Flash Fiction Friday 2022 – Week 36
Flash Fiction Friday continues in 2022. New pieces appear every Friday on my Patreon throughout the year. The minimum pledge to read them before anyone else is $3 per month. Find out what they’re all about and read some excerpts from the latest update in this post.
Excerpts
My Neighbor is a Mind Controller
Hello. I have a secret to tell you. Whether you choose to believe in it or not, is entirely up to you but I hope you do. I wouldn’t be risking myself sharing this if it weren’t absolutely true, so please keep an open mind, okay?
Thank you. So, here’s the thing: my neighbor is a mind-controller. Yes, you read that correctly. While she looks like your typical suburban housewife that loves to bake cookies for her friends while she waits for her man to come home, she’s actually a vixen in disguise that plays with everyone’s thoughts when they least expect it and forces people to do her bidding. I’ve seen it happen countless times already and I fear that, sooner or later, she’ll come for me, too. Please! You need to be prepared in case you run into her. I’ll tell you everything I can about her now.
(…)
The Day Ethel Jones Died
The day Ethel Jones died started as any other day in her otherwise monotonous existence. She woke up at precisely 5:45 am, got up to take a shower and put on some vanilla-looking clothes, then headed downstairs to have her usual breakfast comprising two slices of white bread with peach jam and a glass of orange juice. After that, she ran to the nearest train station to begin her almost one-hour long commute to her supermarket job. She sat at the back of the last cart, leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes to get a few more minutes of rest before the grind welcomed her again. Had everything gone according to the plan, she would have woken up just as the vehicle was approaching her destination, but she never did.
The de-railing took the lives of sixty-one passengers, and injured another twenty, seven of which children between the ages of six and eight, but she was the only one whose body wasn’t found on the scene. A couple of weeks after the disaster, Ethel opened her eyes inside a hexagonal glass tank, floating in a transparent substance too thick to be water. A pair of vitreous blue eyes observed her from outside the protective case. They belonged to a middle-aged man with bushy eyebrows and a thick gray mustache who seemed too proud of his accomplishments for her own liking. The first words he said to her were:
“Welcome back, Ethel. How are you today?”
(…)
There Are No Such Things as Curses
Rebecca’s back was covered in pustulent blisters that exuded the most horrible smell imaginable. As for what had caused them, no one could say.
“Well, Dr.?” the early thirties History teacher asked, biting her lower lip.
“The mystery remains,” Dr. Hughes replied, tapping the chart in her hands with the tip of her ballpoint pen. Rebecca was the last patient of the day and quite an uncanny one. “All test results came back negative, and there’s nothing abnormal in your bloodstream that could justify such lesions. I found no traces of exposure to any dangerous chemicals either, so my best guess at the moment is that the origin is somewhat psychological.”
“Psychological? You can’t be possibly suggesting this is all in my head, right? The wounds are real, I can feel them expanding as I breathe.”
“I understand, but mind and body are connected in ways we still haven’t been able to explain. Sometimes, stressful experiences trigger the strangest side effects and that could very well be what’s affecting you right now. Did you experience something like that lately?”
(…)
Thirty-Three
Claudia struggled against the leather restraints pinning her against the dark dungeon’s wall, trying to break free and escape a fate worse than death. Above her head, a mechanical female voice was counting backwards from 10 to 1.
“10”
The synthesized tone was coming from a set of camouflaged speakers horizontally aligned but the sound penetrated the core of her being. Each number was a death sentence waiting to happen. When the last one came to be, she would cease to exist as an individual.
“9”
“You will not have me, you hear?” she said to her captor who remained as invisible after the thirtieth day as she was during the first. All she knew is that she was indeed a woman, and that she had a bit of a lisp. She wasn’t her first prisoner and was unlikely to be her last unless she fled her torment and had the authorities rain hell down on her.
“8”
(…)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/71761782
If everything you’ve read so far intrigues you and you want to know more, head over to my Patreon page and become Spell… B-O-U-N-D, too.
Should you decide to join this cause, your support will help make sure this site thrives and that more and more content is produced for you on a daily basis. Thanks.
