for his aging eyes. He did not give much thought these days for the mundane debris that wandered the void. He watched the dashboard awaken with a new amber light. Then the vox-com switched on and the sound of Siriver 9086 came on the air.
“Comet 595 passing. Due to sub-structural instability in the comet’s mass, we will not be entering the tail to scoop debris. We will cant closer and attempt spectral analysis. Vox coms will be centrally switched off to avoid RF interference.”
R’iorc exhaled, happy that the AS3 would not have to go for another re-paint. He would simply let the technicians get on with their collection, collation and data manipulation. It was all about harvesting. For them. The vox-com audibly disconnected. R’iorc peeped at the comet through the small square portal. The ship’s HUD displayed a tiny label with the code and velocity data directly onto the window. He shook his head and moved to the anomalous crate he’d brought aboard and grabbed for the Draxian Gin, the contraband of all contrabands. D-Gin was strong and had strange relaxing effects on the mind, and among the lesser inured, on the sympathetic nervous system; in many first timers, D-Gin caused uncontrollable rushes to room L-00. Having sipped the stuff for years, R’iorc’s ability to subjugate the drink was stronger than most. But too much would, he’d found orbiting Kluxar, put him squarely on his ass like he’d been hit on the chin. He took a quick swig of the stuff. Control had issued warnings about its de-stabilising action on the mind and the irrationality it sprouted from the consumer’s darkest core. What, he wondered was in his core except the need to get away from his office and retire? The anomalous crate was before him. Inside were the strange glass discs from their last encounter with the J’lee. Loads of them. They were on loan, for analysis purposes only. The J’lee had found them in a dig and lacked the ability to locate their signature on any dating device. The promise was that these would be returned on the next pass chasing CMT 596. Taking off the rough wooden lid, he passed his hand over the discs and then, after browsing the data pad they’d left on top for clues, R’iorc dipped his hands into the many coloured mass. Cold, hard, shiny...many colours. Red, yellow, blue, green, violet, orange and indigo. The seven colours of the rainbow. With a quick pick, he selected an example of each colour. Slightly convex and deeply coloured, there was no doubt these were lenses of some sort. They were about an inch in diameter, perfectly round and about the right size of lens for a pair of J’lee spectacles. He grinned at the thought. The J’lee had defeated optical problems centuries ago; these were potentially some ancient optician’s cache of unneeded supplies that had been forgotten about and buried. With a quick flick of the console, up came AppCad and soon, with some importing of an ancient model of spectacles, R’iorc had stretched the model and added slots to accommodate lenses. Then he drag-and-dropped the strap design to fix them to his head to allow for increased weight. Time for some fun.
Within seconds, the 3-D modeller had created the spectacles and placed them on the table with a clunk. R’iorch gripped them and popped the lenses into the spectacles, two red lenses first, all the way down to indigo. He strapped them on and hobbled back to his favourite seat, half hidden by the shadows where he could peer out of the viewport. Then with abandon, he took a deep draught of the alien gin and lay back, sinking into the comfort zone with a sigh.
“What colour shall I view through today?”
R’iorch took out the lenses and played with effects, blue one side, green the other. Then something moved. Something in the room...moved. An effect of his now colour impaired vision, he concluded. It was seen using the red lens on the left eye. It gave the room a strange red-brown hue. The same movement, at the edge of his vision. He looked about the room, doubting his sobriety. To aid his sight, he slid the other red lens into place on the right, and took out the other colours. There, on the wall, where there wasn’t one before, was a centipede of deep red colour. It moved quickly and was invisible when it was still. R’ioch sprang up and moved to the wall but the bug scurried and vanished behind another seat.
“Little buggers!” he vented, sliding off his cloven shoe, ready to crush it with a determined beating. As he scanned for the bug, his eyes fell on the mirror at the end of the room. With quiet astonishment, he walked over and starred into its full length reflection. There standing afore him was his huge exo-bug body wearing an ill fitting Apple Star uniform, and his head was crowned with a stupid pair of red lens glasses.
“K’chuk k’chuk!” R’ioch laughed, the alien gin beginning to vent from his thorax in jets of steam.
Hope you enjoyed these old bits of flash.
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