Warped – A 100 Word Story

Yup, it’s flash fiction time again!

As always, this is based around Laurence Simon’s weekly challenge for the 100 word-stories podcast. It’s a great exercise for writers – writing a good drabble is a lot harder than it appears, but is still a "small" task so you can get around that idea of it being too much work. And then you get a random (and often bizarre) writing prompt to shoehorn you out of writer’s block! Go read the rules for the Weekly Challenge and participate! Heck, Chris the Nuclear Kid does when he remembers to (and I can drag him away from video games)!

The player below should have the audio for this week; if it doesn’t, you can find the audio here to download. You can also read and hear the rest of the entries (and vote for your favorites) at the 100 Word Stories podcast site!

Musical credits are: "Sawmill" by Gurdonark and "Window like" by echoed

As I note in the audio, this is another drabble that takes place in the universe (multiverse?) of the Crimson Pact anthology. You can find out more about the Crimson Pact and pick up the novel-length anthology at https://theCrimsonPact.com It was also recorded LIVE at Millennicon just before Elaine Blose and Sarah Hans read parts of their stories in the first volume of The Crimson Pact.

Don't Close Your EyesI take a handful of night and pull.

The darkness stretches, warps, deforms around me. The empty dark shifts to the dark of sweaters, coats, and stinking gym shoes.

Outside the closet door, Marcus and Josephine are putting their son to bed. They are older than I remember. Happier, after retiring years ago. After they stopped hunting my kind. My offspring.

Their son cries – he knows I’m here in the closet again. They laugh, tell him that I don’t exist, and go downstairs.

The demon hunters’ son cries alone in his bed.

I hush him with one long claw.