Category: Short Fiction

What’s eating you? – Original Fiction

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Original posted September 12, 2013 on Tumblr in response to the announcement of the Fantastic Beast film adaptation. Further story notes here.

Josie is a witch and a waitress and usually, she’s damn good at being both. On what’s shaping up to be a very bad day for her, someone from Josie’s past walks into the cafe and makes everything that much harder to deal with.

No matter how many times she gets the same lecture from her boss and her cousins every day, Josie just can’t keep from fiddling with her wand even when she’s surrounded by folks that aren’t magically inclined.

Stroking thin brown fingers over the wand holster currently hidden underneath one of the cinched sleeves of her plain blue dress, Josie focuses on the powerful hum of magic that surges up just out of reach instead of on the mundane folks that think that the small cafe is just an out of the way place for tourists and slumming socialites to try the local grub.

None of them would ever believe that they were sitting in one of the few gateways to New York City’s magical underworld.

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The Insomniac – Flash Fiction

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The Insomniac - Title Card

Malik wishes for sleep. Instead, he receives company and a command from his most confusing housemate.

Malik can’t bring himself to go back to bed – back to the place where dark thoughts and waking nightmares burst into reality in the less than pleasant darkness of his room. Instead, the djinn walks the short distance from his room to the common area that he shares with his housemates.Read More »

[Flash Fiction] Cigarette Break

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Content warning for suicidal ideation/thoughts, depiction of depression

cigarette

For the third time in a week and a half I consider jumping.

To everyone I work with, it’s just a cigarette break.

I look busy but uninterested in my own mortality while the smoke keeps everyone that’d consider questioning me staying too far away to get involved.

I don’t even like smoking. Not really. At this point, I do it because it creates distance and that’s the one thing I need when I want to stand on the roof and stare at the city out in front of me and the ground that’s so far away.Read More »

[Fiction] Temptation Valley – Sharing

Stitch

After a hectic first day, Sheriff Andrade invites Isabella for dinner.

waggon-wheels-336528_1280Twelve hours into her first week as a sheriff’s deputy and already Isabella wants to crawl back into her bed at the in and just stay there for days.

The deep ache in her limbs from riding Marisol so far in such a short amount of time has yet to wear off and every time Isabella moves –or, hell, thinks about moving – her body makes sure that she remembers and regrets. She’s been following Alexandra all day around town, getting introduced to the people she’ll be protecting and locking up if it comes right down to it.Read More »

[Fiction] Lucky Lunchbreak

Stitch

Dean Song isn’t exactly expecting to meet the woman of his dreams on his lunchbreak– or her cute daughter.

There’s a toddler sitting at the counter in front of the bar.

Dean blinks twice at the fluffy-haired kid sitting up with her chubby hands flat on the counter. He doesn’t even bother to resist the urge to rub his eyes. Neither that nor blinking them helps. The kid is still there, sitting up on her knees in a cherry red bar stool with chocolate sauce smeared over the brown skin of her face and a crayon tucked behind one tiny brown ear.

The thing is though, that maybe Dean is hallucinating this — this kid. Maybe he’s seeing things because no one else is acting as if she’s even there. The bistro’s waitstaff wander around the small space without looking at her and no one even glances in their direction as Dean watches the toddler eventually get tired and plop back down in her chair.

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[Fiction] Temptation Valley – The Beginning

Stitch

Isabella finds herself with a job, a home, and what might be a reason to stop running all in a very short time.

Note: This is the first story in a series.

Image used under a CreativeCommons license.
Image used under a CreativeCommons license.

Isabella rides into Temptation Valley in the early hours of the morning on the back of a bay mare that isn’t hers.

Sitting straight up in the saddle, Isabella doesn’t let any of the worry that she feels show on her face. She guides the mare forward with a quiet click of her tongue, directing the horse towards the biggest building on the town’s dusty main street – a building with a hand-painted sign at the front of it that says Temptation Valley Inn in faded paint.Read More »

[Fiction] The wolf in the woods

Stitch

This is a Red Riding Hood-inspired short story from the (were)wolf’s point of view. Much thanks to my pal Fleet for looking over it for me. Red Riding Hood has always been my favorite fairy tale and I try to play around with it every single chance that I get because it can be done so many different ways.

Contains: allusions to violence, dubious consent/consent issues, mild gore, animal death, sort of sexualized violence, mild sexual situations/imagery

From flicker user tambako. Used under a CreativeCommons License.
From flicker user tambako. Used under a CreativeCommons License.

Val’s second in command Koan comes to him in the early morning before the others awaken, coming off his patrol around the forest. Koan lopes towards Val in his human form, moving gracefully around the other wolves despite the sheer amount of space that their fellows take up around the cooling fire.

“There is someone in the woods,” Koan says, speaking in a low voice when he comes close to Val. He dips his head in a short bow and then steps forward, moving into his alpha’s space just far away from the rest of the pack to provide the illusion of privacy. “I heard the humans talking about it in the middle of the night and I –”

Koan does not get the chance to complete his sentence.

“And you what,” Val says, sitting up slowly from his makeshift bed of hides. He combs one hand through his hair, clawed nails catching on the silvery strands as he peers at Koan with an unreadable look on his narrow face. “You waited this long to come and tell me about it? You could have sent a runner, one of the natural wolves in the forest, if it was serious. What’s changed?”Read More »