Category: Flash

Flash: The Sleeper

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Panic. Can’t move. I try to control, to calm myself. This has happened before. Too many times before. Each time I wonder if this time my body isn’t going to wake up.

I have sleep paralysis. There’s a fancier term, but it really doesn’t matter. What matters is my body is asleep when my mind wakes up. Unable to move, unable to open my eyes, unable to talk. First time it happened I was thirteen, Happy Birthday to me. Six hours, an eternity.

Second time I had stayed up late studying. Mom tried to wake me. Shook me, yelled at me to stop faking it. She was so scared. I could hear it in her voice. If I had been able to open my eyes, I would have seen the tears streaming down her face. Tears I got splashed with but didn’t feel. Got to ride in an ambulance. Late in the afternoon, my body woke up after I lived through a battery of tests. The MRI hum makes my teeth rattle every time I remember. Locked in my body, locked in that metal coffin.

Doctors explained it. A sleep disorder like sleep walking, only the opposite. Instead of the body walking around with a sleeping mind, I got a sleeping body and a waking mind.

I’ve only just dropped off. After two years, I know my mind never falls asleep again once it wakes up. Going to be a long night. Fighting the panic. Am I going to sleep forever, trapped?

I wish I could use breathing to control the panic, but my sleeping body is reacting to my nightmare. Adrenaline pushing the heart rate higher, breathing in short, but regular bursts. All I can do is imagine breathing slower, rolling the shoulders back to relax, opening my hands and stretching out the fingers.

Mom has put a baby monitor in my room, for all the good it does. It is not like I am going to cry out in my sleep. But it allows her to sleep so I put up with it. Upside, she allows me to hang with Nat in my room behind a closed door because she can listen in. If we are quiet too long, she shoots a question through the monitor. Kept me from reaching second base so far.

I try to go to sleep on time every night. Yep, I am a fifteen-year-old who obeys a nine pm bedtime religiously. Only way to make certain my body will wake in time for school. Even so about once a month, I “sleep” in and miss the first couple of classes.

I hear my breathing return to normal, my fists unfurl, the lub-dub regularly pushes against my oversized Adam’s apple. Dad’s is buried under his triple chin; he showed me photos when I visited this summer. He grew into it before he got fat, so I have some hope. Nat is threatening to leave hickies on it come turtleneck season; she loves kissing my neck and the deep voice that finally steadied the end of freshman year.

The grief I got last year. Bad enough being a freshman. Braces didn’t help. Orchestra geek too good for marching band. Too uncoordinated for sports, tripping over my feet hence the no marching band. Teacher’s pet in Spanish, English and Math, and transferring to the AP science track the second week should have sealed my fate as wedgie and swirly central. Only having Natalie around, going from pal to girlfriend kept me from being a total loser.

Nat, my savior, my heart, and my torment. We met when mom moved after the divorce. She push me into a mud puddle during recess my first day. I returned by punching her. None of the other boys had tried that, even in elementary school where she ruled the playground. We became best buds after my two days in-school suspension was served. The only black mark on my record.

I decide to visit her. Yeah, I know it will only be in my head, but right now that is all I got. For nearly eight lonely hours of pushing back panic, it is all I got.

I pretend I can feel my hands respond to pushing down on the bed and I sit up. I open my eyes and look around the darken room. Color blooms from my superhero posters, painted by memory. This year’s biology book is open to the genetics section for Friday’s test. My backpack leans against the desk filled with everything else, ready to grab and run tomorrow morning.

I’ve memorized my room so I can do this let’s-pretend game that I can wake and walk around even though I am actually locked in my sleeping body. I look in the mirror and annoyingly my reflection does not look back. For some reason I can’t put myself in it when I do these pretend walks. I look down to make sure I am decent. My favorite jeans and sneakers, but missing a shirt. I pretend grab the T-shirt I discarded before laying down and pull the illusion over my head. The shirt never moved from the back of the chair, but I am now dressed.

Walking through the door, I really wish I could figure out a way to feel like I opened it properly because walking through it is weird and feels like someone pushed soggy corn chips through my chest. I shake once I am through, then turn left and take the stairs two at a time. Mom is watching the news while folding clothes. I stop to watch when the weather comes up to see what will be happening for the weekend game.

I started watching the news with her this year. I figure I am hearing it upstairs since my room is directly over the television. Mom had started the laundry during dinner. Amazing how the mind fills in details. Karen, my younger sister, is studying at the dining room table for some middle school test. Douglas, our older brother, stayed with Dad since he was from Dad’s first marriage. Summer is nice because we can all get together again, though this year was a little tough since Doug had his first job flipping burgers. Be interesting to see how college is treating him. Maybe I will visit him next time.

And there will be a next time. Initially the episodes, as the docs like to call them, were about once a month, but they kept getting closer together. Now they are like every other night. After three nights in a row at Dad’s this summer, I decided to start the pretend walking for my own sanity. Books on tape only go so far.

I go through the front door. This time the soggy corn chips had some crunchy bits. Those hurt, like dry swallowing. Weird. I rest against the front porch pole. Turning around, I try to press through the wall beside the door and that is solid. I press on the door and my hand starts going through. WTF?

Mind games. Things your brain does to you. I’ve been thinking of getting a book or two on lucid dreaming.

I know doors can be gone through and walls can’t. Guess that is what is happening now. Never tried to leave the house before.

I remember in lucid dreaming sometime people can fly. Nat’s house is nearly a mile away. Wonder if I can fly there. I was going to try to pretend bike. I jump in the air like The Impressive, and fall flat on my face. Biking it is.

The nighttime ride went quick, faster than normal. I was able to pick up speed going down Hilltop, but didn’t loose it going up the other side of the ravine. Gravity may rule, but my brain seems willing to break some of the rules. Maybe I can learn how to fly after all.

I lean my pretend bike against the garage and it fades away. Frowning, I go around to the back door which is typically open to allow the night air in, saving on air conditioning. How am I going to get home? Popping through the screen door is easy even though I feel the corn chips on my shoulder where the latch is.

Nat’s parents are watching the late-night news, different channel from Mom. I watch a few seconds as Revenger dukes it out with a new supervillian before The Impressive comes to help. Then the typical public announcement reminding people with superpowers to register with the government. Whatever.

I head down the hall where music is throbbing. Nat will listen to anything that requires head-banging, whether the Black Sabbath’s Iron Man or Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. If she can crank it to 12 on the 10 scale, she is a happy metalhead. I’ve tried to introduce her to quieter music and discovered that even classic can be headbanging if you crank it enough. She loved the 1812 Overture.

Her door is closed, but only a few soggy corn chips push through me as I walk in. The music takes on physical impact on the other side. She is bopping around in a crop top and boy’s shorts and I slid to the ground.

Yay imagination! No bra, the crop top was one she wore during the summers when I am not around and should no longer be worn in public since the boob fairy, as she put it, visited her this year. Her legs sprouted out of the pink lacy underwear I had only seen in my mom’s catalogs and reached the ground after a very long trip. Her stomach, which I used to give raspberries to in fifth grade was perfect caramel from the bikini I had only got to see her wear once before going to my dad’s. She bounced over to the pile of paper on her bed; I recognized the English assignment. Working last minute again, my Nat. I had that assignment done two days ago.

She turns to go back to the pile on the floor, near the door, and shrieks.

(words 1688; first published 6/8/2015; republished new blog format 4/29/2018)

Flash: Fortee

Erin Penn

Image is Public Domain
Portrait of a Moorish Woman – Italy about 1550; School of Paolo Veronese (oil on canvas)
Presently in a private collection (as of 2003)

 “Do hurry up child, the painter expects us before nightfall.” Fortee’s husband barked on the way down the stairs.

The Ivory Coast immigrant bit her lip while adjusting her chemise and overgown one last time. Though married over three years, she had only been living with her merchant husband for a few months after he had made arrangements to bring her home. She still cursed her father every day for accepting the bride price from the self-absorbed money-grubbing man. The marriage contract benefited her family back in Africa as well as the Brunos here in Venice, but she paid the price. Her young soul longed for a single lingering glance or soft touch. Looking in the glass, her brown eyes questioned the servant behind her. The white maid nodded a half-hearted approval, not yet comfortable with the wife her master unloaded from the boat following his last excursion.

Enough dithering, Fortee squared her shoulders, eyed the high feather to gauge its height for ducking through doorways and followed in her husband’s wake. She found him at the front door giving orders for the evening’s meal; several guests tentative about participating financially in the next trade trip were expected. Black eyes darted, measuring her like lumber, before returning to his business, and she felt every bit of the age difference between them. None of the servants bothered turning as she approached.

“The drop pearls work well,” Johannes observed without inflection in her native tongue as they pulled on their wooden platforms before leaving the townhouse.

She muttered a “thank you” in proper Italian but didn’t believe he heard it. His mind tumbled numbers, charting the course and cities for next month’s voyage to maximize profit.

The portrait painter’s workshop neighborhood required walking deep enough into the city the last lingering scent of sea disappeared into the effluvium of humans and animals too long together in too small a space. Holding a scented cloth to her nose, Fortee stepped over horse dung to enter the artist shop. Inside linseed oil and other fumes pushed back the odors of the city.

Her husband was cornered by the oldest of the men in the open, well-lit room. Upon her arrival, the youngest of those present flocked to her. Dark skin drew them. Even in an international port like Venice, the children don’t see many Africans, at least this far into the city. At port, people from her continent sometimes were the only color seen, depending on which ships were in, but here the difference was a rare treat for the young. Fortee crouched down and shifted her shawl so they could touch the skin and hair. Well-trained, the children only patted and stroked, keeping her careful preparations for the painting unmarred.

Two of the older ones darted over to some bottles on the side. When they returned, their arms each had half a dozen lines of different browns. The boys compared it with her skin, then begged her to come over to the paint area so they could figure out exactly how to get the color right. Crowded by children, apprentices, and young journeymen, Fortee allowed herself to be dragged to the work area. Soon every child had at least one stripe somewhere on them representing their best guess at her color. She laughed alongside them until her husband demanded she join him.

There he explained the portrait would take several sittings, including a number of hours today. He verified she could find her way back to their house, checked the master would provide escort, and coins changed hands before he left to prepare for the evenings negotiations.

The master introduced himself as Paolo Caliari after Johannes left, as well as his sons Carlo and Gabriele and his nephew Luigi. All four wanted to paint her, their school priding itself on the study of color and the human body. Paolo arranged her seat and lighting best for the portrait her husband had commissioned. Once she and the master were situated, the rest took various positions around the room, including one of the scamps who had been the first to try and figure out how to paint her skin color.

Several times during the initial sketches they allowed her to get up and play with the children when the youngsters had breaks from crushing stones and mixing dirts for paints. She learned far more about stretching and preparing canvases than she ever expected existed from the excited children. Twice the artists asked her to cease moving during the “rest” breaks so they could sketch a particular position.

Until sunset, she had all the laughter, lingering looks, and soft touches she had been missing.

(words 778; first published 4/14/2018; published on blog on 4/22/2018)

Notes: Writing-in-Stone, my writing group, provided the above picture for inspiration for their April challenge.

 

Flash: Lowriding

Erin Penn

Rating: Mature

CB popped back on his leather Stetson, now that he and Charlotte finished mucking the stables. He tossed his shirt into the stable clothes bin. Some things just weren’t worth taking to the bunk house and Miss Becca rather not have stink at her chow line. Charlotte or Miss Becca would pick up the laundry later, after the shirt ripened some more among the horse rags.

Leaning against a post just inside the barn, CB waited while the girl closed doors and put the equipment away just like she liked it. He rued the day he helped her with the putting back. She had a system and he broke it. After she finished tearing him up one side and down the other, he was more than willing lay about while she struggled with the picks and shovels. The woman had used no words she shouldn’t, but CB rather have the foreman curse a blue streak then deal with her on a rip.

Her eyes kept drifting to him, her lips curled in a secret laughing smile, as things got put.

Dang, he knew he was dirty, especially after two weeks on the trail checking fences, but her stares since he came in with the dawn were making him a might self conscious.  He ran one hand down his chest seeing if any manure had snuck inside the shirt before he shucked it. Slick sweat and dusty red clay combined leaving mud across his pecs and abdomen. He started wiping with both hands, but the streaking went from bad to worse.

Seeing his difficulty, Charlotte snagged a clean towel from the pile they used to wipe down horses.

“Let me,” the brunette suggested.

The little thing didn’t even top his shoulders, but he figgered she had a good idea. “If you’re game, I’d be obliged.”

 He had worked the Double Bar T Ranch since the girl was a freshman in high school. None of the hands, including him, realize Charlotte worked harder than a mule following a carrot before she went off to college. Everyone made the piece of pudding welcome when she came home for the summer, and gladly returned her chores to her tender loving and firebrand care.

“Wouldn’t offer my services if I wasn’t.” She said as she gently wiped the mud off his front side. She looked up smiling, her head cocked to the side.

Tarnation, she had the prettiest brown eyes. CB sweated a few bullets before she started circling around back. CB stepped away from the pole to help her, and his jeans slipped lower.

Well that don’t beat all, his pants were falling off. He lost weight on the trail like he always did and he didn’t have a belt on. And he hadn’t wore underpants because he had done worn the lot on the trail and turned them inside out once to boot. He looked down and saw his short curls peeking over the top of his Levis.

He wondered if he could pull them up without her noticing.

Ooh, that feels so good. She put some ginger into her rubs.

“Like the moan cowboy, sounds just like Rowan when I get it just right. Why don’t you just set yourself down and I can work you top to bottom.” The nineteen year old pushed his twenty-eight year old carcass over to a bench. “Just sit right there and I’ll get the water.”

He watched the girl move through the barn, picking up two more towels, fetching the softer hand soap she preferred, and filling a bucket. He may have lost weight in the last two months, but she had put some on … in all the right and proper places. Her jeans were snug and her top was tight; she would need some new glads before the summer was out.

While he watched, one of the straining buttons failed, giving him a peek of white satin between red and blue plaid.

Setting the bucket beside him on the bench, she stepped between his legs to take off his hat and place it on her head. His eyes were in line with the gape in her shirt. Wouldn’t take much to pop another one. The buttons immediately above and below were straining like puppies on a leash.

A cold wet towel plopped on his head. “Now let’s get down to business CB.”

Shock of the cold made him reach out and grab the easiest thing handy. Happened to be Charlotte’s butt. She wiggled, not hard, just a something not right. Instinctually, like answering a horse shiver, he moved his hands down a bit ‘til they were comfortable. Cupping her sweet ass cheeks.

He outlined and massaged her ass, praying her daddy didn’t walk through the door, while she washed his hair, shoulders and face. Charlotte traced his face gently, gave him a quick peck on the lips and then leaned over his body to wash his back.

Okay, now he sometimes forgot to board the train as his fellow hands put it. But if a woman hits him with a clue-by-four he might figure things out. He reasoned it had to be easier for her to walk around to his back to wash him, rather than lean over him, pressing her breasts into his shoulders, her butt supported by his hands, and one leg wrapped around him for balance.

He brought a hand around to her front and rubbed the wide open juncture of her legs.

This time she was the one who moaned like Rowan.

“Oh dear,” Charlotte announced, “I am just getting wet through and through. Would you mind if I take off my shirt CB?”

“If you want to Miss Charlotte, I just don’t want no problems with Mr. Teahon.” CB’s hands continued to massage of her backside and front zipper. “My job here is as fine as you.”

Charlotte’s cadence changed from the East Coast university she was attending to her childhood tempo as her voice roughened in passion. “Aww, I didn’t expect no sweet talk CB.”

She lowered her leg outside of his denim clad one, pushing it against her own leg with his hand caught between. She lifted his face, holding it firm.

 “Now you don’t go worrying about my paw none. I have already told him what I want, told him even before I went off to schooling. He said if my eye hadn’t wandered by the time I got back and you were amenable-like, he would lock up the shotgun.”

Charlotte brought her other leg to the outside of his legs then sat aside CB. His buttons to her zipper. “So tell me, cowboy, are you amenable? I got some proof here saying you be willing and able.”

(words 1,122 – originally appearing at Breathless Press 9/29/2013 for the 7/15/12 Sunday Fun (unknown copyright on picture); republished new format 4/15/2018)

Flash: No Shirts

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

“Touch football time!” Someone yelled at the picnic.

“Donald, you’re a no-shirt.” A nearby woman assigned him to a team as he walked towards the field where everyone was gathering.

The blond twenty-year old laughed, pulling his gray T-shirt over his head and tossed it to the sidelines. “Why am I always a no-shirt?”

“Like you don’t know,” responded one of his uncles, patting his formidable gut, “but at least you get a chance to win. We get all the girls.”

“Not this year!” sang out Eva as she raced to the no-shirt team.

All day she had been wearing a blue long-sleeve hoodie over her white shorts. She unzipped the jacket for the first time at the Fourth of July reunion revealing a very tanned, very naked, and very masculine chest complete with a perfect six-pack.

Donald blinked a moment before the optical illusion changed to show a full-print T-shirt. She tossed her jacket into the pile with the guy shirts.

Grabbing Eva, Donald swung her around and announced, “You are the best cousin ever!”

(words 176 – originally appearing at Sunday Fun on Breathless Press 4/15/2013; republished in new blog format 4/8/2018)

Flash: boobs

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Rating: Mature (Language)

The woman screaming below woke him from his near coma. Why Kryler remained with the harridan Andre did not understand. Likely arguing about him staying the night … again. Hopefully they wouldn’t wake Mia since he crashed in baby’s room when they pulled an all-nighter.

How late were they up last night programming for the new game? Disorientation clouded his mind; every muscle in his body ached. He hadn’t felt this bad since he jumped a foot in height when he was fifteen. He went from the shortest in the school to the tallest in six months.

Cripes, he felt worse than when he stayed over for seven days working on the Rainbow expansion to keep Kryler’s mind off Natalie … leaving … wait …

Who was screaming below if not Natalie?

Why was gravel and stone digging in his skin?

Andre struggled to open his eyes, which seemed glued together. The expansive vista of ocean and cliff faces set off vertigo and he slammed his gummy eyelids shut.

“Come on you mother-fucking bastard! Tell me you haven’t died on me you asshole! Be alive! Oh God, be alive! Help! Come on Andre talk to me!”

That would be Jane. The spy.

Memory started leaking. The normal pickup when government security break-in happened. This time to investigate instead of as one of the suspects. Following up the foot leads, because the hacker was a master the coffee-house login, a pattern similar to what he had pulled off as a kid. The fights, guns, and dozens of other things a nerd like him had no business being in followed until now.

Something tightened around his ribs. … Right, the rope connecting to Jane. … A couple of ribs felt broken.

He opened up his gummy eyes again, supposing the sticky was drying blood from a head wound and the bullet in his shoulder. A series of fence posts kept him from being pulled off the overlook. For once he was grateful of his insane height. His fourteen year old size would have been pulled right off the cliff.

Scrambling against non-existent toeholds below him swung Jane. Her only support was the rope and his weight.

“Stop screaming!” He yelled, or tried too. The fit of coughing prevented him from saying anything. Pain raised through him; broken ribs grated and simulated sensory nerves in ways he had never experienced before.

She screamed pure terror as the rope shook with his coughs.

“Quiet!” He finally managed to get out.

Silence followed for a few seconds. “You still awake?” Drifted up from below.

She jogged his elbow while programming, why did he think she would shut up now? “Yeah.” He said as loudly as he could, without breathing deeply. The ribs hurt with each breath.

“The bastards left us for dead. Don’t know why they didn’t push you off.”

“Wedged.” Andre decided short answers would work. “Little time.”

“Right, that count-down worm you put in. They would need to fix it.”

“Phone.”

“What phone? You think they could solve it with a phone?”

“No.” Andre tried to shift. The boulder behind his hip held him in place and he had no strength in his wounded shoulder to push free. “My phone.”

“God, are we starting that argument again?” Jane had confiscated his phone when they realized the bad guys were trying to trace them.

“Put battery back … phone.”

“And let them know we are still alive, are you nuts?”

“Put battery in.” Andre took as deep a breath as he dared. “NOW!”

“Alright. What do you got in mind bright boy?” He watched Jane twist and turn. One foot was caught in the rope, balancing the weight drag on her waist, but unbalancing her and preventing her from getting a firm attachment to the rock face. He heard the battery snap in place. Funny how he heard tech noises before anything else.

“Dial 7734 star.”

“7 – 7 – 3 – 4 – star. Sure you don’t want 911?”

“Dial it.”

“Dialed bright boy. What next?”

“GPS – turn on.”

“Roger.” Her soprano voice carried up the confirmation. “Done.”

“58008 star pound”

“5 – 8 – 0 – 0 – 8 – star – pound – Dialed.”

Satisfied he had done all he could, Andre wiggled to relieve some pressure and rested. After a few moments, Jane shouted up. “Andre, bright boy. What next?”

“Done.”

“Done what? What did I just do bright boy?”

“Friends coming.” Andre watched her tuck the phone into her spy suit. He had a few fantasies about getting her out of the men-in-black look. He took one out to play with. There was time to kill. “Wait” He let her know.

“Wait? Wait for what?”

“Wait.”

“Of course wait,” she muttered. Her voice was approaching tech level in his ability to tune only into it. “Stupid bastard can’t explain shit about shit. I’ll just hang here like a piñata while we wait. Ass…”

He must of passed out, because he had lost time. Jane’s talking had changed.

“Yes, this is a real woman on Andre’s phone. … What do you mean, no way? … Boobies’ emergency code?”

“Rescue.” Andre projected as loud as he dared. His ribs hurt worse. He barely heard himself.

“Look just come in get us. Shipwreck outlook. If you got guns, you might want to bring them.” Andre heard the phone beep off. “Some Chrysler guy is on his way .. and said something about Effie and willing guns being close behind.”

Will shotgun with Efran driving in his mother’s car might beat Kryler. Only 30 miles away. “Twenty.” Andre said, trying to let her know rescue would be here in a mere score of minutes. Boobs was the highest of the rescue codes they put together for conventions – everything from “leech fan” to “sex-fiend.” Boobs was for Kryler, back when he had a marriage to value. He was the only one to have women throw themselves at him; being an artist helped toned down the gaming-computer-developer-nerd factor. If one counted graphic artists as artists, which at least four women had at various times. Boobs meant drop everything and come save me now.

Got to love his friends.

(words 1,022 – first published 11/6/2013; republished new blog format 4/1/2018)