Category: Text

Flash: He is Going to Be a Problem

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Yulia Matvienko on Unsplash

I was curled up at the bus stop, collar high and hat low, angling a shoulder to block the wind determined to turn the page before I had finished reading it. I know, Jack Frost, that this is the exciting part, but let us slow humans read at our own pace, when someone else spoke…

“You would look more friendly if you smiled.”

The voice was masculine; shocker, I know.

Don’t engage. I tell myself. Don’t look up. Don’t engage. The bus will be here in four pages.

I glanced up, moving as little as I could. Nammy, a regular on the route, sat next to me on the side of the shelter where the plexiglass was still unbroken. She’s older, gray-hair and cane-for-balance level, and I insisted. Luis and Mateo leaned against the back, two latchkey middle-schoolers, their caregivers long-gone to their first jobs of the week. The speaker dressed better than any of us and was white, like me, and had about five years on my early twenties age.

He rode the bus every Sunday afternoon, arriving at ten and leaving at three. “Timothy Gordon,” he had told me in the past when I needed to go somewhere on a Sunday afternoon and no one else was in the bus shelter for me to use as a barrier.

I knew more about him than the mouth diarrhea he shits over me when I’m hostage to the bus schedule. Stuff he regurgitates like his condo, his boss, his office, a professional convention is meaningless to me. I know the important stuff, that his grandmother, who raised him, lived in 12973 on the fourth floor with two other widows to pay the rent. She appeared a lot less white than him, but she was proud of his schooling and being a banker.

Why he hadn’t taken her away from here, False Tree Slums, was everyone’s gossip. Theories ranged from kind to cruel. But what matters is at the end of the day he didn’t live here anymore and she did.

Me, I’m here, despite my skin color lacking the appropriate levels of melanin, because I’m moving up the social strata, not down like most people assume. I was lower than slum housing once I had turned eighteen, being released from the foster care/orphanage system without a penny to my name and a GED worth less than the paper it was printed on. Having shelter at night without selling, stealing, or hiding made the last eight months the best of my life, despite sharing a bathroom with five people.

It was Monday. Morning. I would be on my feet and smiling all day. I only had time to read 23 more pages before clocking in. And he shouldn’t be here.

I hope Ms. Vargas was okay; that he hadn’t had to stay overnight because she was sick.

“I’m not friendly.”

Why did I engage? Maybe picking up the double-shift on Saturday where everyone told me dozens of helpful hints of how to plan for the holidays, where they were in the process, wishing everyone their best life for the season of joy pushed me over the edge. Those people I can’t say anything to.

“Just a little smile.” He gave me a brief half-smile. “Come on, just a little.”

Nammy eyes flicked between him and me, but she knew better than to get between two whities. The boys behind pretended not to pay attention, but this would be one of the thousand examples in their head feeding how men and women should behave together. Those in power can demand behavior out of the weaker. What they will be allowed to do to the women in their lives.

Don’t engage.

I scanned him up and down, snorted, and returned to reading.

“Look bitch!”

The black woman and the two Hispanic boys froze around me. The silence after his words released the screech of the bus turning down sixteenth street, the last street before the Tree streets making up False Trees: Oak, Elm, Birch, Pine, Spruce, and Walnut. Streets where only the garbage men of city services risked travel.

Should I engage, apologize? Make the rest of the people here feel safer? He was a regular, had been a native.

I stood, tightened the coat I picked up last Wednesday when I had been able to go winter clothes “shopping” on Riverside Ward trash day. I didn’t get many weekdays off, since the university kids and high schoolers and adults working a part-time job got nearly all the weekends, but every one of those became “shopping” days thanks to a quick search of city-wide trash days and a universal bus pass.

Looking him right in the eye, I kept my face stoic, before turning to Nammy and giving her a gentle smile, “Need help, today?” The boys got the hint and came around the bench to get in line for the bus to take them to school.

I watched them corral Timothy to the front of the line, them staying just outside the slush slash zone. The water splooshed over the business man’s shiny shoes.

I guess they decided which side of power they wanted to be on today. Tomorrow might be different; they were still young.

He cursed and hopped back as the bus door opened. Glaring behind him, at the kids, at me, and, unjustly, at Nammy, he stomped on the bus. The boys clambered after him, then Nammy carefully lifted herself on the bus one step at a time. I brought up the rear, flashing my bus pass over the scanner and giving the bus driver a social smile.

The only open seat had Timothy’s glowing white face smirking at me. I grabbed the handle over Nammy and turned to face front.

(word 962, first published 12/23/2025)

Flash: The All-Seeing Eye

Erin Penn Leave a comment

ID 47751479 © Jeff Gabbard | Dreamstime.com

“Hey Jeb, coming in, don’t shoot me.” I shoved the slightly stuck door of the trailer open further with my back, my arms filled, wobbling on what could only generously be called steps to get into Jeb’s fifty-year old mobile home he inherited from his grandfather.

He shouted back. “No promises, unless you brought beer.”

Safe, relatively, with his acknowledgment of my existence, I stepped inside, the mildew scent of inadequate insulation and air conditioning had retreated from overwhelming to only nauseating with the change of the season. Now, the cat piss from the two ferals living under the building beat out the mildew. I would shower once I got home.

“I owe you two six packs, and,” I said as I passed by his work station to head for the kitchen, adding the beer to the piles of shit. Returning from that toxic dump, I continued, “I got one for hanging out.” I stuck an arm out to the faded, splintered plywood masquerading as his porch to pick up the third before heading to the bank of monitors and the half-broken chair he kept for visitors. I moved the library book on North American birds to the ancient fax machine he kept for emergencies. The front door remained cracked, and I promise myself for the hundredth time to measure it and bring him a non-warped door that would swing shut. During the summer, the promise is to keep out the bugs and during the winter to keep out the chill; fall and spring are okay, but even as far off the beaten trail as we are, someone could come by and hear us talking.

And not all business is suitable for just anyone to hear.

I cracked one green can and pass it to him, then popped a second out of the plastic rings for me. Looking over the ten monitors, most had four to a dozen street views., I asked, “What’cha doing?” The two monitors where I sat showed woods.

He knocked back half the can before answering, his eyes not leaving the screen tower before him. “Sauron business.”

“Like that evil dude in Lord of the Rings?”

“Yeah, kind-of, not really.” Jeb’s black eyes flicked my way as he typed a message on one of his keyboards. “But also, none-of-your-business. But speaking of business, if you brought beer, the info panned out.”

“Like a well-oiled iron skillet.” I pulled out an envelope from my jacket. “Here is your part of the haul. Three gift cards, two HEB and one Walmart, fifty each, and the receipt for your property tax being paid for the year.”

“Girls safe?”

“They are out-of-state at least, can’t do much more than that.”

He grunted.

I let the silence stretch between us. Jeb lived alone, very alone, and he only had so many words in him at any time, outside of talking computer, which I don’t speak well. He downed the can, and I finished mine. I cracked him another before getting up.

The hunt for the two boxes of trash bags I left in the kitchen for when I visit didn’t take long; it’s more a matter of excavation than figuring where he might have moved them. Into a clear bag, I dropped as much of the recycling as can fit, tie it off, and toss it out the door in a clatter. Then in a dark bag, I picked up as much of the soiled paper plates, napkins, leftover molded food, and trash-trash as I could lift, cursing under my breath once again about being dumped into a female body and the bum left arm gifted to me by other males who took exception to me dressing like my real sex and beat me within an inch of my life when I was fifteen. Maybe, someday, I’ll pour money into some hormone treatments to help with muscle definition, but I rather spend it other ways for now. Being small had a lot of advantages in my work.

The black trash bag also went out the door. I don’t bother looking into the refrigerator; I had learned that lesson. But I do a quick count of the paper plates and plastic utensils to see if anything needs replacement, and made sure Jeb was eating enough to stay alive. Satisfied he had enough until my Thanksgiving kidnapping, where I drag him out for his seasonal shave, bath, and full meal, I passed through the main room where he worked and slept. The single-wide’s bedroom had his miniature server farm fed by the solar panel array he kept closer to the road. Four of the ten monitors were now dark.

Outside, I move the recycling to the back of my compact and, after repositioning the gun box to the side, put the trash bag into the trunk to take of later. I touch the grip of the Glock in my ankle carry, the Beretta at my back, the dagger set up for a left draw, and the two thin knives built into my jacket. Everything in place and everything in its place.

Returning inside with the lunch I bought on the way, I sat and waited, pouring out half my fried okra and placing the second roast beef sandwich on the folded fast food bag. The first roast beef, with garlic sauce, went into me.

“No, apple pie?” Jeb popped two okra into his mouth as he turned off another monitor.

“They were out; only had peach.”

He grunted and returned to whatever task he had on the final screen. Two always remained up; one monitoring stock markets around the world and the other showing four or so group chats scrolling by. My text window with him is on the bottom with a couple other high school friends he helps out locally, and one old flame he kept hoping will reach out after disappearing during COVID.

He specifically asked me not to look. Same with Harvey. We did anyway. We agreed he didn’t need to know until he was ready.

The two monitors at the station I sat at were for special long-term projects which wouldn’t be turned off until he was done with them. I’ve seen all kinds of things here from architectural designs of buildings around the world to chem trail studies. I looked over the woodland visuals for birds, since he had a book about them. Here and there red outlines popped up from movement, turning to green around plants and blue around animals. Sometimes names appeared, identifying the flora and fauna with Latin designations.  I squinted some as the twilight cast long shadows, seeing if I could identify the stuff before the computer.

Something furry went by the trail camera. Taller than the shrub trees. On two feet. Visible for only a second. Emblazed with red.

“Hold on.” I leaned in. “Anyway to back this up?”

“You see something?”

“Yeah, the fucking Big Foot, maybe.” My voice raised and cracked. I hated when I squeaked. “Is this real time? Is it near here?”

“Nah, it’s a PA cam, part of the Sauron program. Just background checks for discrepancies the computer couldn’t identify. The guys wanted some eyeballs to sort out the flags.” He crumpled up the sandwich paper. “Figures you would see Sasquatch.”

“Don’t start.” I warned. All my life I have seen weird shit that nobody believed. Maybe it is from being a man in a woman’s body. Maybe it was the double flat-lines I pulled on the way to the hospital when I was fifteen. But I had encountered ghosts, two I am absolutely positive of – one new-dead and one from the revolutionary war, Texas version. One of my clients swore up and down a demon was stalking her; I took the money because it was green, but by the end, I agreed with her before returning the motherfucker back to hell where he belonged. And, no, there isn’t a body anywhere for blue boys to find. A feral pig hunting trip with friends ended with me hyperfocusing on Big Foot until deer season rolled around.

Jeb shrugged at my words and returned to whatever he was doing.

Jeb had been among the friends when I went four months of bat-shit crazy looking for the furry bastard to show up again. He never believed. Not Big Foot, not the ghosts, and not the demon. Not even after gluing me up after fighting the thing that left claw marks needing his non-tender mercies and sizzled when holy water had been poured over them to cleanse them. At least he accepted me as me, which is more than most of the people I grew up were willing to do, including half my family.

“Alright, let’s back this up.” He closed his last screen, rolled over, and started to hit the keyboard at my station.

“So what is this all about?” I asked as he worked.

“The Sauron project?” Jeb smiled half-way. “Officially the ASE project, or All-Seeing Eye. A group of…” click, click “that should do it. Watch the screen. Of us gray hats got together and decided to see how many publicly available cameras we could put together.”

“Like the dark web?” I glanced at him, before returning my eyes to the screen.

“Nah. We wanted it to be totally legit, a real challenge.” He leaned back, the wheeled chair creaking. “One of the Florida guys from Reddit NotTheseDroids had started the work, and a tech bro from the valley wanted to test out non-AI pattern recognition. We’ve been stitching it together since 2020 and it covers most of the US now. I used it to help you with that car chase in Dallas.

“But the big jump happened when BirdWatcher929 found out about it and joined us. He is trying to find all the birds and helped us link in trail cams. He paid for five servers across the nation to process data so it would never go down in any local disaster, a big investment to link up since this isn’t on the world wide web net. Anyway, several bros are using all the visual data to test out various programs. One guy is doing visual compression and can keep up to a week of data stored.”

“From every public camera?”

“That we can legally access. That’s important, we want this totally legit. A couple college lawyer wanna-bes pop in and are getting us access to public cameras in buildings and oth—What the fuck?” Jeb froze the screen.

It wasn’t a clear shot by any means, but it was large, on two feet, and furry.

Also snouted like a wolf, not a human face.

“Let’s back up.” The keyboard started clicking. A screenshot expanded out, timestamp with location, and he typed Verified good red flag. Anomaly. Investigating species.

“The trailcam group has helped BirdWatcher find thirty species for his lifetime list, which he has driven out to see in person, and the Audubon Society has loved all the dumps we have made for location spottings. In addition, the All-Seeing have been working with other scientists on gathering migratory habits and endangered species information. But this sucker…” The second screen flipped to four packing lots, all with timeframe before the anomaly. Jeb dropped in a search engine, “Come on JeffWishedHeWasThisGood, let’s see how good we have tweaked your crawler.”

“Why are we looking at parking lots?” I snorted a laugh. “Sasquatch doesn’t drive.”

“Eliminate the reasonable before you look into the unreasonable.”

“Fair.” It’s something I always have to do with my investigations. I watched as each of the parking lots, one just inside a State Park entrance, another gravel with a retail store, a paved one looked like next to a fire station with a small airplane strip, and the last was mostly cracked and overgrown, its lines faded with age. People pulled into and out of the first three, faces matching going in and out. Jeb answered questions popping up with “yes store, no search”.

As the shadows lengthened, heading toward the twilight and the countdown to the time stamp of the not-man-maybe-costume-guy siting on the original screen in the screenshot, a nice top-of-the-line SUV pulled into the cracked parking lot. I finally picked out the date, four days ago, about the time I was helping get my client’s daughter and her best friend across state lines under a bright full moon and away from their attackers. The computer grabbed the front license plate, but since Pennsylvania only requires back plates, it was just a vanity plate saying “Run Faster.”

A tall man got out, dark hair curling around his ears, beard shadow but no moustache or sideburns, key in hand. He walked around to the back, leaving the driver’s door open. From the bending over, I bet he was putting the key into a magnetic box under the fender. Returning to the front, he pulled off his shirt and tossed it in. Not much could be seen by the camera because of the door in the way and the glare of the setting sun on the glass, but the man obviously worked out.

I pushed down the jealousy of muscles I wanted and didn’t have.

The rocking motion indicated taking off his shoes and bending over for socks and likely pants. The door closed to show his buck-naked back. No tattoos.

Then no skin, only fur.

“You saw that, right?” I asked.

“Nope. I absolutely did not see that.” Jed’s hand froze over his keyboard. The question hovered on the screen, with a little square of the man’s face…the werewolf’s face. “Store? Y/N; Search? Y/N”

“It’s okay,” I said quietly. “Just say No, No. Lose this, lose the screenshot. Say it was a bear or something.”

“But Kenny,…”

Still talking barely above a breath, afraid to break Jeb. “It’s Pennsylvania. Far from here.”

“I-I…” He stopped with a grunt. Jeb’s eyes darted from the screen to the keyboard and back again.

I pulled his hand away and hit the “N” key twice. “You say everything is on a week back-up.”

“Yeah,” my friend’s voice was flat, “it helped us find two lost hikers last month. Being able to pull things up.”

“Is it seven days at a time, or…?”

He shook his head. “Twelve-hour compressions.”

“Okay, so in three, maybe four, more days this will go away.”

Jeb started shaking.

“Four days you will be safe. Don’t save anything. Don’t flag anything. Mark the anomaly a bear to train the computer not to flag it for others.” I kept talking to him softly, trying to get through his shock. “It is a camera. No one knows it is on the public sites. The download was everything and no one knows anyone would pick out this one thing out of everything. You are good. You are safe.”

“It’s real.”

“Not to you.” I moved my body between him and the screen. “Turn everything off and come home with me tonight. We will do Thanksgiving early. Clean all of this off of us. You will be fine.”

“What if…”

“No, just turn off the computer. Wipe what you need to. Come on now. You don’t want the FBI finding this.”

His eyes lit at the FBI. He understood the FBI. He nodded.

Not as focused as normal, but I watched him close things out, changing the red flag marker. He did a quick search and found two other markers from the same night and area and deleted those as well. A click here and a click there. Eventually all the screens went dark, even the ones which were never dark.

Outside we walked by the woodpile and climbed into my car. We drove past the solar panels keeping the server farm running and dodged his goats, which kept the grass down around them, letting the strong Texas sun provide maximum benefit. He relaxed the further away from the impossible we got.

I wiggled in my seat, double-checking the gun I keep in the back holster. The one with blessed silver bullets if I ever cross paths with a demon again. Dying twice changed my definition of impossible a long time ago.

(Words 2,695; first published 12/22/2025)

Flash: A Helpful Ghost

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Phillip Goldsberry on Unsplash

“Hey where did my—” the female guest twisted on the dark green sofa to better search the end table”—drink go, there it is.” She picked it up from where it had been tucked away from the edge making it difficult to see from where she had been sitting. The underlaying cork coaster featuring North Carolina’s state bird lifted a moment from the moisture before falling back on the wooden surface.

Dwight chuckled before saying, “Sorry, that would be Molly.”

“Who?” Sabine asked, sharply.

“The house ghost. Unlike most poltergeists, she doesn’t knock things off tables but moves them back. She is very helpful to have around.” Dwight looked mid-air, then said, “Molly, this is Sabine. I told you about her. Sabine,” he waved generally around, “this is Molly. Came with the house and is the bestest ghost one could ask for.”

“When you invited me over to meet people, I thought I would be able to see them.” The deadpan in Sabine’s voice was flatter than a squirrel run over by a steamroller.

They first met dancing at a nightclub, him with a bachelor’s party and she with a couple friends taking advantage of the free drinks. After a few dates, Dwight thought it time to introduce her to his roommates. “Well, yeah. Tom will be back from work anytime now. But Molly is also part of the package.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but let me show you her room.” Dwight pushed out of the recliner, and the AC rattled as it kicked on. “Molly, it’s fine, she won’t break anything. This way Sabine, it’s just up the steps.”

The blonde put her glass back on the wood. Extracting herself from the overly soft sofa took some effort, but the woman managed with minimal grunting. Unseen, the glass moved from the wood back to the protective coaster. “Isn’t this new construction? How can there be a ghost?”

“Don’t know, but she definitely came with. Maybe them moved a cemetery to build here?”

At the top of the stairs was a bathroom door, open and just off center from the stairs so no one would accidently fall down the steps leaving the toilet area. The second-floor landing oversaw most of the living room, the soaring ceiling providing an open area with a skylight to let in the sun in the morning. The left wall had a closed door, as did the right wall. Along the landing on the side with the staircase and to the left was a third door.

Dwight pointed at doors. First he pointed at the right door over where the kitchen and dining room was located in the open floor plan below. “That’s Tom’s room.” The left side of the second floor was located over the garage. “That one is my room. And this one,” he opened the door on the staircase wall, “is Molly’s plus our work-from-home room. Tom gets Mondays and Thursdays and I get Wednesdays and Fridays.”

The outside wall facing east was filled with glass, giving an excellent view of the neighbor’s matching window across the street. Someone had covered the lower half with a one-way viewing film. Sabine brushed by Dwight to enter. Near the huge window was a desk with two neat paper stacks on opposite sides of the desk in little in-boxes, each having wired business holders behind them with pens, pencils, paperclips, and other paraphernalia. The laptop on it was probably Dwight since it was Friday. Tucked under the left side of the desk was a wireless printer. The majority of the room was taken up by another table, this one covered in Legos. Beside it were two toy chests filled with dolls, books, balls, and blocks. In between the child haven and the business zone was a small table with three blocks, each side a solid color.

Sabine could see the tops were red, and one of the sides facing her was black and the other green, the third was angled and showed a yellow and a white.

Dwight frowned at the blocks. “Problem kiddo?”

“What?” Sabine asked.

“Oh, Molly uses the blocks to talk to us. Red means bad or stop. I guess she is not okay with us being here.” He turned to the air, “Sorry about that.” He then addressed the living person before him. “Let me show you my room.”

“Whatever.” Sabine backed out and waited for him to open his door. A made bed, nothing on the floor, and the white carpet looked freshly vacuumed. “You cleaned up.”

“Nah, Molly does that. It’s great.” He brought her in the room. “I love this house. Both Tom and I got a little nook that looks out on the non-existent backyard. He made his into a workout area and I read books in mine.” He led her over to an area with an oversized chair easy to curl in with five books beside it sitting on the window sill. Dwight indicated for her to sit while he leaned against the wall. “The house was cheaper since the couple who originally ordered it put three bedrooms with a single bathroom upstairs instead of the standard two bedrooms, one with a master bath as well as the open guest bathroom. But with the half-toilet downstairs, Tom and I are covered. We had originally thought to get a third roommate to help with the mortgage, but then we discovered Molly. The loss of a third income sucks, but we hadn’t really wanted to give up the office space either, not with COVID fresh in our minds, and once we figured out giving her a Lego set a month kept her happy, and a happy Molly is a dusted and vacuumed place, it’s a loss we can handle.”

“You are for real, about the ghost.”

“Yeah.”

A shout and a door came from below. “I’m home. And the Thia food has been delivered.”

“Want to meet the housemate you can see?”

“Delighted.”

***

Two months was a fast hunt for Lisa but time to finish. Pity, she thought as she stroked Dwight’s dark hair, sitting beside him on the ugly overly soft couch. He snored away in his heavily drugged state. His insistence that he lived with a ghost just was too much. It’s hard to gaslight someone into crazy when they were already there, and where is the fun of breaking someone who was already broken?

And with Tom away on a business trip, now was the perfect time to end this and move onto something more exciting.

Fire or suicide? She couldn’t decide.

Dwight would be awake in another five hours, give or take basic tolerations. She would want him awake for the fire. Suicide could be done sooner, an “overdose” of sleeping pills, and she could hit up the nightclubs for Tuesday Night Tacos. If she found a new mark tonight, she might even be able to marry by June. She could use a renewal of her bank accounts with another turn at widowhood. Suicide then.

“Ouch!” A block, which had just hit the back of her head, landed in Dwight’s lap, red side up. “Are you kidding me?”

Lisa, whose present Driver’s License claimed the name Sabine, leaped out of the sofa like a cobra. Pilates and yoga gave her core strength and dexterity she hid from her victims until the final cycle. “Molly?!?”

Another block flew over the upstairs railing, hitting her hard enough midchest to leave a bruise. It landed white-side up.

“Oh, even better. I’m going to love this.” Lisa smiled up the stairs. “I’ve never had an audience before.”

The third communication block launched toward her face, but Lisa easily sidestepped it. Behind her, it landed on the black side.

“No? Molly, Molly, Molly,” she tisked. “I say yes.”

“And I say no.” Echoed through the house, rattling through the AC and bouncing through the kitchen. An icy wind blew and lights dimmed. Behind Lisa, the voice continued, scratching the ears like static and glass, “I like this one.”

Lisa spun, expecting nothing and discovering many things she understood about the universe was wrong. Ghosts, or something supernatural, existed. Some things could scare her enough to pee herself. And she wasn’t the top predator in the house. “You aren’t a kid,” she managed to whisper.

“Imagine that.” The shadow form of a slim small woman reached out a clawed hand toward Lisa’s throat.

Lisa felt the claws sink into her throat but no blood gushed. A jerk pulled her slightly forward and pain ripped through her.

In the ghost’s hand was a glowing globe, which it promptly swallowed, becoming more solid. The hair sprayed high, floating about a young teen face in a Farrah Faucet cut.

“Ah, that is better,” said the ghost with her voice. “Now, we need to reach an agreement. I know you would like to live.” It stroked the side of her face with a claw, the face widening into a grin literally splitting the face in half, showing jagged teeth supported by braces.

Lisa nodded quickly, backing toward the front door away from the poltergeist.

It picked up a block and gave the toy to her. “Turn it to white for yes and black for no. I want our contact to be clear.”

Lisa rotated it to white and put it on the table inside the front door where the housemates dropped their keys and change when entering.

“Now, green means anything, yellow means only certain things, and red means nothing. You summoned me by calling my name three times, so the contract is under your control. What will you give me so you can live?”

Icy air turned Lisa pants into puffs of fog. Grabbing the cube, she rotated it to the green side, put it down, and took two more step away from the solidifying terror. Her back hit the door. She reached behind with one hand, grabbing and twisting the doorknob, hoping the creature was housebound. In ten seconds, she would run like the wind.

“Excellent.” The ghost stepped close enough to whisper into Lisa’s ear, slamming the door shut just as Lisa cracked it. “I want your life.” It then stepped into her body. “Just so we are clear, as long as you live, I get to possess you and your life. Do you understand?” Molly used Lisa’s body to pick up the cube and rotated it to white before putting it down again.

(Words count: 1,747; first published 10/12/2025)

Flash: Big Rock: A Small-Creation Story

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Winggo Tse on Unsplash

Chapter One

Rufus panted as he finished pushing the wagon to the crest of the hill. After lifting and resettling his straw hat against the high noon sun, he nodded to his eldest two children who helped pushed, silently thanking them for a job well done, even if the most important contribution to the task at ages eight and six respectively was not being added weight on the wagon. As a group, they walked to the front where his pregnant wife held the reins to the donkey pair and kept the recovering two-year-old under control with equal skill. Girly, the four-year-old, passed from the bad water they got during the second week out and Leo, the youngest, was still suffering the impact of losing his best buddy and vomiting up his body weight for longer than Rufus or Wifey cared to think.

“Dangnabit, they weren’t kidding, that is a big rock.” He stated, looking down the other side of the hill into the strangely shaped valley.

As far as the eye could comfortably see, a slight curving hill surrounded a mostly flat valley. The weird hill had been slowly rising for a while, but the final curve at top had been steep, more than the donkeys had been comfortable with. The route down off the hill was much more steep than the approach, except for the final bit they had just surmounted, and was littered with boulders, but he could see a switchback path had been carved into the side about a quarter mile to the north and a path followed the top of the circle-ish hill to that point, growing less green and more dirt the closer one got to the path down.

But the big rock was what drew the eye. On a raised piece of land in the center of the valley was a huge boulder gleaming in the sun, made of a dark, yet shiny, stone he had never seen before. Some shrubs grew on the hill where the boulder sat, but he had no perspective to guess its true size. Grass and shrubs, scrubbed land and rocks, pretty much made up everything.

“Once we get down, the land looks as flat as promised for easy travel,” wifey commented. “Didn’t the folks say go there, line up with the sun in the morning and continue forward and we should be in Bad Springs in three days?”

“That they did. That they did. After that another four months and we will be passed from the Open Territories and into the Fiefdom.” He smiled up at his dark-haired beauty. “If that is still what you want.”

“Just room to breathe, and place for children to run.” She smiled down. “The Industry Port Republic didn’t have none of that. Ruffy and Sissy, get on up and we will be going.”

“I’ll pick out the route.” Rufus announced as he pulled his walking stick from out of the footwell then started walking ahead, making sure the ground was firm and the path would catch the wheels.

The switchback, for the middle of nowhere, was surprisingly well maintained. The walk to the big rock took the rest of the mid-summer day. The colorful night sky, with Smoke and Ash sparkling across the center in a swirl of yellows, blues, reds, and pinks, lit the last two hours of travel, the cracked moons wouldn’t peak over the horizon until well past midnight and the silent sister was hiding all but the smallest silver of her face. Over half a day, must have been at least six or maybe eight miles from the top of the hill to stopping for the night at the bottom of the hillock lifting the big rock.

Dried horse dung, left by previous travelers, provided a good fuel to boil the water and soften the beef jerky. They didn’t have any idea which shrubs, grass, or berries were safe, especially not after dark, so they dug out one of the blue-roots for the youngins and the last of the greens they picked two days ago when they recognized a brace of lace-leaf. The youngins barely finished chewing before falling asleep on the blankets under the wagon. None of them were doing good even two months after the bad water.

“How big do you think that rock is?” Rufus whisper-talked to his wife as they lay on their blanket.

Contemplating the boulder’s size, she rubbed her huge belly, wincing as the skin shivered from a kick. “Bigger than the weaving factory where I worked.” She moaned and puffed, pressing hard on one side of her belly. “Three, maybe four stories tall and about as wide, and who knows how much of it is buried here.”

“Could be. Could be.” Kissing the side of her cheek, he wrapped a hand around the hand pressing her skin. “Tomorrow, we will line up and get moving. We’ll stop in Bad Springs until the baby’s born. I know it will be a long month there, and then we will be running up against winter if another wagon wheel breaks, but I don’t want to be too far out from everything. We are still city-folk underneath all—”

Rufus thoughts broke as his wife squeezed his hand. He had only felt her grip his hand that tight four times.

Dawn found the first citizen born in Big Rock. Rufus named him Granite.

 

Chapter Two

Rufus the Fourth looked dissatisfied. He often looked that way, the lines etched into his face, so even though he was mayor, no one would have been too worried even if anyone was up here but him and his oldest. From his viewpoint, at the top of Big Rock hill, he could see his entire domain. Unlike many of the Free Territories towns, his did not have a wooden palisade protecting it from the Fifedom incursions, not that the town needed a spike fence this far from the lakes. But the town didn’t even have a tower on the top of the Circle Hill to see anyone approaching, though Gallus’ widow had set up a house beside the north switchback and Marus and his wife had set up a water station on the east switchback, with Marus’ brother, Vius paying both of them to send him signals of how big a caravan was heading into town so he could set up things beside the travelers’ pond where his stable and food store had been built.

It wasn’t strong. It wasn’t impressive. And a town of nearly fifty voting men should be more impressive. Ten streets crossed below him, only a small walking path coming up the side to Big Rock. He wanted more for his town. He wanted more for him.

Something impressive.

A legacy.

Rufus the original had settled Big Rock, opening the first inn for people passing through the landmark. Rufus the Second set up the system of ponds to collect rain and store safe drinking water. Rufus the Third dug out portions of the Circular Hill and laid brickwork for each of paths merchants used to get into town, sealing Big Rock as the perfect wagon stop for trade.

Now it was his turn and it needed to be a big one. His beloved Wifey only gave him girls. Nine in all before she died, so Rufus of the original line would end when he died. He needed to do something memorable. Something more memorable than coming up with two new designations for the female birth order, since none of his girls had the decency to die or marry before the twins were born and free up the standard seven designations for females before marriage.

Rufus leaned against the rock that soared a hundred feet above him. The dark stone that remained cool in summer and warm in winter, unflaking, unchanging, shiny at a distance and yet the shiny stone didn’t reflect sound and was as quiet as shadows when you were close up. Around them, the grassy ledge went out nearly four hundred feet to the north and south. It was a little narrower east to west since Big Rock was mashed a bit instead of being true sphere. East to west it was nearly a hundred fifty feet but north to south just a hundred. If turned on its side, Big Rock would look like two flatish-bowls placed edge-to-edge with the bulges going out, assuming the curved surface continued beneath the hill.

Maybe he could dig down and find out where Big Rock ended, but if it tipped over, what would be left of the only thing that brought visitors to his town other than being a convenient bump in the road between dozens of free towns?

“Da, time to head back.” Sissy, his oldest, said behind him where she had been waiting patiently until the first of the oranges touched the edge of the horizon.

Sissy, not a Wifey, he grunted, dissatisfied. At eighteen, she had already turned down two suitors. Not that he wanted to run her off. Sissy kept him sane by keeping the house in order, getting the youngins their needs, and helping him about the office. But, still, Girly had married off fine last year and Silent had several males sniffing around her skirts.

“If you were mayor, what would you do to make Big Rock a place where people would come, not just pass through,” he asked her, not expecting much of an answer.

“Well, first, make it safe to have more people. Bad Springs has set up an emergency group to handle fires after the fire burned half the town last year. Second, do better at getting trash out of here and maybe move the dyes outside the circle. Yeah, it will mean further for Reds and Blues Wifeys to travel, but the dye pond colors and smell are creeping into the washer and second street ponds. Third, make a better way for people to walk up here than that damned rope bridge and ladder. People want to see Big Rock up close, let’s let them. Safe to visit, no bad smells, people can look at the rock, oh, and maybe a place to play music.”

The girl had added the last like it only had occurred to her, trying to be sly. Not like she hadn’t been agitating for the last month to have a place to play music and dance, maybe even present plays, since the last caravan had a six-member band traveling from Greener Grass to Port-of-Trade.

“Hmm. A stage like the Industry Republics has in all of its big cities. Maybe not now, we don’t have the people, but we are near a lot of fair-sized towns which don’t have anything like that and with the new motorized cart catching on, travel times are dropping. A man from Big Spring came through the other day having left home after that morning’s breakfast and stopped here for lunch.”

“We will need a better sleeping space for visitors than the traveler’s meadow.”

Nodding, Rufus walked toward the rope ladder. “Big Rock, a destination place, like Aaron’s Spa, only plays.”

“And music.” Sissy added.

 

Chapter Three

“See I told you the view from up here is amazing.”

Fias snuggled in the crook of Marius shoulder like she was shaped just for him. “Are you sure we won’t get into trouble?” The rumble of his voice still shocked him. The last time his voice cracked was last month during the presentation on how Big Rock’s first female mayor redefined the women in politics, at least in the Free-Ts, including getting the right to vote after they turned twenty-one, same as men. He hoped it was the absolute last time.

“Sure silly. I got the key and codes from being a tour guide all summer, and besides Mom’s mayor.”

“That won’t get you out of everything,” he informed her, as they both stared up to the cracked moons crossing the streaks of the Smoke and Ash shining from the center of their galaxy. The view from the platform the city had built at the very top of the Big Rock could only hold six people at a time and the one hundred and fifty steps leading to it was no joke to climb, but the city stretching from one radii of the Circular Hill to the other was beautiful to behold and they were high enough between the Big Rock Hill and Big Rock itself that Smoke and Ash actually was visible despite the light pollution.

“Maybe not, but a little teen high-jinks when we don’t break anything will be fine.” Fias stated with the full confidence of the Rufusson line of unbroken mayors since the founding of the city two hundred years ago. “And, besides, we graduate in a month. This is the last chance to do a little mayhem before we take the apprentice-citizen oath. It’s the last chance to do a lot of things.” Her hand drifted downwards, crossing the belt-line of his pants.

He grabbed the wandering hand and moved it up to his midchest and held it there. After several slow breaths, holding the hand firmly in spite of two small jerks on her part, he said, “You know I love you.”

“Yeah, but—”

“I want to marry you.”

Fias paused before saying. “We can have sex before marriage.” Her words had a strange tension to them.

One he knew well after dating her for four years. She wanted something and was playing him. And he knew what it was. She wanted sex. Fias delighted in it. Ever since they figured out kissing could be very interesting the lower you went, she tried to make sure they had enough privacy so he would kiss her lower until she screamed. Fias was very interested in seeing what sex would be like with all the parts matching up in a more traditional way. Sex was what she wanted. And he would have been cool with that, except…

She also wasn’t going to get married. Ever.

More than sex, she wanted to be the next mayor after her mom and she had sworn by the silent sister of the cracked moons when they had been just friends in sixth form she would never give up any of her rights, including handing off her right to vote to a husband. Her mom had three kids without getting married, she didn’t need to do so either.

And Marius didn’t want to play second fiddle to her ambitions and leave his own alone like a pathetic designated unnamed male. Being the third son was bad enough. Maybe a hundred years ago, when families had a half dozen or more children, being a third son would have been fine, especially when the Free-Ts were still the Free Territories and had territory to spread out away from two brothers who were already full oath citizens, happily married, and had respectable jobs. But under the present cap of three children, being the youngest was a sentence of obscurity.

He wanted more. He wanted her. Was even willing to stand at her side as the husband of the mayor, but he would be cracked from pole to pole before he was designated as her sidepiece instead of named husband.

Marius hoped to wear her down, futile though he knew it was, keeping the last step of sex out of their relationship. “No we can’t.” He had explained no to full sex as avoidance of an unwanted pregnancy before apprentice-citizenship; she didn’t need to know his other reasons. The no-children before taking the apprentice oath was just common sense if you want to raise your own children, which both of them did. Once they were five months out from graduation, and guaranteed to have any child conceived being born after the oath, she started wearing him down asking for full sex. He wasn’t giving up on this battle of wills; he loved her too much, and also loved himself too much. At the same time, he didn’t want to weaponize their physical connection too far. “How about this,” he counteroffered, “I can eat you out under the stars if you want.”

Her screams might echo all the way to thirty-second street and the cops would find them, but that would be worth it.

He also liked sex, even if he was quieter about it.

“Oh, alright.” Fias started shimming out of her jeans.

The shimmy rocked the whole platform and tilted his girlfriend sideways. Marius grabbed her before she rolled over the side, then grabbed hard to one of the handrails.

The platform wasn’t shaking. The Big Rock was shaking. A crack appeared along the flawless surface, emitting light.

Echoing without sound came the words: System.repairs.complete.

(word count 2,790; first published 10/5/2025)

Flash: Rent to Own

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Max Kleinen on Unsplash

The walls are bleeding, again. Not the typical horror haunted movie with the slow run of what is actually chocolate syrup but looks like blood on camera starting from the ceiling and dripping down the plaster in long streaks. That would be doable.

No, my haunted house gets splatter patterns in the dining room. A screech of metal and *splush* – a dozen of bright red dots, which starting running just a little where the drops were the heaviest before drying in place.

I roll my eyes. “Is it that time of month already?”

The house moans in response, the floor shivering underfoot as I set the table for dinner. A louder high-pitched scream follows and another connect-the-dots pattern appears beside the first, a little lower. A bit of a void is on the left side, as though blocked by a head and part of a shoulder.

Built in the double-oughts for an up-and-coming executive, the house witnessed the end results of the tech-bro who borrowed “just a little” money from his company’s coffers to cover things after a slow month. In the end, the embezzlement toppled into investigations when an audit showed missing millions for which the man blamed his wife “wanting good things” according to his murder-suicide note. He took out the kids first because he didn’t want to leave them orphans but was vindictive enough to make his wife watch. Bastard.

What a way to baptize a house’s first year. That sort of thing leaves an impression on brick and mortar.

“I feel you.” I said with sympathy, putting out the bowls. Tonight was going to be tomato soup with grilled cheese. Returning to the kitchen, I ignore the clinking china in the other room, She is good at avoiding breakage. Sighing, I put a lid on the pot of simmering red soup and move it off the heat. I’ll repackage it for the freezer to be eaten later, once the monthly bloodfest is done. After pulling down another pot, I go to the pantry to see what other cans are in there. Carrot soup should work. And Mercy likes it better anyway, though Wolfgang will complain before digging in.

The gunshot makes me jump, like normal, but it gave me the extra push when opening the soup can, so the lid came off cleanly for once with the can opener instead of having two small burrs opposite sides of the can which prevent the actual removal of the lid. A thud reverberates out of the dining room into the kitchen as though a heavy body just hit the floor. The soup glopping into the pot makes a similar thud.

The timbers moaned and the floor creaked as wood shifted.

I pat the counter after I add water and set the soup to heating. “It’s okay.”

And it is.

A real estate investment firm snapped up the house from the foreclosure company after the quadruple homicide plus suicide. But, surprise surprise, they couldn’t find reliable renters. The firm kept dropping the price until a single mom with two kids – plus “sure you can have pets without a deposit, it’s not like the downstairs has carpet” desperation got Prince Albert, our Siamese, Doofus, our loveable but extremely dumb lab, and Cunningham, my ex’s last purchase to try and regain Wolfgang’s favor after missing yet another track meet – without consulting either me or Wolfgang if we wanted a second dog, which we didn’t but Cunningham is a better bed partner for me than my ex ever was, even if the German shepherd hogs the covers.

I liked the price. I fell in love with the house after the first time the ex picked up the children for the weekend. She did not like him. I thought she was dramatic BEFORE. The glass paperweight didn’t actually hit him, but that is only because Mercy caught it in the baseball glove she was showing off to her dad. The squishy puddles of blood did ruin his shoes, though, and I know from experience the blood splatter does not come out of clothes, not even with iodine.

We now do the exchange at the local McDonalds like reasonable adults, and I no longer worry about him breaking in and keeping any of the threats he made during the divorce.

“I’m going to buy you.” I promise while pulling the grilled cheese from the oven. “It might take until the kids are grown, but I will find a way to buy you.”

(words 749; first published 9/29/2025)