Category: Flash

Flash: The Archer (Part 2) – The Reaction

Erin Penn

Image from freedigitalphotos.net

Rating: Mature

Banging open its doors, the metro bus traded another group of afternoon commuters with a tide moving out and a wave moving in. Susan stared outside hoping people would take the hint that she wanted to be alone. She still debated trading her car for cash. Now limited to public transportation, the trip between her apartment and her department store job went from a short fifteen minutes if lights were with her to over an hour unless she hit the transfer jackpot. Today the commute home was exceptionally bad after being on the wrong bus for five stops.

Someone in her peripheral vision paused by her row, dragging her out of self-flagellation.

“Is this seat taken?” a smooth baritone asked. Susan forced her eyes to look at someone directly. Her eyes started at the belt buckle and crawled up. Past the sweat stained shirt declaring a name of Billy working at DJ’s Recycling. Over the dark almost beard hiding the shape of Billy’s chin. Stopping a moment to trace the purple scars scratched into the man’s face. To finally focus on two of the bluest eyes she had ever seen. Her heartbeat stopped.

The bus lurched and restarted her heart. “No, please sit.” Susan tried to ignore her tightening breasts and moisture pooling in her nether regions as he took her up on the offer.

“Billy” he said, offering his hand. Susan stared at the well-scrubbed pink hand before gripping it. All she could think of was his callused tips dragging across her nipples. What was happening to her? Her fantasy life usually was limited to the camera and software at her apartment.  With her behind the camera, outside the action.

“Susan, Susan Freeman.” She responded before reluctantly removing her hand from his warm grasp. She half turned in her seat as his wide shoulders encroached on her area, bringing her wide thighs into direct contact with his uniform encased legs. The surge through her system sent her mentally inventorying her apartment for working batteries.

“Nice to meet you Susan … Susan Freeman.” He responded in a voice that made her insides crawl, and her hands itch for a sound board. What a great narrator’s voice.

“James Bond fan?” She responded, hoping to hear his voice again.

“More like movie fan.” He said turning his body towards her. His lips parted in a smile so perfect she would have given up a day of chocolate to film it. “You?”

“Oh, something much worse.”

The man’s expressive face shrank in pretend horror, the recent scarring hardly noticeable in his constant animation. “No, not a critic!”

“Worse than even that.” Leaning forward she shared in a whisper. “I am a wanna-be. A wanna-be-director.”

The bus came to a stop causing her to glance outside. One more stop, she thought.

The response of “Really?” had turning back to the first man she ever wanted in front and behind the camera. “How badly are you wanna?”

Very, very badly wanna, she thought. To think she wouldn’t have met him if she hadn’t daydreamed her way on the wrong bus. “Enough to sell everything I got to get my own RED. My friends think I am crazy.”

He nodded. “Art students usually are. Which school are you attending?”

She shook her head, her brown curls bounced off her plump cheeks. “Not a student. Remember I had to buy a camera. Students have resources.” Susan focused on the driver’s head four rows ahead. “I created a couple shorts using a camera phone I posted to YouTube. They got a lot of hits. I always loved movies and writing, with the Internet response the bug bit big time. Now I’ve sold pretty much everything and spent every cent on equipment and software. Don’t even have money for rent this month.”

She refocused on Billy as her depression came rolling back. “I’ve been so stupid.”

Consideration crossed his face. “How many hits?”

She almost reached up to kiss him. No one had ever asked that. Not her co-workers, not her friends, not her family.

“About 12 million between the two.”

His blue eyes blinked. “Twelve … million?”

Smiling happily at the first person who seemed to get it. “The Moonpie Werewolf got more hits, but I feel Vampire Twister is the better of the two. “

“Those were yours?” he gasped. “Hon, hate to break it to you, but you got talent. Stupid would be not trying.”

The brakes squealed indicated another stop. Double-checking, she stood to get off. He stood letting her by. Feeling reassured someone liked her work, she disembarked. Sure, twelve million hits indicated interest and the ton of comments helped – but actually talking to someone who like it! She started floating towards her apartment.

Behind her came the perfect rolling baritone again. “Hey hon.”

Her body turned to face him. The other commuters scurried away. She debated responding, but seeing his face again outside the bus made her heart race. In for a dime, in for a dollar – as she had been telling herself for months now. “Yes?”

“Look. I don’t normally come this way. Got some buds catching the game at a sports bar tonight and I need to get food before male bonding with alcohol. Want to grab some pizza?”

She smiled sadly. “Sorry, don’t have any money.”

“I’ve got plenty.” He waved a hand over his face. “Car wreck two months ago. Lawyers are still working out the details, but the other guy is rich and they don’t want it to hit the courts. I’m set for the rest of my life if I don’t live large. I just got to accept no woman will ever look at me again.”

Susan grabbed the fallen hand and started pulling him to her apartment. “No woman ever look at you again? Really? God, just wait until I got you in my sights.”

In for a dime, in for a dollar “And between my legs.” She added.

(Words 993; first published 12/12/2012; republished 2/10/2019)

Flash: The Archer (Part 1) – The Action

Erin Penn

Image from freedigitalphotos.net

 

The archer stopped just past the bus’ commuter card swipe. So this is what humanity has come to. They who challenged the gods. They who ripped deity from Olympus and claimed equality.

 

They who discovered the great burden divinity carries. To be responsible for oneself and others. Not a single face carried joy. Those by the dirty windows watched the grey world with defeat. Those in the middle seats fixed their eyes on the floor and bore holes to Hades’ realm. Reaching back to pull two arrows from his quiver, he compared what he saw with Charon’s passengers. Charon’s clients appeared more animated.

 

He had toyed with the thought of not following through with Lachesis’ request. After all, humans had pushed them away. But the Fate was right, even when the worshippers leave their gods, their gods cannot forsake their worshippers.

 

“I have a chance to add some brilliant color to the tapestry.” The Moirai had said when she had tracked him down in the marble halls. “If these two threads can just be twisted together, they will brighten a whole segment.”

 

She had played with the strands until they would be side-by-side for a moment and asked him if he could fix them together. He had agreed … for a favor. A favor from a being older than the Titians is something to be seized whenever possible.

 

The male Lachesis had manipulated came beside the empty bus seat and turned his head to examine the window seat occupant. The arrow’s shaft rested against the ash wood for only a second before its whistling release. No one noticed the missile’s flight or its piercing of the man’s back.

 

The archer had asked Lachesis what would happen if he did not bond the threads. With her typical pragmatic temperament, “Together the brown threads take on the Iris’ hues and bring attention to the colors around them. But separately … brown threads abound. My sister will need to cut one shortly, likely both.”

 

The seated woman raised her head from something the man was asking. A miracle as far as the archer was concerned. No one on the conveyance looked anyone else in the eye and his magic required eye contact.

 

Eros quickly loosed his second arrow and watched in satisfaction as it buried itself in the woman’s heart. Everything else is up to the would-be-gods. May they and others like them return the gift one day.

 

(words 405; first published 12/5/2012; republished 2/3/2019)

Flash: Burdened Reflections

Erin Penn

Photo by Antoine Da cunha on Unsplash

Art cropped by Erin Penn

Rating: Mature

Heather pulled into the daycare parking lot shaking from exhaustion. Two co-workers had quit in the early morning because of the insulting and vulgar rudeness of the pre-Christmas crowd, leaving the rest of the store to take up the slack. Lunch never happened. Getting off at her normal time had required her to demand the ability to leave, or payment to cover the daycare penalties if she showed up late.

The backup at the registers had been bad enough the tightwads running the outlet debated the costs until she shut off her light and walked away from the waiting customers.

Prying her fingers from the staring wheel, Heather shouldered her handbag before leaving the car, feeling a little naked without extra weight of the diaper bag she had left when she dropped off the children. She glanced around at the four other cars, recognizing all the them, as she quickly crossed the graveled lot, shivering in the cold. The daycare wasn’t the best, but it was willing to take in the twins and the government covered all costs so she could work. She didn’t know how she would have made ends meet without welfare assistance.

It wasn’t like her ex would be paying child support. After he dumped her once the baby bump showed, he disappeared without a trace. Phone number, facebook, twitter, old address – nothing worked. She had been so stupidly enthralled she hadn’t notice she never met any of his friends and he hadn’t bother meeting any of hers. No one existed anywhere with the name Jevil Horne, and she had looked in ways not available to most people. It was like he wasn’t on the planet anymore. She couldn’t even find where he got his inks, and they had been elaborate.

Heat embraced her through her windbreaker once the door closed behind her. The tight entryway required her to step out of the path of an exiting parent, toddler on his hip. The father nodded in passing, looking as harried as she felt. They overlapped each day during pickup and dropoff. One day she should ask his name.

She needed a new group of friends since her old ones dumped her. Babies didn’t mix with the half she used to club with, and the rest, well, they had good reason for distancing themselves even if it hurt. Getting involved with other parents might be the answer, because she sure as sunspots wasn’t going to stick around at the General Outlet after the holidays. They already treated her as a second-class citizen since she gave birth.

Breezing by the always unmanned receptionist desk at the understaffed, cut-rate daycare, Heather made her way back to the nursery area.

“Hey, Mrs. Forester, running a little late today?” asked the extremely overweight woman rocking one of the babies in the crib area, greed gleaming in her eyes.

“Only twelve minutes, which, since I usually run twenty minutes early, means I am still ontime.” Heather snapped going to the crib where they double-bunked her twins. “And it’s Miss,” she muttered under her breath, knowing no amount of correction worked with the caregiver. Heather picked up the pink and blue striped bag hanging off the side of the crib, automatically counting diapers and bottles. She hadn’t got to pump today, missing lunch, but she had enough at home for tomorrow.

“They ate just fine and needed three changes today, plus one change of clothes.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Gula.” Heather pulled out her customer service smile for the hag, then lifted first one and then the other of her twins from the crib. She should complain about the daycare putting them in the same crib, but she did the same at home. At two months, there was plenty of room. Thinking into the New Year, and what her growing babies would need, required sleep she seriously lacked. Decision would be made later.

Juggling the two mostly awake children, Heather exited the building and loaded them in her blue Honda, carefully checking all the straps and kissing first her son and then her daughter on their foreheads, saying “I love you.”

Her parents, and her several sets of step-parents, never said it enough to her. If she remember right, and since she had wrote it in her diary because it had been unusual even then, the last time was her eleventh birthday. When she left home, she swore she was never going back.

If that means raising two children on her own, so mote it be.

It would be nice to hear the words from someone again. Not even her coven-mates said those magical words. Only things like “We support each other before the gods.” and “Blessed be.”

Tucking her blonde curls behind her ears, Heather climbed into the car and started shutting her door. The coven had been relieved to have a reason to kick her out; they always been scared about how quickly she learned and mastered new magics. Magic soaked into her like sunlight into a tan, it didn’t matter the form – fire or water, nature or –

The door wouldn’t close.

Heather looked up to find her ex, Jevil, grasping the top.

“Hello sexy.”

***Chapter Break

Heather’s breast tingled at the voice, trained after nearly a year under his kinky appetites, but her mind pulled the rest of her deeper in the car. He looked dangerously delicious, silhouetted against the gray, winter sky. His black curls hung around his shoulders ready to swing forward and cut off the world has he hovered above her, building anticipation before he slammed into her the first time, every time. His large hand pulled the door completely open, and he filled the space with his wickedly well-muscled body. She remember digging her hands into the hallows and stroking the planes of his sinfully perfect build. All she could think about is how much she wanted to kiss him, have him work his way down her body until she screamed for release.

Then someone tried to open the car door into the back seat. She always locked them after loading the children.

“What?” She snapped her head around to find two men, even larger than Jevil, if that was possible, trying to get in the car. The back of her car. Where her babies were.

“The door’s locked,” one of them reported, his voice satin and melted chocolate late at night, stirring hormones buried beneath the changes to her body required during nursing.

When Jevil reached to the button on her door to unlock the car, she called the winter wind and shoved him back, his unseasonably thin shirt covered in a light layer of ice.

He smiled, his eyes darkening beyond black, like they did when he applied nipple clamps or taught her a new incantation. “Don’t be that way babe.” He wiped the crusty frost from his front and strode toward the car again. “We just want the brats. It’s not like they are anything but a burden.”

burden. burden.

The day weighed down on her. Lack of food made her shake. Every screaming, demanding customer. The looks the daycare workers gave her. The abandonment of her friends. And all for what?

Her son made a sound, a half-cry for attention.

“Don’t you dare!” she spat, slamming the door. The Honda turned over instantly without her touching the key, and she peeled out, spraying gravel, hearing a slight thud when one of the men with Jevil didn’t move out of her way quickly enough.

She saw him leap impossibly high in the air, and for a second, a split second, that if she didn’t have the Sight, her mind would have brush aside for a more comfortable version of reality. Behind the suddenly naked man stretched two large wings. Black, shimmering with midnight purple and sunless silver scales, and perfectly matching the horns growing out of his head. One hand gave her a single taloned finger in her rear-view mirror, as he landed back on the ground, pulling the illusion back into place.

“Oh goddess, oh goddess.” Heather kept looking at her side mirror all the way home, though nothing seemed to be following her.

The rental was small, but affordable, at least on the salary she had before she got fired because of missing days from morning sickness. The hard scrabble since then from one minimum wage to job to another destroyed her anemic savings long before the babies were born. Government assistance workers had helped arrange partial payment until some real section 8 housing opened up, but she had to make up the difference. She hadn’t made her portion of this month’s payment; she didn’t think her landlord would kick her out until after Christmas. Her luck said today might be the day.

Well, good luck with that. No one would get anywhere near the house today. Pulling into the garage, she raised the wards her coven had put in place back when they used to meet here and locked the house up tighter than a fortress. When Jevil had dumped her, she had rescinded his welcome and cleaned the house of all traces of his existence. The first pass had been mostly to find something to cast a tracking spell because she wanted to give the jerk a piece of her mind, but the bastard hadn’t left even a hair behind. No way he could get inside now.

She breathed deeply instead of hyperventilating, and turned off the car, this time with the key.

“So, Apollo and Diana, how did you like meeting your daddy?”

The twins started crying after being silent the entire wild ride home.

(Words 1610; first published 1/27/2019)

Flash: Reversed Reflections

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Ben Schonewille at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The men were still following her, she was sure of it.

Heather adjusted her mirrors after pulling into the rest stop. She watched as the black Tahoe continued down the highway, positive that when she passed the next gas station it would be pulling in behind her again. But for the moment, she was off their radar.

Leaning  back, she took a moment to breathe and center herself, then adjusted the mirrors for real. Cars with intent to follow would have a red haze around them going forward. At least until nightfall, when her sun and nature-based magic failed. That’s when they will attack again, her gut said.

“I guess I could try some of the night magic.” Heather suggested to the two rear-facing seats shown in her inside rear-view mirror. The twins neither approved or disapproved the suggestion.

Not that she would do the night magic her ex-boyfriend taught her. Her demon lover. She hadn’t known how true that appellation had been when Jevil had introduced himself at the club. She thought he had just been a bragging asshole, and she always liked bad boys.

Having a guy gyrate behind her while she was dancing, and somehow whisper in her ear , “I’ll be your demon lover tonight,” made her panties melt five beers in to the night. She hadn’t questioned the magic required to perform a whisper while dancing to ear-shattering club music after sunset.

When she started showing, Jevil had flicked her aside like the butt from a used smoke, and she thought that was that. Lesson learned, sun and darkness don’t mix. Until yesterday when he had shown up at the daycare with two other men who could have passed for his brothers, wanting the kids. The twins had already been strapped in, so she floored her sedan, making one of the men leap out of the way and she had seen wings behind him for a moment before the illusion reformed. Real, honest-to-badness, bat-like wings shimmering like oil in the dim winter sun.

She had spent the night at her house, her haven, behind wards made by her coven before they had cut her from the circle, while the trio battered and pounded the magical walls denying entrance. It was the night before winter solstice, so nearly fifteen hours of her tossing what little magic she had under moonless skies. Every stone and plant in her house was drained or dead by the time the sun rose. The house would not survive another night.

Not that it mattered, because they had tossed gasoline against the side they had breached close enough to touch the physical siding, and then added a match.

Heather barely managed to get the kids into the garage and strapped into their seat in the Honda Civic before flames roared through their living quarters. She pulled out from the flames and smoke while dawn broke the horizon, which she used to power a nuclear blast of Light, capital L intended, to clear her path. She had been driving ever since, exhaustion held off only by magic. She wouldn’t make it through the night.

Stumbling out of the car, she opened the driver-side rear door. Carefully unbuckling her daughter, she took the baby over to a picnic table. Looking around, to see who was about to get an eyeful and finding no one, she kicked off her shoes and dug her toes into the sod. After that she lifted her shirt and unsnapped the nursing bra pad protecting an aching breast. The child latched on as soon as the nipple was in range.

“I know, I know. I am so sorry to have missed your morning feeding. You’ve been so good, Diana.” She had been feeding Apollo when she had smelled the gas; he had not been happy about the interruption, but settled immediately after the car started moving. Both of them had been eerily quiet as she drove in a panic to nowhere. Her coven had removed her when she had shown up with a reverse witch streak, the black lock damning against her blonde hair. Dabbling with Jevil, using sex magic at night and other seductive tricks, left its mark on her body, life, and soul.

“I should have known better.” Heather talked using the rise and fall babies love to hear. “You will know better, won’t you? You are going to be my smart little girl.” The baby sucked steady, leeching liquid from her body she hadn’t replaced since yesterday’s, goddess help her, breakfast. She had worked through lunch at her retail job since two of the staff quit. Well, management must be having a field day with her being a no-show today. She drew more energy from the soil to push back the low-blood-sugar headache and dehydration migraine. The brownish grass turned black as she killed it for her survival, removing every particle of light the living mass had stored for the winter.

The clear blue eyes of the very young stared up at Heather, studying her intently, until, finally, Diana slowed her sucking. Unlatching the nipple, Heather tucked everything back in and slipped on her shoes, not worrying about the mud clinging to her toes, before carrying the drowsy baby to the car. Laying the two-month old back into the seat, Heather started buckling the child in. Kissing her lightly on the forehead, she promised, “I’m going to do everything in my power to protect you and your brother.”

Heather quaked as she considered her words. Everything in her power. She had to do it. Closing the door, she walked around to the other side where Apollo patiently waited for her with his black eyes. As she unbuckled him for the afternoon feeding, Heather commented, “Well, I guess your daddy is going to find out how well he taught me the Empty Magics.”

(Word 975; First published 1/20/2019)

 

Flash: Respect My Profession

Erin Penn

“Please, could you?” he begged. His clear baby-blues pulled at her soul.

Victoria eyed Dodd’s muscular arms, the bunched shoulders pleading for rubs, the tight back ripe for touching.

She should not. She needed to stop giving away her services for free. Now she understood the complaints of doctors and lawyers, people always asking them for advice. The complaints of singers and musicians, where family and friends expected free performances at every life event from weddings to birthdays.

Victoria had spent years getting licensed because she wanted to help people. Now she wanted her career to pay her mortgage. Moreover, she wanted her friends to respect her as a professional.

Did she ask Dodd to fix her computer every time he came over? Well, maybe. That last malware infestation had been a bitch.

Sighing, she dug out the special oil blend.

A childish grin danced over Dodd’s lips as he buried his head between his crossed arms. Victoria could do a massage like no one else.

(words 169 – originally appearing at Breathless Press 9/11/2013 for the 6/10/12 Sunday Fun – See the picture that inspired the story! – As I do not know the copyright permissions, I have not copied it here; first published on the website 9/11/2013; republished 1/13/2019)