The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: flash fiction

  • Two Sides to Each Door (Flash Fiction)

    “You gotta understand,” Momma says to the doctor as though Annabelle can’t hear her. “She has always been a special child. Very particular, you know. Apple of her Gramma’s eye.”

    The Doctor peers over the top of her horn-rim glasses, tapping her pen against the pad of paper in her lap. Annabelle feels small when the Doctor looks at her, even though it was just her birthday and everyone was saying Look how big you’re gotten!

    The Doctor nods slowly and says in her strange, slow voice, “Annabelle, can you draw a door for me?”

    Her heart pounding in her chest, Annabelle looks from the Doctor to Momma before shaking her head. You mustn’t draw a door, young lady — Gramma had been clear about that. She could draw whatever else she wanted, so long as it wasn’t a door. Annabelle rubs her sweaty palms on the skirt of her nicest Sunday dress, trying to pretend she doesn’t know that Momma is glaring at her. “No,” she says, her voice so soft that it’s almost too quiet to be heard over the rattle of the air conditioner.

    (more…)

  • The Death Ranger (Flash Fiction)

    Photo from here.

    “Okay, okay.” I accept the plastic two-liter bottle signifying my turn to tell a story. I need to think about it, size up my audience a bit. I close my eyes and go ‘round the fire:

    Beth – who I have always wanted to go to bed with – is to my right. I want to startle her. Give her the chance to reach out to me instead of George, her boyfriend and an acquaintance of mine for nearly twenty years.

    Todd was next, a friend of Holly. Yeah, she’ll be the most frightened if I tell the story right. She said that Todd was just along for the ride because he had the pot.

    Directly opposite is an empty rock where Noah had been, but he was out gathering wood for the fire. We’ve been friends almost as long as I’ve known George.

    Janice, Noah’s wife. A true stick in the mud.

    Carla is next to her and always game for a good story. She’ll heighten the mood at the right time.

    Mike is off to my left. He’s sullen tonight and drinking too much.

    On my left is Willow, my soon-to-be ex-girlfriend. This trip had been planned for a while, and I don’t want to break up with her before I’d given our relationship – if you could call it that – one last chance.

    “Are you finally ready, o master storyteller?” Todd is trying to be funny and already high as a kite. His pot is pretty good, and everyone except Janice and Willow have taken a toke.

    “Yeah,” I say, opening my eyes. “This -” I hold out my hands over the fire and draw them apart, “- state park we’re in has a long history and there are lots of things out in the woods that’ll take you to hell in a heartbeat if you’re unwary. But there’s nothing more terrifying than -” I wait for effect, “The Death Ranger.”

    (more…)

  • Netstrider (Flash Fiction)

    “And then, the Netstrider passes in the night and eats the internet.”  Laney paused to let the chills go down their backs, as they poked at screens under the covers.

    “But Mommy, they can still use their phones, right?” Dana asked. “That’s not the internet.”

    “The Netstrider doesn’t care how you are on the internet, my love. He only cares that you are on, and it draws him like honey. In those lands where the Netstrider has recently passed, oh, the chagrin, oh, the horror–for all around, the phones disconnect, the computers grunt and groan and settle down in a poof of dust.”

    The children gasped.  “Then what do we do?  What does anyone do?” asked Will.  His phone beeped three times then, three messages. (more…)

  • Angry Levi (Flash Fiction)

    “Who’s our first volunteer for bear patrol?” Mitch asked.

    Huddled next to the fire eating mushy baked beans out of a tin plate, I exchanged covert glances with my fellow rookie scouts. None of the four of them looked anxious to volunteer. They kept their faces buried in their food bowls.

    Mitch snorted. “So much for Helpful, eh Joe?”

    Joe barked a laugh. “Untrustworthy lot we got here, looks like.”

    (more…)

  • Bobo’s Haunted Circus (Flash Fiction)

    Photo credit: Wee Willy Wicked http://stayingscared.blogspot.com

    Okay, guys. Chill. It’s getting dark. I need you all around the fire so I can keep track. Nobody wander off. Two steps into the trees and it’s pitch black. You’ll get turned around and lost. I don’t want to explain to your parents why their kid didn’t make it back home.

    Jimmy, come on. Why didn’t you pee when it was still light? Fine. Just to that tree there, no farther. Hurry. You don’t want Bobo to find you out there alone.

    What? You guys haven’t heard about Bobo? Hurry up, Jimmy! You don’t want to miss this. Finish up over there and hurry back to the fire.

    They say years ago, in this very spot, a circus pitched their big top once a year. Right where we’re sitting. They had elephants and dancing dogs, a high-wire act. They had everything. The Macelli Brothers owned it.  Giovanni and Enzo. They did everything together, and the circus was their dream. (more…)

  • The Fools on the Hill (Flash Fiction)

    Alan positioned the flashlight directly in front of his mouth and made eerie ghost sounds. The light, tainted red from shining through his flesh, made disconcerting shadows on the sides of the tent.

    “Bre-e-e-tt, are you afraid of the da-a-a-a-rk?” Alan asked in the same ghost-mimicking voice.

    “No, of course not,” Brett replied, all the while thinking Yes, yes, oh dear God, yes I’m afraid of the dark. But they were safe in the tent they had pitched in Alan’s backyard, Brett chided himself.

    “We should tell ghost stories.”

    Even in the dim light, Brett could see the wicked gleam in his friend’s eye.

    “I don’t know any,” Brett muttered.

    “Have you ever heard about the house on the hill?”

    Brett shook his head.

    “They call it the Fool on the Hill, like that Beatles song.”

    “What’s so scary about a fool on some hill?” Brett asked skeptically, and then wished he hadn’t asked because he knew that now Alan was going to tell the story whether he wanted him to or not.

    “Some crazy guy used to live there. Just a regular dude, worked at the factory, and then one day he just snapped and killed his wife and kids and boarded himself up inside of his house up there. Nobody has seen him since, and now it’s haunted by his restless spirit.”

    The flashlight was back to illuminating Alan’s mouth, and Brett watched, mesmerized.

    (more…)

  • The Devil’s Hole (Flash Fiction)

    Hole in the groundDuring the summer, I was allowed to stay up late, which usually meant bedtime was an hour or so after dark. But I stayed up with my mom, waiting for dad to return.

    She was reading one of her tabloids from the grocery store, and I had my nose in a comic book. But I don’t think either of us was getting much reading done. Every time we heard a car in the distance, we thought it might be him coming home with news.

    Around 11:00, a car finally pulled up to the house. The sound of tires crunching gravel on the driveway drew me to the window. Mom went to the door, but it opened before she could touch the knob. Dad came in with Mr. Johnson, both men covered in sweat and dirt. Dad looked shaken. Mr. Johnson helped my dad into the door and left without a word.

    (more…)

  • Shadow Puppet (Flash Fiction)

    If you’re looking for something profound and spooky that you can share with your friends back home, I can’t offer you that. I can only tell you what happened, what little I know, and from there we’ll take up the thread together.

    This thing … this, whatever it is, I don’t even think you could call it a man … I started seeing it about a year before my wife died. It scared the hell out of me the first time, when it walked into our bedroom, slow and smooth like it belonged. I guess it was about three in the morning, one of those times when you wake up and feel so exhausted you don’t even want to look at the clock. Because no matter how much time you have left to sleep, it won’t feel like near enough.

    When it walked in, this tall, thin man-shaped thing that looked like it was made of shadows, a jolt of adrenaline-laced fear shot through my body. My wife, Ellie, slept peacefully beside me, oblivious to the intruder. I both envied and hated her for that, as if somehow she had chosen for me to be the one who was awake and watchful and terrified.

    This thing, this Shadow Man, walked to the foot of the bed and seemed to consider us for a moment.  In truth, I have no idea. It had no face. How can you know what a shadow is thinking?

    (more…)

  • Whose Woods These Are (Flash Fiction)

    Hank woke up, drenched with sweat, cold from the dying campfire. His slimy body felt slimy, sandwiched within a soaked sleeping bag. For Hank, every morning was a reminder of age. His shoulder ached, jammed into the socket by the bone-dry ground. Hank winced as pain shot through his spine. His muscles played tendon tug-of-war. Hank always lost.

    Hank unzipped the sweat sponge sleeping bag and stood, careful not to surprise his left knee with any quick movements. If the fire died, he would have a lot of cold, cranky cub scouts. He had promised to keep the fire going, lest the dark consume them. The campfire stories were too effective. Already stressed by the lack of Xbox and what terrors may wait in the woods, the lack of a fire might make them snap.

    Hank decided to keep his promise and look for firewood, rather than risk playing the role of piked pig’s head in a live rendition of Lord of the Flies. He rubbed his eyes. His tears pushed away the fogged protein-haze of smoke-dried contacts that felt like scratch-and-sniff stickers on his eyeballs. Hank then noticed he was alone.

    (more…)

  • To Dream of Impossible Dreams (Flash Fiction)

    Miklos had been dreaming of bacon for a solid week before he decided, by God, to do something about it.

    Almost anything could be gotten at Capricorn Station. It was a transport and commerce hub for twelve star systems. Species, races, and cultures of all kinds passed through, for diplomatic or economic exchange, or on their way to somewhere else. Capricorn’s warehouses were stocked with goods from hundreds of planets and outposts, any of which a being could buy, within reason.

    Unfortunately those reasons did not extend to cured, smoked, animal-based lipids in a protein matrix imported, at great expense, from Earth.

    “I’ll have to make my own,” Miklos confided to the only customer in the bar, a shifty-eyed jack-of-all-trades who claimed his name was Anson.

    (more…)