Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy

Tag: lady antimony

#DearValentine: “Abandoned”

It’s been far too long since I’ve tackled one of ‘Timony Souler’s flash fiction challenges, and so when I heard about her #DearValentine event, I signed up immediately.

Over the next 4 Saturdays, my fellow participants and I will be posting short 300 word drabbles based on the challenge prompts.

Week 1’s prompt is simple: A note, a photograph, the docks.

My entry is exactly 300 words long, and is part one of my still-unnamed four part series. Feedback is always appreciated. Finally, be sure to check out the other participants’ work.

-oOo-

“Abandoned”

The ship was a speck against the horizon by the time Pierce arrived at the docks. He was too late.

He could still smell her fragrance lingering in the air, the faintest trace of jasmine and lavender. It taunted him, an unsettling reminder that even he, with his speed and strength and near-prescient senses, was capable of failure.

The cynic in him said that he deserved heartbreak. He had rejected his carefully honed instinct for self-preservation when he decided to pursue her, and all for what? A pair of haunting violet eyes, a sinful mouth, and the most luscious curves he had ever seen? A woman more intelligent, more passionate than any he had ever known?

Self-reproach was useless, for Wyng was perfection. He had been helpless against her from the start. More importantly, she had loved him. He would never believe anything less.

He couldn’t look at the photograph she had left behind; they were too in love, too blissfully happy. Rather, it was her final note, little more than a crumpled mess of smeared ink, that he clenched in his fist.

I’m no good, Pierce. I’ll only bring destruction upon you if I stay.

That was a lie. She had restored him to life, reminded him that there was a world beyond violence and hate.

Forget me, and don’t try to find me.

How could he ever manage such a feat? His chest heaved, as though some imaginary string tied their hearts together and pulled taut, stretching beyond endurance. He couldn’t allow it to snap.

With a curl of his lip, he tossed the note into the wind and climbed onto his motorcycle. The engine revved to life at his touch, and within moments, the docks were behind him.

He had never been very good at following directions.

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Ghouls Galore: Vampire

Eeep, I can’t believe I forgot about the final week of Lady Antimony’s Ghouls Galore October flash fiction event! The word of the week is “borborygmus,” and the overall theme is Pick-Your-Own-Creature.  I’ve chosen the vampire, for old times’ sake.  Back in the day, The Vampire Diaries by L.S. Smith and Silver Kiss by Annette Curtis Klause were my books of choice (both of them are better than Twilight, IMO), both inspirations for the mediocre vampire fiction I loved to write.

As a Halloween treat, I give you both flash fiction and poetry.  The poem was originally written in 2000, one of those things I scribbled in math class when I was 13, a silent protest against learning algebraic equations. 😉 I’ve tweaked it a bit, however.

David A. Ludwig has written a lovely summary of the challenge, along with links to the other participants’ work, so be sure to swing by and check it out.

And as a final fun note, this is my 100th post! It totally snuck up on me, too. 😀

-oOo-

“Midnight Walker”

Blood:
Source of life for all,
elixir of the chosen
drink of the Damned — those more-than-mortals,
the living dead.

Forced to forever stalk the living,
chained to the night,
without rest, without peace
Midnight Walkers forever.

 

It was a small thing, really: a single globule of blood, no larger than a dewdrop and just as delicate.  If Alaric hadn’t been starving, his veins parched and dry, it would’ve been easy enough to ignore.  Restraint and willpower had always been his strengths, even before he was reborn.  But then again, he had never been deprived of sustenance for so long. There was no way he could withstand such temptation.

That drop of blood was a siren’s song of lust and desire, flooding his mouth with saliva, sharpening his gleaming fangs.  It gleamed in the flickering glow of the streetlamp, adorning the whore’s neck like the most precious ruby.

She’d been bitten already — a sloppy kiss from a drunkard, for her intoxicating bouquet was tainted by the acrid, burnt smell of whiskey. With his preternatural senses, he could hear the beating of her heart, the borborygmic trembling of her stomach; she was hungry as well, her face pinched and pale beneath a heavy coating of rouge.  It mattered little. By the time Alaric was through, food — or lack thereof — would be the least of her worries.

The whore turned limpid eyes upon him, lips parted in a drawl of invitation, and Alaric’s hands shook as his slid the coin into her hand.  A thrill of delight coursed down his spine as he followed her into the dank alley nearby, even as his conscience uttered one final whimper of protest.

He would hate himself come morning, when the alleys would be strewn with evidence of his excesses, but the salt-sweet elixir on his tongue drove away all regret.

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