Tag: Furious Fiction

FuriousFiction for January 2021, ringing in a new year! This was a strange one, but I had fun writing it. Please enjoy!

The prompt and specifics are as follows:

• Your story must begin at sunrise.
• You must use the following words somewhere in your story: SIGNATURE, PATIENT, BICYCLE.
• Your story must include a character who has to make a CHOICE.

We begin with a sunrise. The class gathers around the small window and stares in silent rapture as the darkness is slowly leeched away into brilliant reds and oranges and pinks. The ocean is still, only slight waves oscillating and sending winks of colour towards us. As the sun crests over the horizon, I instruct the children to put on the tinted lenses they’d been given. They watch, breathless, frozen in wonder as the sky lightens and crystalises into a clear blue.

Knowing that the show is over, I put on my widest smile and say, “Okay, kids, time to come away from the window.”

“Just a bit longer,” pleads Tom, the most outspoken of the gathered children. The others nod in agreement, all eyes fixed on the black shadows of birds that are now flapping serenely past the scene. Unlike us, they are leisurely, with nowhere they need to be.

My smile becomes strained at the corners. “Tell you what, if you still want to see later then we can come back, okay?”

This compromise seems to satisfy them, because they trail off to the next window with their eyes still lingering on the morning sky they’re leaving behind.

I press a button and the window shutter rises, revealing a different scene. The ocean here is rough: tall waves cresting and crashing onto golden sand. Dangling palm fronds sway and clatter together. The children, thankfully, are just as mesmerised by this scene, flinching back and gasping when each wave breaks upon the beach.

“Where do they go?” asks Paula, my favourite student.

“Back to the ocean,” I say. “The water was always part of the sea, it just wanted to visit land for a bit.”

Suddenly, surprisingly, something glides along the scene. It’s an alien silhouette, all angles and curves in all the wrong places. Like the birds, its pace is slow and sedate, unhurried.

The children are horrified. Most let out some sort of gasping scream, recoiling. Tom, in direct contrast, leans forward, eyes wide and fascinated. I am not surprised when he turns to me and asks, “What’s that?”

Knowing what I’ve been instructed to say, I choose to be honest instead. “A person on a bicycle,” I say patiently. Leaning forward I point out the various forms. “That’s their leg, their arm, their head. These are wheels in a frame, see? In olden times it was a way to get around quickly.”

“Can I have one?” Tom asks.

“No, sorry.” I push the button again and the screen flickers out before the shutter swings closed again. “There’s no room here.”

Tom lets out his signature disappointed sigh. The rest of the children exchange relieved glances. Paula offers, “Can we go back to the sun please?”

I agree. As the kids crowd around the first screen, watching the sun rise again, I look out of the window. Staring into the empty blackness of space that surrounds the ship that our forefathers sent off into the unknown depths.

FuriousFiction for December 2020, the last of the year! I didn’t place for this month, but am still very proud of the story I wrote. Please enjoy!

The prompt and specifics are as follows:

• Your story must include a GIFT of some kind.
• Your story’s first sentence must contain only THREE words.
• You must use the following words somewhere in your story: PALM, MATCH, ROSE.

I’m very nervous.

More nervous than I really should be. The anaesthetist can tell, I think, because her eyes crinkle due to what I assume is a reassuring smile behind her mask. Although, it could equally well be a grimace, I suppose. 

“You won’t feel a thing,” she says. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Thanks.” I flash a thumbs up and try to put the horror stories of waking up, paralysed but completely alert, from an anaesthetic from my mind. 

I do not succeed.

When they wheel me into theatre, I’m overwhelmed again by how white and bright and cold it is. There’s more people in here than I think is strictly necessary and I’m suddenly acutely aware of the gaping slit in the back of my hospital gown. If I sat up in this bed now, my crack would be completely visible to everyone. I debate wiggling the edges of the gown together, when the anaesthetic nurse asks me to do exactly that. I shuffle over to the other bed with heat in the cheeks of my face and a cool breeze on the cheeks of my arse.

The operating bed is deeply uncomfortable, slightly too narrow for me to feel fully secure. I grit my teeth as the anaesthetist jabs a thin needle into my hand—kindly ignoring my sweaty palm—-and secures the cannula without a drop of blood spilled.

“See you in a bit,” she says, her eyes crinkling again, and then warmth rushes up my arm and everything goes black.

—

When I wake up my hip is burning, a blossom of heat opening delicate petals of pain in my flesh. Shifting my leg brings a sharp spike into the arch of my pelvis. Thorns on the rose stabbing deep. I groan softly, and a nurse is there immediately with a cool glass of ice chips sweating in his hand.

“Go slow,” he says in a low, soothing voice. A spoon slips the ice into my mouth where it immediately melts on the dry heat of my tongue. “How are you feeling?”

“Hurts,” I say. The word seems to stick on my tongue, and I swallow hard. “I did okay?”

“Everything went really well.” He smiles at me. “You did a really good thing today.”

I give a weak thumbs up and drift back into the darkness for a while. 

—

When I’m recovered, they give me the chance to see the gift recipient. I didn’t know before, just got the call that I had matched with someone and was needed at the hospital in the morning. I had been nervous, of course, but I hadn’t hesitated to go down when they’d given me the time of admission.

Now, I step up to the window and wave a little awkwardly at the little girl sitting in bed on the other side. She has a cannula in her hand and tears on her cheeks and I am so grateful that I became a bone marrow donor.

FuriousFiction for November. This story made it to the long listed entries of the month, and I’m very proud! The prompt and specifics are as follows:

• Each story had to take place at a HOTEL.
• Each story had to include a PHOTOGRAPH.
• And finally, each story had to include the following ‘blue’ inspired words: COLLAR, GLOOMY, POLICE, RHYTHM, SAPPHIRE.

It was a grimy little hotel. The type you’d expect in one of those dark, overly saturated superhero movies. Gritty realism. The rooms were small, with stained, peeling wallpaper and stains leaking through the ceiling. The sort of place I could imagine being shot. Or stabbed. Or strangled.

One of those violent ’s’ deaths.

The gloomy darkness outside was shattered by the pulsing lights of a police car. Ruby and sapphire bands dancing over the room in a regular rhythm. Certainly a familiar enough sight here. A drug bust maybe. Or a murder. Maybe just a welfare check, called by the receptionist. Or just a routine cruise by to break up any nefarious activity.

If I hadn’t been unable to sleep, no doubt the flashing lights would have woken me. As it was, I sat on the lumpy mattress and stared at the closed door to the bathroom. There was light leaking from around the frame, a flickering yellow light from an ancient, dirty fluorescent tube.

Lex couldn’t sleep in new places.

And so I couldn’t sleep in new places.

Soon, though, hopefully that would change. 

I checked my watch. Almost six. Soon the sun would start to rise and we could actually achieve what we’d come here to. 

My phone buzzed. Three words. “She can’t sleep.”

I smiled and typed back a response. “Same here.”

A few seconds before the reply came through. “Can I bring her over now?”

I tapped my phone against my chin for a second. Staring at the flickering light from the bathroom. My eventual response was an emoji.

While I waited, I busied myself around the room. Made the bed again, moved the overnight bags we’d packed and then not touched from the floor onto the hotel desk. I checked the photo again, wondering if she would really look that way, then waited by the window and picked at the painted windowsill.

In the end, I heard them before I saw them. The excited skittering was audible when they reached the top of the staircase and headed down the concrete path outside.

I threw the door open and the terrier sprinted inside. Brindle spots, sparkling eyes, lolling tongue and furiously wagging tail. The trainer snapped his fingers and the dog sat obediently. Whole body wiggling with excitement.

“Lex,” I called, resisting the urge to kneel down. “Daisy’s here.”

The bathroom door opened a crack. Huge, dark eyes peeked around. My daughter crept from the bathroom. Pointedly ignoring the gaze of myself or the trainer. Her eyes fixed on the dog we’d travelled across the state to pick up.

Daisy’s tail still wagged excitedly, but she sat calm and still as Lex approached and snapped the collar she’d been holding the whole time around her neck.

“Free,” the trainer said, and Daisy stood and immediately wiggled her way into Lex’s arms, lapping happily at her face. For the first time in too long, my daughter smiled totally unselfconsciously and hugged her new support dog tight.