Four-Story Friday
Sci-fi/Horror/Speculative fiction - Four short story concepts: two created without a plot, and two with a plot.
These are four story ideas I had this week that I decided to try out. Two were not plotted at all and two were plotted (in my head at least). Can you guess which ones are which?
⚠️Content warning1
The Woods
Knives and forks and spoons rattled in the drawers. She moved on to the next drawer in the kitchen, then the next. She had no idea what she was looking for or what she planned to do, but she was hoping for inspiration. Pull, clang, clatter, slam the drawer shut.
In the junk drawer, she found batteries, thumb tacks, rubber bands, random change, a lint roller—Fuck! I need something!—old appliance manuals, spare keys, extra toothbrushes. Nothing sparked an idea.
Under the sink: dish detergent, sponges, spray bottles. Next drawer: rolling pin, grater, cutting boards, metal skewer—This might work. Long and thin and most importantly, metal.
She took the skewer into the garage and looked around. Tools: a lathe, a saw, hammers, screwdrivers. Then she spotted it: the outlet. She looked down at the skewer then up at the outlet. This will work.
In went the skewer, BANG went the outlet, ZIP went the electricity through the water in her body. There it was—the pathway opened up again. She followed it and awoke in the same field as the last two times.
Tall grass stretched far and wide in front of her. At the end of the field was the tree line. She took two steps and felt the wet grass brush against her hands and hips and legs. Based on what she experienced during the last two visits, she only had about five extra seconds to get as far as she could—fifteen total. She set off at a sprint, counting between breaths.
The trees grew closer: five. She pumped her legs harder, dug her toes into the earth, and grit her teeth. Looming trees and the darkness in between: ten.
Almost there.
She felt the pull back to the other place.
I need to know what’s in those woods.
A shadow crossed in front of a tree trunk. She slid to a stop. Someone else? Fifteen.
WHOOSH. POP!
Air forced its way into her lungs. Her heart slammed against her ribcage. The cold garage floor stung her skin through her shirt. She lifted her hands and assessed her blackened fingertips. They would heal, but she’d still have to hide them.
He hadn’t believed her when she’d told him she knew a way out. He hadn’t believed that she could go and come back.
The shadow in the trees scratched the back of her mind. A chill coursed through her burnt veins. She had never seen any hints of other people in that field; there hadn’t even been the sounds of birds chirping or insects buzzing. Something had moved in the trees, though, and perhaps whatever it was had the answers she sought.
From the other side of the closed garage door, she heard the wheels of his car as he pulled into the driveway. She jumped up, ignoring the brittle feeling in her eyeballs, and ran inside, up the stairs and into the bathroom. She turned on the shower, heated all the way up, and stepped in. Water cascaded down her head and down her still-clothed body. Steam cured the dry feeling in her nose and mouth.
The Devil’s Blue
The apartment floor was hidden beneath brightly colored canvases in various sizes. Bright yellow, deep teal, hot pink. Paintings of birds, fruit, flowers, and sorrowful faces. She stood over them, holding a jar of process blue paint in one hand and a wide, hog-bristle paintbrush in the other. It was time to say goodbye.
He was the devil. He was a man who sat atop the tallest building on the street and dangled his legs over the edge. He laughed maniacally, sang songs, yelled into the evening. His joy was horror for other people. The cops came. They looked at her standing several feet from him. They didn’t do anything. They didn’t save her. He was the devil, after all. What could they do? He waved them away and they left.
A month later, he fell from a different building in the middle of the night. He walked away without a scratch and faked some bruised ribs when he went into the hospital. She answered a phone call from his brother the next day.
“Is this Eleanor? He wanted me to tell you he’s in the hospital.”
A sizzling sound came through the speaker. A cleared throat.
“He’s in bad shape. Thought you should know.”
He showed up at her apartment two days later, thin, pale, but with lively eyes. He held out his arms and when she didn’t hug him, he pouted comically.
“But you knew I’d be back. And I knew” —his lips pulled back in a sneer—”you really cared for me.”
She went to bed that night imagining his rag doll body slipping over the edge of the roof and landing on the ground. Every time she replayed it, his head smashed into something new. In her mind, the blood seeped slowly from his cracked skull, and he was dead and everyone was free.
But now she belonged to him and had to leave the life she built by herself to go away, somewhere far. She was the devil’s property.
The gloss of the varnish protected the hours of paint strokes beneath—hours she’d spent in freedom. That freedom was destroyed now, and so must the paintings be. She never wanted to remember herself as she had been. Better to let that die.
Blue paint, in a shade she detested, dripped from the brush. The loaded bristles came down, spread the foul color, covered all the beauty she’d created, for the devil will have no beauty in his home that he wouldn’t eventually consume and she would not let him have these.
Layer upon layer of blue drowned out the petals, eyes, lips, hands, integument, succulent meat, feathers, lace, wings, webs. Soon a flat, monotone surface reflected her new self back at her. She smiled, for this was still power—power to ruin, to keep something from him, to deny him the pleasure of denying her. Now she was like him, and this was how she would survive.
The Farm
A black SUV that had once been top-of-the-line pulled up to the farm. Maribel looked up from her desk and squinted through the dust that coated the windowpane. Two heads of long hair appeared, as the women exited the car. Maribel recognized them immediately. She raised an eyebrow in disbelief.
Ah, shit. This should be good.
Voices from outside reached her as she methodically donned her holster and pistol.
Let em think they’re getting away with it.
Her boots thudded on the wood planks of the porch just as the women were taking their boxes of fresh produce from the farmhands.
“Hold up!” Maribel placed her hat on her head and jogged down the steps.
“What’s that, boss?” Sam, the one who’d been with her the longest, a true magician with soil, moved his hand to his own weapon hanging at his hip. Maribel subtly wiggled an index finger as she sauntered over and he relaxed.
“Not these two!” She called to him.
The eyes of the women holding the boxes widened. Both of them shrank back, holding the fruits and vegetables to their chests protectively.
“They’re part of the community, boss. Had the papers to prove it.” Sam wasn’t protesting, only making her aware of the facts.
“Not if I say they aren’t. Take the boxes back.”
Sam nodded and the two farmhands stepped forward to grab the boxes. One of the women leveled an angry glare on Maribel. The other looked about to cry.
“Trust me, Sam. We don’t want these two.”
Sam whistled low and long and studied the two women with a look of amused pity on his face. Maribel never turned anyone away, preferring to take their weapons from them in exchange for food.
She approached, hand resting on her gun. The tow-headed women met her gaze. She adjusted her hat, looked out over the fields of crops they’d first turned four years ago, then settled her gaze on them once again.
“You both know I run this operation. What are you doing here?”
“We’re part of the community,” the one with a mean mug spoke up.
“You’re part of the problem.” A vein began to throb in Maribel’s neck. She worked hard to control her breathing. The hollow scrape of leather on metal and the subsequent click of the pistol’s hammer spoke for itself.
“Way I see it, you both can eat shit for all I care. Come back and I’ll shoot you.”
This was the cue for the woman who was already near tears to burst into sobs. She turned and walked back to the car, hugging herself.
The other pointed at Maribel and snarled, “We have children. You’re a monster.”
Maribel raised her gun and aimed it at the woman’s heart.
“Git.”
The woman lowered her finger and left, dust clouds lifting around her designer boots.
“They really that bad?” Sam stood next to her. They watched the SUV back up and drive away. Maribel lowered her gun.
“Worse than you can imagine.”
Merits
The physician holds a flimsy white ruler up to my nose. He squints, writes down a number. He moves on to my mouth, measuring my lips. He writes another number down.
Next, he takes a chunk of my hair and rubs it between his fingers.
“Hmm,” he considers. A circle on a scale of 1 to 5 is filled in.
“Open.”
I open my mouth. He looks in with a flashlight and nods. He motions me to lower the gown. With two fingers, he pushes down on my areolas. His eyes flick to mine. I look away.
“Lay down, edge of the table. Keep going, keep going, keep going, okay, stop.”
I spread my legs and the bulbous end of a probe is pushed inside of me. I concentrate on the texture of the ceiling.
After a minute, he says, “Uterus normal.” He’s talking to himself. We are alone in the exam room. “Cervix length typical of non-European genetics.”
My stomach lurches. He removes the probe.
“Okay, sit up.”
I collect the gown around my thighs and scoot back up the table. He says nothing as he scribbles on his notepad. Minutes pass. I begin to shiver under the paper gown.
Finally, he swivels on his tiny-wheeled stool. His slacks stretch under the strain of his parted legs. He pushes his glasses up and holds a slip of paper out to me. I take it.
“Based on your 52% European DNA, and you being born in the United States to one parent also born here, you qualified for 86 merits, which would have kept you in the clear for about nine months of the year.”
His jaw goes slack, his mouth opens, he leans in, and uses one thick, stumpy finger to point at a number circled twice. The paper shakes with his contact.
“Now this is your overall Purity Score. You can see that it is low. This will cause your merits to depreciate at a slightly higher rate—about 0.8%. That gives you only about six months.”
He sees my face and is quick to comfort me. His calloused hand squeezes my bare shoulder.
“Oh, don’t worry, yet. Your husband’s Purity Score is the highest it can get. He can work overtime to gain merits through his employer on top of the credit he’ll receive every year. He has a good job, yes?”
I nod.
He smiles and nods back at me.
“See? You have nothing to worry about. But”—he looks at me over his glasses—“only illegals with 180 yearly merits after depreciation are allowed to procreate. So, please return in two weeks for your sterilization procedure. You can make that appointment at the front desk.”
He extends his hand and I shake it. The door of the exam room closes behind him with a soft exhale.
If you’ve ever wanted to tip me for a story, please consider passing it along to my friend, Bea .Ko-fi link below.
self-harm, medical horror
I was holding my breath all through the last one. What a cool and horrifying idea for a story!
The daredevil of microfiction strikes again