Photo prompt: Jodi McKinney. Thanks Jodi!

They rise with the fleeing mist, dragged from moisture darkened earth into the muted dusk, puppets of that uncertain time that bridges night and day. Oblivious to victory or aftermath, two groups of shadows coalesce, then lurch, all but purpose lost. A cry to curdle blood signals an unrelenting charge, carbine and riffle retort giving way to the clash of sabre as brother meets brother, north and south a line as muddied as the field.

The incorporeal mesh and fall, a tangle of swirling grey that slowly dissipates with their cries, bleeding into the rich soil and the cloud-streaked sky.

The barking of a nearby dog falters.

Quiet descends.

By Sally-Ann Hodgekiss.  

Thank you to the challenge host, Priceless Joy, for this weeks FFfAW Challenge. For more information visit HERE.

From behind came the dreaded, faint whir. Only minutes until the Chronogyn reached full charge.

Where was she?

He pulled the small journal from his coat pocket. As he folded back the soft leather cover, it opened to that page. It was a talisman, no more, every word memorised. He had planned to the very second. This country, city, hotel, room, year, day, hour. One moment in time upon which all that came after would rest. He could fix this… everything, if only he could find her.

Another whir, louder, and he felt the familiar pull; as if his insides were being drawn towards that small box through the hose of a vacuum cleaner.

She wasn’t coming. Somewhere amid all his calculations; an error. He could fix this. He could…

Too late, that whir, and something else, a key in a lock, the twist of a handle the creak…

Whirrrrrr

______________

Thank you to the challenge host, Priceless Joy, for this weeks flash fiction challenge. For more information visit HERE.

While focus is elsewhere, all the subtle shades of inked grey, the detail born of creative industry, is blurred together in one accidental brush of the hand, a drag of errant flesh. What once was texture, curve, definition, is swept almost beyond recognition.  Almost, for not all is lost. The rest stands clear and unmarred, a pained reminder of what could have… No. Should have been. Yet enough is altered to spoil the whole and all that is left to do is crumple or discard, and find the energy needed to begin again.

Sally-Ann

Silence frightens more than any scream; bites more than the harshest discord. It waits, desperate to be made full, whole, right; for the noise of existence to dispel the nothing, nowhere, never. Silence whispers, mute, of a time before, acknowledged yet unknowable, of one that presses down with unceasing fervour, waiting, poised, undetermined. Oh, how singularly relentless are our subconscious devotions, an eternal struggle to keep at bay the state of truly knowing peace.

Photo by Sue Vincent.
Inspired by Thursday Photo Prompt – Crow at  Sue Vincent’s Daily Echo. Please visit.

© Photo: A Mixed Bag

The seven men heaved as one and the prow pulled free of the sucking mud. Progress was slow, the air unnervingly still. The lapping waves seemed determined to thwart the efforts of the two young women pulling desperately at the centremost oars, the remainder lying useless beside the still, fur-swaddled form of their brave lord.

The seven reached the place where the wounded and dying littered the slope and waited, thankful for the warmth of the nearby pyres. For many, this would be their final sunset; no spoils or glory, no tribute walk, nor welcome feast. This defeat had cost them their home, left them stranded with too few to man the oars, forsaken by their gods.

“It is time,” said the tallest, his gaze pinned to the two, now distant, figures who had abandoned their arduous task and stood poised by the dragon headed bow.

The oil soaked cloths were bound tightly to the seven shafts. The boy could barely walk, his calf rent and weeping, yet without complaint, he touched each of the waiting arrows with burning brand.

As one they raised bows, pulled flaming shafts quickly towards their cheeks then, loosed.

Mercy saw the daughters fall, the oil catch, the fire quickly race from arrow to timber and flesh.

For the rest, lay Valhalla and the sweetness of vengeance.

By Sally-Ann Hodgekiss

Sunday Photo Fiction – April 9th 2017

Photo © Sascha Darlington

Better Late Than Never?

I wait for awe and wonder to overwhelm me, for the crisp unfiltered air, the give of the surface beneath my feet, the bright, bright light of the mega-sun to awaken the torrent of emotions I have long imagined this moment would bring.

It doesn’t.

Yes, the EndeavourZ arrived safely. Terraforming was a success, just as I had calculated, and Zeta 466 is now everything and, if the brochure I was just handed is to be believed, so much more than we ever could have hoped for.

And yet I cannot join the rest.

Zeta 466 was meant to be ours. I was to help transform this new world for all those to follow. As the lid to my stasis pod had closed, that hope and expectation swelled within me until I had almost burst with anticipation.

Then it all went wrong. To avoid the pull of a distant, failing Sun, the EndeavourZ was forced to detour for over two hundred lightyears. Eventually, even stasis ceased to hold back time and we scientists slept the best part of our lives away while others avoided our miscalculation.

As I look down at the welcoming induction centre, all I feel is bitter regret, crushing disappointment and the unceasing ache of my failing bones.

By Sally-Ann Hodgekiss

Sunday Photo Fiction – February 12th 2017

Photo prompt provided by Jessica Haines.

The simplest of things

One of my most brilliant childhood memories waits in that wonderfully crisp and renewed time following the violence of a summer storm.

Any distant rumble sent my mother to the centre of our home, each flash of lightning, a harbinger of the gut trembling roll of thunder sure to follow. Oblivious to her fear, I would don my gumboots, pull on a rain jacket, just to keep mother happy, and wait for the rumble to grow distant and the last of the pelting rain to be blown out to sea. Then off I would run, down the washed-out gravel drive, towards that perfect dip in the road, where the all too briefly fleeing runoff pooled and swirled before bullying through the narrow drainage pipe leading to the neighbour’s dam.

As the receding flow eddied past my ankles I remember feeling as if the clearing sky and that all too fleeting burst of chilled water held all anyone could ever need to be happy.

By Sally-Ann Hodgekiss in response to
FFfAW Challenge-Week of January 31, 2017

Photo prompt provided by Shivangi Singh

Douglas

“Can I do it? Please?”

Dad paused his shovelling to wipe the perspiration from his crinkled brow. “It’s too hot sweetie.”

I bounced around the tiny, potted fir as if Douglas really was the puppy I had begged for. “Please. You said he was mine.”

Dad smiled down at me before returning his efforts to the growing hole. “You get the most important job.”

“Huh?”

“You get to watch him grow. One day, he’ll be as tall as…”

“As me?”

He laughed. “As the roof!”

Eyes shaded from the glaring sun, I peered towards the lofty roof peak, knowing he was telling a huge fib.

It’s been two decades since Dad passed. The house went, but Douglas remained and so did I. No amount of protest could convince the homeowner’s association to save him. How could a lifetime of memories ever compete with a new swimming pool?

https://flashfictionforaspiringwriters.wordpress.com/2017/01/16/fffaw-challenge-week-of-january-17-2017/

Sally-Ann Hodgekiss

Photo prompt provided by Louise – The Storyteller’s Abode. 

We packed them in so tightly, a woman towards the back whimpered.

None turned to offer help or switch places.

The youngest children were last to fill the bottom level, frightened into a silence more heart-breaking than if they had cried out or struggled.

I tried not to make eye contact as I closed the lower door. Instead, I followed protocol, stoically channelling the next group towards the upper deck.

Did they know?

They had to by now. One by one, TV and radio stations went dark. Supply trucks never arrived. Those sent in search of answers never returned. Still, even when the power flickered out for the last time, the desperate hauled up the putrid water from the river and continued to ration the last of their food.

The boats were meant to bring hope, and yet they must have seen, even in the eyes of those cajoling them towards the ‘arks’, that the virus left no room for even that.

And yet we had to do something. Didn’t we?

https://flashfictionforaspiringwriters.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/fffaw-challenge-week-of-january-10-2017

https://sundayphotofictioner.wordpress.com/2016/11/06/sunday-photo-fiction-november-6th-2016/

It had once been glorious.

Footmen waited, unvarying in their dark livery, gazing over manicured lawns, ordered hedgerows, carefully weeded gravel paths silvered with torchlight.

Arriving in fine carriages, delivered to these very doors by pairs of high stepping horses, men and women of privilege were ushered towards the warm glow of the graceful entrance.

Inside, dressed timber floors polished to a blinding sheen, mirrored fabric and finery as the fortunate swept past moulded ceilings and inlayed doors towards the elegance of the dazzling ballroom.

These very stones once trembled with the sweet anguish of a string quartet, tittered with scandalous gossip and warmed at a tender proposal…

The words sprayed rudely onto the soot-stained stone were childish and crude, devoid of any passion or meaning. Beyond the gaping maw of the entry, what remained of the timber flooring was left gauged and thirsty. Everywhere, melted syringes and fast food wrappers had been permanently fused with years of dust, decay and senseless destruction.

Ahead lay the ballroom, a blackened shell half filled with the charred debris of the upper floors. The two remaining roof beams were skeletal, a fragile black to contrast angry grey of the afternoon.

I would have done anything to save it, if only I had known it was rightfully mine.