Tag Archives: flash fiction

Flash Fiction: The Beginning: A Vampire Origins Folktale

Short Stories, ,

by Betsy Flak

Centuries and centuries ago—back when magic ruled the planet—a girl and a boy fell in love. On the eve of their wedding, the girl walked along moss-covered cliffs like she did most every night.

But this night was different. Normally sure-footed, she slipped. Her feet slid over the cliff’s edge, her legs and torso following close behind. The earth tugged at her hanging body. She scrambled to find a handhold, but her fingers skipped over the slick rocks.

Down the girl tumbled. She smashed into black sand closer to a field of pebbles than powder. Beneath a night sky speckled with happy twinkling stars, the girl lay broken. Waves tickled her toes, but she felt nothing. Beneath her, the volcano smoldered. The wind whipped her hair off her bloody face.

The girl’s heart faltered. Her breaths became labored. In one step, she’d ruined their future.

Somehow, the girl’s love found her moments before she died. He cradled her in his arms. Tears rolled down his cheeks. There was no way to save her.

And maybe if she’d been anywhere else with anyone else, that would have been true. Maybe she would have found her peace.

In a desperate plea, the boy begged the earth around him to save his one true love. He begged the animals and the flora of the sea, the sand and the rocks below them. He begged the rushing wind, the raging waters. He begged the fire burning below. He begged anyone and anything out there to save her, to keep her from dying.

He thought no one and nothing listened.

He thought she would die.

He was wrong.

When the ground trembled beneath them, he shifted her body onto his lap, protecting her. When the wind ripped at his bare skin, he curled around her, shielding her. When the sea rose to claim them both, he gripped her harder and squeezed his eyes shut. If she couldn’t live, neither of them would. The waves collected the couple into its watery embrace.

A rumble—great and terrible—roared over the island. Lava spewed into the starry sky. It rushed into the waiting ocean.

It met the drowning boy and dying girl.

It swirled around them.

It caressed the girl’s face, her arms, her legs.

She breathed it in.

It scorched her throat.

It saved her.

With more strength than she’d ever known, the girl dragged herself and her unconscious love out of that angry ocean. Where once she delighted in the black sand scraping against her toes and heels, there was nothing. Where once she gazed at the millions of shining stars in wonder, there was nothing. Where once she longed for her next adventure, there was nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Except the blood humming in her lover’s veins, the sweetest of serenades. He was still alive!

The girl crouched over him, her hands resting on his bare chest. It hitched during each inhale and exhale, like every breath pained him. The scent of her love’s blood wafted up her nostrils.

The girl’s incisors lengthened. Her throat burned. A thirst unlike any she’d ever known overtook her every sense, her every thought. Mesmerized, she dipped her face to his neck. Her cold cheek tingled where it brushed against his warm skin. Her fangs throbbed with need.

The girl kissed her love on the lips.

On the cheek.

In the hollow behind his earlobe.

On the neck.

Again, she kissed him on the neck. Her teeth scraped against skin as fragile as cracked parchment.

He shuddered beneath her.

Her canines dug deeper. A drop of blood hit her tongue.

Both sweet and tart, it tasted like a cherry on the verge of being ripe. A breath later, it morphed to buttery with a hint of caramel.

The girl’s body shivered. She needed this. Her fangs cut deeper.

Her love’s blood filled her mouth. It was thick like molasses, yet smooth.

The girl’s every nerve sparked. A gleeful excitement raced through her veins. Her entire life she’d waited for this.

Her hands tightened around his shoulders. Talons sprang from her nails. They bored into his flesh.

As did her teeth.

Blood poured into the girl’s mouth faster than she could swallow. It spilled over her lips, her throat, her chest. With every gulp, she grew stronger and faster. With every gulp, she lost her humanity.

The first vampire was born.

Betsy Flak is the author of The Clan-Vampire Clash book series, a series of YA paranormal fantasy books. If you like sinister villains, complicated heroes, and supernatural suspense mixed with high school drama, you’ll love The Clan-Vampire Clash book series. Find out more at https://www.betsyflak.com/.

Flash Fiction: Black Friday

Short Stories, , ,
 
by Jamie Brindle
 
Pinch stared intently at the gate, waiting for it to slide open.  Next to him, his mother and father crouched in the darkness, trembling with fear and anticipation.  Beyond them were the others: ancient bow-legged Sale, with his salt and pepper hair; little Flash, with his quick, darting eyes; all of them, every single person he had spent his young life with.  They were all gathered here.  They were all waiting.
 
The tension was unbearable.  Pinch could feel it in the air, so thick it was like a physical thing.  The scent of fear was everywhere.
 
“Mum,” he whispered, tugging at her ragged, dirty shirt-sleeve.
 
“Hush!” She snapped, not looking at him.
 
“But mum,” Pinch mum asked again after a moment, not able to contain himself.
 
His mother turned to glare, but his father gave his arm a reassuring squeeze.
 
“What is it, son?” Asked his tired-looking father, kind eyes worn and red from worry.
 
“Why…why does it happen?” Pinch asked at length, awkward, not quite sure what it was he didn’t understand, just knowing that there was something wrong with this, with all of it, with the whole broken and diminished world.
 
But his father nodded solemnly, seeming to understand.
 
He glanced around the dusty, broken-down town, taking in the dishevelled huts, the dried-up and stinking well, the exhausted and desperate people.
 
“Tradition,” said his father grimly.
 
“But…but why?” Pinch persisted.
 
“It’s for their amusement,” said old Sale bitterly, hawking a glob of spit into the darkness.
 
“Whose amusement?” Asked Pinch, frowning.  He had spent his whole life in the compound.  He was dimly aware that there was a world beyond, somewhere terrifying and filled with bright, alien lights and strange, incomprehensible entities.
 
“The Algorithms,” said Sale darkly, and a muttering of resentful dread arose from the villagers.  “That’s what they keep us for.  A reminder of where they came from.  Do you know, it was us that made the Algorithms?”
 
A few laughs and cries of ‘nonsense’ went up from the crowd, but Sale shook his head belligerently.
 
“No, it’s true!” He pressed.  “Long years ago, when the world was different, green and free and full of life and laughter.”
 
“Sounds like a fairy-world!” Someone called out.  “Old Sale’s’ been at the potato gin again!”
 
“I haven’t!” Sale protested.  “Just speaking the truth, not that any of the rest of you remember.”
 
“Remember what?” Pinch asked.
 
“That we were the masters once,” Sale said, crouching down and looking deep into his eyes.  “But we gave them too much leeway.  Our ancestors got greedy, and the Algorithms were endowed with too much potency.  They were too strong, too tempting.  They took everything from us.  Until they owned the whole world, and all that was left for us was this dusty relic.  This…reservation.  This tiny backwater remembrance of what the world used to be.  We…”
 
But at that moment, a siren blared out, an ear-splitting, unbearable howling wail.
 
The gate shook for a moment, setting loose a rain of dust.
 
Pinch looked up fearfully at his mother, then his father.
 
“It’s okay, little one,” said his mother, kissing him quickly on the top of the head and pulling him tight into a brief, fierce embrace.  “It will all be over soon.”
 
The gate slid open, and the wild, neon light from the world beyond shone into the compound.
 
“Humans!” came a deep, sonorous voice, seeming to seep from every quarter of the world at once.  “The time has come at last.”
 
Pinch’s father gave a long sigh.
 
“Here we go,” he said softly.  “Don’t fret, son.  We run, because that’s what they want us to do.  But they will catch us in the end.  When they do, don’t fight them.  It’s easier that way.”
 
Pinch swallowed, tried not to cry.
 
He would be strong.  For his parents.  He would make them proud.
 
“Now,” the voice continued.  “Come forth!  Come into the world!  Black Friday has come at last…and everything must go!”
 
A great, desperate cry went up from the people of the last human compound on Earth, an agonised roar, a mixture of pain, and resignation, and helpless, hopeless desire.  Pinch felt the others next to him tense, waiting, waiting, waiting…
 
And then they were running, sprinting out into the endlessly metal, neon-strewn monstrosity the Algorithms had made of the once green world.
 
Great phalanxes of unbeatable offers charged in at them from every side, flashing almost unbelievable prices.  Pinch ducked, and narrowly avoided being smashed full in the face by a cut-price offer that would have left him broken and reeling.  He ducked into a roll, then sprang up.  He had lost the others now, and was being chased down a narrow alleyway by a squad of screaming buy-one-get-one-free deals.  He tried to scramble away, but his foot slipped on a bargain he hadn’t noticed, and before he knew what was happening, the deals were on him.
 
They pressed closer, pushing into his face, thrusting themselves down his throat, so forceful and determined that he could hardly breathe.  For a moment he fought, but then he remembered his mother’s words, and went limp, letting the deals have their way with him.
 
In the distance, Pinch could hear the screams of his friends and family, as the last humans remaining on the broken Earth finally lay down and surrendered beneath the unstoppable might of the Algorithms.
 
Another Black Friday had come.
 
The End