I found myself unable to write anything meaningful. So in the bit of free time I earned myself I decided to do a little bit of exercising. Below is the end result. Before beginning I created some ground rules to work on.

1. Every entry should involve the randomly generated topic word.
2. Every entry should somehow use something from the previous entry.
3. Thirty seconds. No more. No less.
4. No editing.

Pick your favorite. I will write a 600ish word flash fiction entry for it by Friday.

About
“Well, what’s this all about?”

The headmistress said, her voice jaded and rough, born of a lifetime of bathroom smoking.

I glared up defiantly, the dead body of my best friend beneath me. His jaw was slack.

“What the hell do you think this is about?”

I replied with an edge that could not be placed.

Talking
They were talking about me when I found them huddled in the filthy men’s room. Julia was snorting up lines of coke on one of the cracked toilets. Michael was making sure he took full advantage of her vulnerable view.

“So, you see Pete the other night? Christ, he must have emptied his entire wallet on that whore.”

Gray
If there was one color that fit mister Peter Graham, it was gray. He was always the shifty child in school, the one that always had the air of a grave digger about him. He’d often play by himself, the other children too afraid or indifferent to bother with poor Petey.

Then one day he stopped coming to school altogether.

This is his story.

(Oh there is more…)

Part one of a two parter. Sorry about the cliff hanger, but it’s probably for the best. Again, this is me fleshing out my recent fascination with golems and magical constructs. So I apologize if it is not up to par with modern literature.

The sun had just disappeared completely from horizon as Joel hastily fiddled with his antique lantern, lighting the kerosene soaked wick with exquisite care not to spill any fuel. His father’s fields were over grown and parched, there was dried grass and bales of uncollected hay for as far as his eyes could see in the shadowy light cast by his lantern.

It was strange being home again. After all this time so much had changed in town. People used to look at him with happy, optimistic faces. But as he strolled through the deserted main street just hours before, he was met with only a couple of hollow stares. His town definitely remembered him, but it was as if he was a ghost barely in their realm of perception.

He gleaned from a couple of friends that were too poor to flee the drought that the wizard of the four winds had died just after he left. His tower had been found ruined by a fire that ground the granite walls into dust. They never found the body, but the old man claimed to be hundreds of years old. Everyone had assumed he simply burned in the fire, simply too old to escape the flames he had likely carelessly created.

Everyone had always been cautious of him and it seemed they were right in doing so. With his death he was told that the air became hot and brutal, an oppressive dusty thing that zapped the earth of life. It wasn’t long before the rains stopped completely. Grass withered, dried and ultimately died.

He had been gone little more than a year. The devastation wrought by this Wizard of the Winds was remarkable.

So lost was Joel in thought of the disaster that he did not notice the grass around him shivering in a nonexistent wind and coalescing around an especially large bundle of hay.
(Oh there is more…)

It seems I’ve happened upon a golem interest. The artisan, The Soda Can Golem, and now one made entirely of artifacts and relics of a dead civilization? I wonder where this will take me.

This is more of fleshing out an idea rather than a literary prize. So, forgive me if it sucks. It’s something.

It was moments like this that Decima lived for. Her long life had brought her many heartaches and even more joys, but she lived for the all or nothing moments her line of work often brought her across. She’d spent weeks tracking it across the ruined city scape that sprawled across the barren plain. She often abandoned sleep entirely for the off chance at picking up just the right hint of wind or the faintest bit of its tell tale scent.

It smelled dusty and old. Like ancient papyrus and stale leather. There was always the smallest bit of a gritty talcum powder that hung in the air and stuck to the back of the throat just before it fed, the smashed remnants of objects too precious and unique to ever be replaced.

It quite literally was a relic of an age long since passed into dust.
(Oh there is more…)

Delilah carefully adjusted her wide brimmed hat in the oppressive summer heat and picked her last meal, a single seville orange. She had always loved citrus, especially the bitter and tart varieties. She ran her fingers over the rough and dimpled skin of the dull colored fruit, savoring the scent of the essential oil wafting from her hands. It had been ages since she had savored the rush of flavor and juice from the first bite, or the burning sensation on her lips from the bitter pith.

It seemed fitting that it’d be her last meal.
(Oh there is more…)

The old wizard’s body was failing when I found him in his derelict tower. It had been gutted by a recent fire, likely of his own mad design. The floorboards had been dissolved into ash days before, but the fine stone masonry of the stairwell and the top floor was still as stable as it ever was, so secure was the magic embedded in the red granite. His robes were stained in soot and his finger nails were black and ragged. Obviously he had spent the last several days scrambling through the ashes looking for something. A pile of metal scraps adorned the far corner. The place was probably his workshop.

I didn’t know it then, but that moment would shape the rest of my life. My parents had always told me that the wizard was a bit touched in the head, so mad was his ramblings about extra dimensions, mechanical automatons and empires that spanned more than the stars. A young lad at the time, I did nothing more than ferry his taxes to the magistrate and perform the odd, mundane chore on occasion. It was rare, but sometimes he’d give me lessons on alchemy.

But as I rushed toward him, so weak and pathetic looking a strange feeling came about me. Tears welled up in my eyes like I was losing my best friend. He offered a warm smile and coughed, the soot in his beard sending a cloud that filled the wood ash smelling air.

He was enormous to me, even in his sickly state. He was bigger than most humans, and even the smallest of his kin would have two lengths on my father any day.

His giant’s hand ruffled my hair into a sooty mess. I didn’t mind.

“Rit, my boy. I knew you’d be the last. You’re right on time.”

“I’ll- I’ll- I’ll get the doctor!”

I stammered. I’d never seen a dying man before. I didn’t know what to do.

(Oh there is more…)

Aceline was severely bleeding from her compromised exo-plating as she dashed for the surface. She never thought the sting of the brutal northern winter would feel so good and homely on her chapped and weather beaten face. But it did and she savored it the best she could as she clambered over shattered military-esq relics.

How many people had sought shelter in this literal dump, only to realize at the last possible second that their only hope was a horrible, dirty place? She wouldn’t be the last.

A rusty nail, embedded in some poor sod’s mutilated and moldy forehead ripped a gash in her smart-webbing. Most of what she had in the world spilled to the ground mixing with cigarette butts and rock hard lumps of feces. There were a couple of crunches as glass and over used reactive plastics shattered. Her last grenade rolled off into the inky darkness.

She didn’t bother to check if it was live or not.
(Oh there is more…)

I’ve been fiddling with a new Dungeons and Dragons character class for a little while now. This is just a little piece of flash fiction I used as a medium to get some ideas down. The Artisan is more or less a Sorcerer/Wizard combination, a class that uses creativity and artistic talent to produce magic, not arcane knowledge and physical prowess.

Joan smirked and issued a little giggle from the back of her throat as she tinkered with my spell pouch. I wasn’t exactly sure what she was up to, but it was probably something that’d cost me a pretty penny. I had a lot of valuable things in there.

I craned my neck and tried to look over her shoulder, but the woman was enormous. My short legs didn’t help matters.

“What are you doing?”

She paused for a moment, looking over her shoulder. Her clothing was worn and faded; I could see her mottled grey skin.

“Fleesh..”

“… excuse me?”
(Oh there is more…)

Old Reness was coughing up blood when I found him. The old bastard had crossed me two days before and wound up with a round in his back. I thought I had killed him outright, but again the old man had surprised me.

He was tough as a cockroach and twice as ugly. When I came strolling around throught he doorway of the burnt out cathedral he didn’t bother to scramble.

He knew he was breathing his last couple of breaths. So, being the nice guy I was I sat down on a half collapsed pew and offered him a shot of my flask.

Giving me a smile, he pounded back a round. His rugged fingers left greasy smears of oil and blood on the last piece of my past life. I shook my head when he offered it back.

“So, this is the end old man. I have to say, you’re one touch son of a bitch. I tracked you all the way from the airfield to here. It was really a hike for me, how the hell did you manage?”

He paused for a minute, probably trying to scratch and claw onto the last shreads of juice from his busted internal power supply. His blood was already beginning to corrode his exoskin.

“Brunus, how the hell do you think I got here? I fucking walked.”

(Oh there is more…)

His neighbors were mating again. Their neon plastered hides belting out colors so bright it blurred the edges of his vision. His entire room appeared to vibrate as the taste of blue invaded the back of his throat with a chalky burning sensation.

Jules groaned and turned over in his bed cradle. He screwed his eyes shut.

“Five more minutes..”

A strobe of purple went off in the far corner of his quarters.

Yawning lazily he opened his eyes to another disgusting morning. Checking the digital clock on his nightstand (the only normal thing on board) he cursed.

That was another hour of sleep he’d never get back.

When he had first signed up for this mission four years ago, it seemed a mysterious and beautiful thing. It was something that couldn’t possibly have any scientific explanation, an enigma like the prime numbers screamed out by black holes or the ruins of Dyson’s Odyssey.

Then he learned it was the way they talked dirty to one another. His view of them after that went a little down hill, to say the least.

It was on that day he had wished he had thought to buy a pair of extra strength sun glasses before leaving human controlled space. It made him feel remarkably dirty to know he was bathing in light that pretty much translated to “smack my ass.”

(Oh there is more…)