I've been hanging out with one of my characters for a while; he's rapidly growing from a short story character to something a lot more meatier. He's popped up on several flash stories of late, and I think I need to invest some serious effort into making him a fully fledged character worthy of his dastardly deeds. He is, after all, a psycho, and his name is Hackett. He's evolving before my very eyes.
For those who like a little gristle in their horror, I've included two flash stories involving Hackett: Confluence and Palette.
Enjoy.
Confluence
A billowing violet flourish, a fanfare. The sound of the opera in the background transcended the stink of fear and drowned out the man’s screams.
The high-pitched wailing grated on Hackett’s nerves.
The first slice cut through the larynx and instantly silenced; followed by a deeper cut which carved through sinew and muscles and slowly, deliberately, separated head from the neck.
The eyes fascinated Hackett; the tongue had become slack, but the terror bloomed in the man’s expression. Pain, death. Last moments captured.
Nerves made the man’s mouth twitch madly in a silent scream.
It was time for dinner.
Palette
The soothing sound seeped through the hallway; ambient musical strings floated like granules of dust caught in a beam of light.
Pulsing.
Hackett eased back in his chair, smoked his cigarette. Cool cerulean tendrils stroked his face as he listened to Rachmaninov’s dulcet concerto No 2.
His finished artwork hypnotised him; deathly indulgent and deep velvety red. She was beautiful now he’d skinned her, peeled and pruned and...
Pulsing.
Weeping strange colours and glistening beneath the dull light, she was tremulous, drowning in her fear and pain.
Her palette fascinated him. He exhaled; carved a path through the smoke.
Smiled.
A matter of confidence
Confidence in writing comes with the territory. Being a writer is a bit like standing in the middle of a firing range - some bullets will miss, some will hit, some will hurt and some won't even cause a ripple. Confidence is so fragile - you think you're full of it, but the reality is that it only takes one tiny thing to break it.
Sometimes what we write works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes people get it, sometimes they don't. I wrote a recent piece for a competition, called Love Letter, and it didn't appeal to the judge. I don't like writing weak stories - I invest as much time in a poem or flash fiction as I can. Quality is important, not quantity, but also technical application matters too, so the old confidence went astray after my dalliance on the firing range. I couldn't dodge those bullets! Thankfully my writing mojo came back like a dog returning to its master.
There's a lot packed into these 200 words. See what you think.
Love Letter
A dusty remnant lay on the kitchen table. A fragment of her life, shadowed for a lifetime, found buried in the attic of a house somewhere in the lush green hills of northern England, it now gleaned the light.
Celine Pierremont glanced at the sturdy oak in the courtyard. A love heart and initials - carved into the bark almost seventy years ago - had darkened but had not diminished. Nor had her love for the salient figure that had vanished from her life so long ago, snatched from the street by German soldiers looking for English spies.
Their love had been secretive and clouded by war, yet unchained by the guilt that it brought, and she remembered the feeling of her love, like silk ribbons and velvet over softened, supple skin; lost like time itself.
She looked to the letter on the table. Her lover had died in a concentration camp in 1942, a year after they had met and fallen in love, just before the letter was written. Celine had never known the truth, believing that their love was doomed.
Until now.
The letter brimmed with words of love, from the most beautiful women Celine had ever known.
Sometimes what we write works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes people get it, sometimes they don't. I wrote a recent piece for a competition, called Love Letter, and it didn't appeal to the judge. I don't like writing weak stories - I invest as much time in a poem or flash fiction as I can. Quality is important, not quantity, but also technical application matters too, so the old confidence went astray after my dalliance on the firing range. I couldn't dodge those bullets! Thankfully my writing mojo came back like a dog returning to its master.
There's a lot packed into these 200 words. See what you think.
Love Letter
A dusty remnant lay on the kitchen table. A fragment of her life, shadowed for a lifetime, found buried in the attic of a house somewhere in the lush green hills of northern England, it now gleaned the light.
Celine Pierremont glanced at the sturdy oak in the courtyard. A love heart and initials - carved into the bark almost seventy years ago - had darkened but had not diminished. Nor had her love for the salient figure that had vanished from her life so long ago, snatched from the street by German soldiers looking for English spies.
Their love had been secretive and clouded by war, yet unchained by the guilt that it brought, and she remembered the feeling of her love, like silk ribbons and velvet over softened, supple skin; lost like time itself.
She looked to the letter on the table. Her lover had died in a concentration camp in 1942, a year after they had met and fallen in love, just before the letter was written. Celine had never known the truth, believing that their love was doomed.
Until now.
The letter brimmed with words of love, from the most beautiful women Celine had ever known.
Holiday inspired poetry
I recently returned from the gorgeous south Aegean island of Kos, which inspired a some writing. I sat on the beach on a beautiful, cloudless hot day and looked across the ocean towards Rhodes and the clipped mountains of Turkey, and a poem, Sky Blue, popped into my head.
I am a sucker for Greek mythology, and since I was staying in the land of the greatest of mythological characters, I couldn't resist having a play.
Sky Blue
Indigo hue replete
She ripples and glistens
Reflecting her silvery charms
A Goddess, bathing beneath
The sultry breath of Helios.
Her shimmering emerald hints
Refract his light
And summon sapphire shards
That quicken across her supple surface
With a darkening, sensual allure.
She is sky blue in all her beauty
Sky blue beneath the waves
Voluptuous around Ionian Islands
Her subtle whispers in the surf;
Amphitrite, ascending.
I am a sucker for Greek mythology, and since I was staying in the land of the greatest of mythological characters, I couldn't resist having a play.
Sky Blue
Indigo hue replete
She ripples and glistens
Reflecting her silvery charms
A Goddess, bathing beneath
The sultry breath of Helios.
Her shimmering emerald hints
Refract his light
And summon sapphire shards
That quicken across her supple surface
With a darkening, sensual allure.
She is sky blue in all her beauty
Sky blue beneath the waves
Voluptuous around Ionian Islands
Her subtle whispers in the surf;
Amphitrite, ascending.
Runner Up...
Thanks to Lily Childs for picking my little flash piece, Just Another Echo, as runner up for the Friday Prediction challenge over at the Feardom.
It's reflection of something that happens on most streets in most major cities around the world, and the title reflects how society perceives those who find themselves coping on the streets, and how they are victims of our ignorance.
Just Another Echo
The wretch in her eyes shrank behind the shadows that swallowed her sullen flesh.
Shapes oozed into focus before vanishing into a dull blur, leaving her squinting.
Sounds...slipping in and out of her velvet-tinted haze with a slow coiling resonance, like a soft burr, an aching hum.
Muscle fibres tautened around her torso, rippled around her ribs. Vomit spilled down crumpled, soiled clothes but she barely noticed.
She looked up from her stooped position; people drifted by, unaware of her pain.
She was just another echo through the cold damp streets.
No matter. She lifted the bottle, took another sip.
It's reflection of something that happens on most streets in most major cities around the world, and the title reflects how society perceives those who find themselves coping on the streets, and how they are victims of our ignorance.
Just Another Echo
The wretch in her eyes shrank behind the shadows that swallowed her sullen flesh.
Shapes oozed into focus before vanishing into a dull blur, leaving her squinting.
Sounds...slipping in and out of her velvet-tinted haze with a slow coiling resonance, like a soft burr, an aching hum.
Muscle fibres tautened around her torso, rippled around her ribs. Vomit spilled down crumpled, soiled clothes but she barely noticed.
She looked up from her stooped position; people drifted by, unaware of her pain.
She was just another echo through the cold damp streets.
No matter. She lifted the bottle, took another sip.
Available anthologies
Two recent anthologies have been published by Static Movement which contain some of my short stories. Driftwood - a dark take of death on turbulent seas - first appeared on Lily Childs' February Femmes Fatales, and is now published in Tales of Salt and Sorrow, available from Amazon.com
Nocturne, another tale originally featured in the February Femmes Fatales series is about things that go bump in the night, and features in another anthology called Comes the Night.
A second seminal short story is also included, called Watched. This originally appeared on Thrillers, Killers and Chillers under the original heading of The Watcher.
Both anthologies are edited by Dorothy Davies. If you like your stories dark, then these are for you. Happy reading...
 |
| Available from Amazon.com |
Nocturne, another tale originally featured in the February Femmes Fatales series is about things that go bump in the night, and features in another anthology called Comes the Night.
A second seminal short story is also included, called Watched. This originally appeared on Thrillers, Killers and Chillers under the original heading of The Watcher.
 |
| Available from Amazon.com |
Both anthologies are edited by Dorothy Davies. If you like your stories dark, then these are for you. Happy reading...
Good things come in small packages
It's been a very busy few months with the second novel in its third draft, short stories and poems for various anthologies, critiques for clients and various competitions. A writer's work is never done.
A flash fiction story called Resurrection won first place over at Lily Child's Feardom, inspired by and using three words - Legionnaire, envelope and scry. Not exactly the easiest words to work with, but a challenge nevertheless, and writers love a challenge.
Resurrection
Shallow thoughts and sallow eyes - she stared at the churned earth, scrying ghostly images in her mind, wresting death from its muddy hole to invite the light.
She held a sullied, rotted leather pouch in her hands, like a prayer book, careful not to disturb the disintegrated envelope scattered inside.
The suffocating cloud of time slowly lifted on the Legionnaire’s last days; broken words on perished paper to loved ones back home; now lost and forgotten and blemished.
Urged by a breeze, the garnished green fields of Champagne wafted at her feet.
As one by one, his bones emerged.
A flash fiction story called Resurrection won first place over at Lily Child's Feardom, inspired by and using three words - Legionnaire, envelope and scry. Not exactly the easiest words to work with, but a challenge nevertheless, and writers love a challenge.
Resurrection
Shallow thoughts and sallow eyes - she stared at the churned earth, scrying ghostly images in her mind, wresting death from its muddy hole to invite the light.
She held a sullied, rotted leather pouch in her hands, like a prayer book, careful not to disturb the disintegrated envelope scattered inside.
The suffocating cloud of time slowly lifted on the Legionnaire’s last days; broken words on perished paper to loved ones back home; now lost and forgotten and blemished.
Urged by a breeze, the garnished green fields of Champagne wafted at her feet.
As one by one, his bones emerged.
Repetition and Sibilance in poetry
A recent poem for the One Word Challenge over on Writer's Talkback made me examine the relationship between two devices used in fiction - repetition and sibilance - a way of teasing and toying with a reader, and I wondered how I could apply these together in poetry.
Repetition is well known in poetry, but for Something Hidden, I wanted to create a sense of creeping tension, of drawing the reader to wonder what that Something was, and why it was hidden. I used the sibilance on each opening stanza, coupled with repeating the something hidden mantra to try to give it that dark quality.
Does it creep beneath the skin? Judge for yourself.
Something Hidden
Slithering, simpering
Something hidden
Facade built, your
Pearlesque crust
Smiling from within.
Soiling, spoiling
Something hidden
Cleaving your way
Through life, and
Slicing with passion
Heaving, leaving
Something hidden
Sharp words, your
Forked tongue
Mocking with fashion
Bending, folding
Something hidden
Blunting your blade
Around soft throats
Betrayal bidden
Creeping, masking
Something hidden
Your deceitful sheen
Stretched tight
Across a burnished
Expression.
Repetition is well known in poetry, but for Something Hidden, I wanted to create a sense of creeping tension, of drawing the reader to wonder what that Something was, and why it was hidden. I used the sibilance on each opening stanza, coupled with repeating the something hidden mantra to try to give it that dark quality.
Does it creep beneath the skin? Judge for yourself.
Something Hidden
Slithering, simpering
Something hidden
Facade built, your
Pearlesque crust
Smiling from within.
Soiling, spoiling
Something hidden
Cleaving your way
Through life, and
Slicing with passion
Heaving, leaving
Something hidden
Sharp words, your
Forked tongue
Mocking with fashion
Bending, folding
Something hidden
Blunting your blade
Around soft throats
Betrayal bidden
Creeping, masking
Something hidden
Your deceitful sheen
Stretched tight
Across a burnished
Expression.
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