The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: flash fiction

  • Missing Days

    I sat at the edge of the forest in a pile of torn clothing and howled. Long moments of silence answered my call and then, in the distance, I heard a response. I felt heat rush through my body, burning away the foggy haze that surrounded me since awakening.  A sense of belonging settled over me.

    The ground melted away beneath me as I ran deeper into the forest as I followed a familiar scent on the wind. I could catch faint whiffs of them on passing branches. I flung my head back and howled. The response came much quicker this time. My stride lengthened.

    Excited yips greeted me as I came into the clearing outside a den. Home, a whisper came from the back of my brain. Tiny pups slammed into my sides, all teeth and claws and fur. Mine. (more…)

  • The Cow of Cthulhu

    On the morning of the unfathomable event, I, Robert Joseph Edgerton III, was awaken from a fitful slumber by a heavy knock upon my bed chamber door.

    “Bobby Joe,” my mother said. “You’d best get out of that bed and get to breakfast. Those chores ain’t gonna to do themselves.”

    I wiped a crust of sleep from the corner of my eye. My faithful feline companion Applejack stretched and then leapt from my feather-stuffed mattress. Applejack and I had spent my sleeping hours exploring the Dreamlands city of Ulthar, using sleep techniques promoted by my renowned professors. My feline guide had escorted me on a tour of the legendary village where no man may kill a cat. (more…)

  • The Cat Came Back

    My cell phone rang at two minutes of four in the morning. I swiped my thumb across the green ‘answer’ button, put the phone to my ear and grunted.
    “Meow?” came the reply. It was my cat.
    “Waffles?” I cleared my throat and sat up. I hadn’t heard from my cat in two months.
    “Meow.” She sounded sad and exhausted and I could guess why. She’d gotten herself a job and apparently she was—predictably—in over her head.
    “You’re not going to try to tough it out?” It was kind of cruel of me to string her along. We both knew she couldn’t handle this.
    “Meow.” It was a long, drawn out meow. Almost like back in the days when she still lived with me and her food bowl wasn’t entirely full and she desperately needed me to cover the entire bottom of the dish with kibble.
    “Okay, okay. I’ll be there by tomorrow.” I hung up. I hadn’t said ‘I told you so.’
    *** (more…)

  • The Smell of Christmas

    The coffee shop smelled like Christmas when I walked in—rotten eggnog, burnt pie, and BO. I pinched the bridge of my nose, of all the days he chose to stop living up to my expectations, it was on the day that more than anything I needed to guzzle the world’s largest coffee—as advertised on the chalk signboard—in peace.

    I drew in a deep breath—through my mouth, because there are some smells you’d rather not be in your nose—and winded my way through the overcrowded tables to one in the back corner populated by a man in a stained crimson hoodie with the hood pulled up over a baseball cap.

    He grunted and pushed one of the cups of coffee closer to me. I watched as it sloshed over the sides of the cup and dribbled onto the table. I clasped my hands in front of me on the table and leaned forward. “What’s this all about?”

    “It’s good to see you, Sam,” he grunted. “Thanks for coming out on such short notice.”

    “Sure. Whatever. Are you in trouble?”

    “Why would you think that?”

    “Because the only reasons you’ve ever called me in the past decade is because you needed something.” I tried not to breathe in too deeply in his presence.

    “Fine. I was trying to be… nevermind. I finally found it.” He hauled a box out of his rank backpack and dropped it on the table. He’d wrapped it in dark green paper with snowmen and Santa hats all over it. Plaid ribbon wrapped about it several times and finished in an oversized, lopsided bow.”

    “Found what?”

    “It.” He gestured at the box. “It’s in there.” (more…)

  • Birdie

    Birdie and her family left their home after the great cooling came. Food was scarce and they hadn’t been fed in so long. The light was fading. Once bright and white, it had turned a golden color that plants couldn’t seem to tolerate. Their leaves changed to a sickly yellow color and fell. The days were getting shorter. Soon there would be no light left at all.

    It wasn’t so much a decision to leave as, well, one day some of them started walking. The rest followed and they didn’t see any good reason to go back. There was no one around to stop them.

    They didn’t stop until they came to a great field of corn. The stalks grew taller than Birdie’s head. She looked up at the fading light through their leaves. It was the first time she’d seen green in what felt like forever. The leaves here were already tinged with yellow, though, and turning brown at the tips. Some of the stalks had fallen to the ground under the weight of the ripe cobs. It was the first food they’d seen since leaving home and her brothers and sisters stopped to gorge themselves. (more…)

  • Glitterbomb!!

    I finally found the exit. Someone had covered it in glitter. I hung back for a moment, not trusting the glittery death trap hanging from the ceiling. Surely that could not be up to fire code. I peered at it through the well lit room. Was that red glitter forming the words? Or was it actually light shining through the silver glittering covering the rest of the sign.

    Someone rushed past me. I watched as she shoved open the emergency exit door. Instead of an alarm blaring signaling that somebody dared to open the door without the fire alarms screeching above, a cloud of glitter descended upon the hapless individual.

    I took a step back, wondering if the glitter dump was a one-time thing or if every person fleeing the untoward gathering would receive the same fate. I ducked behind a ficus as another party-goer ran down the hall, approaching the exit sign. Did they somehow find an unlimited source of glitter, I wondered as I watched the woman get doused in sparkles. (more…)

  • Love Potion No. 999

    In this economy you’ve got to take the jobs you can get.

    When I found out a couple of months ago that my new next-door neighbors weren’t just a bunch of loud, inconsiderate dirtbags, they were loud, inconsiderate dirtbags running an interdimensional speakeasy, I offered to tend bar.

    Drunks are drunks, right? It can’t be worse than wrangling frat boys. And say what you want about your average alien menace from outer space, they always tip well.

    I was getting my set-up ready for a hard night of drinking when Djik-lik, my manager, came bustling in. Djik-lik is a pretty good guy, all in all. I’ve certainly worked for worse.

    “Jake,” he clicked, “We have a special request. General K’ll’t’rsk has come to celebrate his great victory over the Ooooooom armies this cycle. He says that tens of thousands of Ooooooom perished in a single battle.”

    “He must be very proud.”

    “He is. He has heard of your people’s ‘cocktails’ and insists on something very special for his celebrations.”

    “Ok. What’s this General K’ll’t’rsk,” a bitch to say, but I was sure with practice I’d get it, “like to drink? We have Jello shots, but they won’t be ready for another hour.”

    “He wants it strong, he wants it fast, he wants it blue to celebrate the blue sunshine of Pokrath, the world he has just subjugated.”

    “How much is he willing to pay?”

    “Like all T’rr’k, he’s a cheap bastard.”

    “Gotcha.”

    So I broke out the Blue Curacao and tequila, mixed up a couple of pitchers of “Sunset Over Pokrath,” and sent it on over. (more…)

  • The 17-Year Harvest

    The old farmhouse survived the first alien harvest. The world watched while the ships settled into orbit 17 years ago. There was no communication, never any communication. And the world waited to see whether they came in peace. The house in Kansas wasn’t home to any great scientist or military general. Just a farmer who’d grown up with a wide view of the stars.

    The old farmhouse table was covered in astronomy books and tabloid clippings of the aliens. He picked his little girl up with his big, sunburned hands. Katie laughed and settled into his lap. From here, she surveyed the table like a little princess in a castle tower.

    “Icky,” she declared, waving one of the pictures around in her little, chubby hand.

    He laughed at her and his laugh was warm. It was so deep that it shook the little girl on his knee. That laugh, there in his lap, made her feel safe. Nothing could ever harm her there.

    “Not icky,” he said. “I think they’re actually quite pretty. I know they look like bugs, but the scientists on the news think they’re really just like men once you get past their funny costumes.”

    “Icky,” she repeated matter-of-factly, as though that was the definitive word on the subject.

    He laughed again and took the picture away from her.

    “I’m sure it seems that way now,” he said in that manner of patient fathers everywhere. “But you’ll grow up in a world full of aliens. How great will that be? And they’ll seem perfectly normal to you by the time you grow up.”

    She looked into his face with a five-year-old’s certainty that he was wrong. But some glimmer of childlike wonder in his eyes stopped her from saying anything.

    “Just think of the things they’ll be able to tell us once we learn to communicate with them,” he said.

    But that was before. Before the aliens stripped the world of whatever food and resources they could carry off in their ships. Before they left the cities in darkness and ruin and the remaining people in almost perpetual hunger. (more…)

  • The Lonely Ghost Meets the Hungry Ghost

    Holidays were the ghost’s favorite times. The dining room was vacant and quiet throughout most of the year, with occasional visits when the silver was polished or something needed temporary storage. But during the holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas especially, the humans visited the ghost in her lonely room.

    She had been there as long as she could remember. She didn’t even remember how she had died, or why she was tied to the dining room of all places. But there she was anchored, doomed to stay within the perimeter for all time.

    Other ghosts flitted through from time to time. Just blips for only a moment, usually. Some stayed longer, but could never stay forever. Those who were doomed to wander must always wander, just as she must always stay in the dining room. (more…)

  • Death of Underwood

    “Grandma? I thought you weren’t going to come down for his birthday.” Alexandra Underwood placed her school books down tentatively on the table. Grandma Jean’s generous curves were always dressed in pale pastels and heavily sprinkled with jewelry. There was once a time that Alex had thought her grandmother was the living embodiment of a cupcake.

    “Sit down, Alexandra.” Jean’s rings tinkled softly as she patted the table next to her. Her tone wasn’t especially grave, nor were her words overly alarming, but Alexandra recognised those pinched eyes and thinned lips.

    No, not today. This day is cursed enough without more bad news. She sat heavily in the decorative chair in the beautiful dining room her mother had decorated with fanciful china, lace curtains, and a delicate curlicue border.

    “Is it dad?” Alex swallowed against the cotton lining her throat. (more…)