List of /fiction writing
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A Dance With The PrinceRead on…
Elle couldn't believe her luck. Here she was dancing with the most dashing prince. They were alone in his grand ballroom. There wasn't even a band, the instruments magically played themselves.
Earlier this week she had gotten a letter from the prince inviting her up to his castle. At first she had thought that her step-sisters were having a laugh at her expense, but the seal turned out to be genuine. The prince hadn't left his castle for five years now and Elle had wondered how she came to the honour of being invited.
Another problem had been choosing what to wear. Her step-mother did not pay her a wage for the chores she did around the house nor was she getting an allowance. When she had asked her sisters for clothes they said: "Here's something for you." and had thrown rags into the mud.
But on the evening of the visit the prince's butler arrived at her house and had given her a yellow dress. She had been surprised to find it fit her perfectly, as if it had been tailormade for her.
When they had arrived in the castle's entrance hall and the butler called for the prince Elle began to worry. Nobody in the village had seen the prince these past five years. Maybe he had been disfigured in a fencing accident? Or simply not getting enough sun had turned him pale and week? But when the prince appeared at the top of the grand staircase all worries immediately had faded.
He was muscular and wore a dark blue suit with gold cufflinks. He had a handsome face with a clean shaven, angular jaw. He had brown hair with some light curls. His blue eyes immediately enchanted her. She was in love.
They had had a few drinks and then he had asked her to dance. And that's what they had been doing for the past hours. She was amazed by the prince's endurance as she could feel her own legs aching and her lungs were begging her to take a break as well, but being held in his arms she felt home and thus willed her muscles to endure another dance, and another.
But then the clock started striking.
"Is it midnight already?!"
"What is it to you? You are a prince."
"No, you don't understand! Go, leave!"
He turned away and ran off to some door.
"Will I see you again?" she called after him.
He did not respond and disappeared behind the door.
Elle decided that he had probably just not heard her question and decided to follow after him. When she reached the door she heard strained moans and coughing on the other side. She carefully opened the door just a tiny bit to peer in.
Elle was shocked at the ghastly sight she beheld and her hands immediately went to cover her mouth to stop her from gasping. She could not make out any details as the only light was the full moon shining out through the opposite window. But she saw the black silhouette of the prince hunched over, holding his stomach and vomiting up some dark liquid.
Then something on his back began to move. Or was it his back that was moving? Lumps grew across his spine. Then they consolidated into spikes that violently shot out from his back and ripped his jacket.
All this had been accompanied by pained cries and belching, but the sound of these now started to change into a terrifying shriek. And when the body shifted position against the moon Elle could understand why. The head had become extended, the neck had widened and the mouth and nose area was no protruding in a point, the eyes had fallen back and the ears had completely vanished. The prince had transformed into some kind of reptilian monstrosity.
Elle couldn't believe what was happening. She stumbled backwards in fear and tripped. She still hadn't mastered high heels.
The shrieking from the other room stopped. Elle rushed to get back on her feet, but in her terror it took her three attempts. By the time she got up the. . . creature was standing in the door, just a couple paces away from her.
Its nostrils widened and narrowed in its breathing. It began slowly circling Elle. She was completely frozen and was only able to slowly turn her head to follow the creature.
Suddenly, it shot forward and its teeth tore into her neck.
Read on… -
A MetamorphosisRead on…
As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into gigantic insect. "Yes! Fuck yes! Hahaha. Finally!" He pumped his little insect legs into the air in triumph. "Fuck work. Fuck the bank— No, fuck the whole capitalist system. I'm out!"
He wiggled out of bed and with a 'Thump' fell to the floor. He was quickly getting the hang of his new body and scuttled towards the door. Crawling on all—six, now—he wasn't big enough to reach the door handle. But Gregor didn't care. He threw his new and, in his view, improved body against the door four times until it gave way and broke open.
His mother, father and sister stood there, in the living room, in stunned silence. They had been awoken by the celebratory shouts and wanted to check on their Gregor.
His sister Grete was the first to break the silence. "Holy shit. I told you guys he'd do it! What a madman. Congratz, Gregor. I'm proud of you, big brother." His mother turned to his father. "I always knew our Gregor was special. That he could achieve anything. And you doubted him." To Gregor she added, "I'm proud of you, son."
"I guess I was wrong, son," spoke now the father, "I saw you toiling away at the bank to pay all of our debts while we were at home. I really believed you to be a spineless pushover. But look at you know, do you even have a spine? Just kidding of course, just a bit of humour from your old pops."
Gregor was deeply moved by all these nice words of affection and appreciation and would have turned red had he any blood in his body. Instead, the hemolymph rushing to his face gave it a hint of yellow.
"Well, I'm outta here. Peace!" he said and scuttled out into the backyard, free of all cares and obligations.
Read on… -
The Abandoned HouseRead on…
It had been 12 minutes since Jane had gone to check on the weird noises coming from the attic.
"We said we'd check on her if she didn't return after ten minutes," offered Felix with some hesitation in his voice. He didn't want to go up there. Actually, from the beginning he had been against the idea of spending the night in this abandoned house. But when Jane and Steph had flirty stressed the pyjama party aspect of the night he had relented.
"Well, are you coming?," asked Steph, more to assure herself than to actually get going. She had stood up and turned on the flashlight of her phone.
"Yup," Felix replied getting to his feed. He grabbed his phone as well and turned on the flashlight as well.
"You go ahead, you're the man," commanded Steph.
Felix gulped, but did not protest. He stepped over the Ouija board careful not to get his polyester pyjama too close to the candles they'd spread across the room.
He made his way towards the hallway and didn't take his eyes off the door frame his white flashlight illuminated.
When he'd reached the door he shone his light both ways to inspect the hallway. A slight draft went through from the cat flap down the corridor to the small round window the other end. It was swirling up dust through the air. A dresser stood against the wall with a couple of drawers half open.
Most notably, the pull down ladder towards the attic was gone. The trap door was closed. Steph must have noticed the same thing as she whispered, "Jane must have closed it after herself."
Felix weakly agreed. He was desperate for any explanation that did not involve a murderer or ghost or any other fourth entity in the house with them.
"Can you reach it?," Steph asked. Felix tried to reach for the cord to open the trap door. He couldn't. He tried a few careful jumps, but the cord eluded him by just a few centimetres. He needed a few steps for a running start. He walked a few steps towards the door and turned around. With a running start of four steps he was able to reach the cord and grabbed it.
The trap door swung open and the ladder unfolded behind Felix who had misjudged his jump and crashed into the drawer. "Fuck!," he exclaimed in pain, immediately regretting the noise he had made. He pulled up his shirt and found big red scratch across his side, but luckily no blood.
"Let's go," urged Steph, clearly uneasy. Felix grit his teeth and began the ascend. It's just an attic, it's just an attic, he repeated in his mind. Finally he reached the top and poked his head through the trap door. He did a three-sixty. He spotted a lot of cardboard boxes and even more dust hanging in the air. No sign of life. No Jane, but also no murderer.
He pulled himself completely up onto the floor and searched the room again with his flashlight while he waited for Steph to make her way up as well. She grabbed his arm and also started pointing her flashlight around the room.
"J-Jane?," he ventured. No response. Steph kept her tight grasp on his sleeve, but he didn't mind. This was freaking him out and it was good to have Steph close. The boxes were stacked high and basically formed walls around them. But in one corner there was a gab and the two slowly inched their way towards it.
Suddenly, there was a strong pull on Felix' arm that through him to the ground while Steph began screaming, "Felix! Felix, something's got my leg!" Felix was pulled across the floor by Steph. He struggled to turn and face her instead of the ceiling. When he finally managed he saw that Steph's bottom half was hanging down the trap door. He had to drop his phone in order to grab onto her arms with both hands. "Felix! Do something!" Steph was screaming in terror. Tears were streaming down her face.
His grip was slipping. Something was pulling her down, away from him. He tried to change his grip and in that moment lost her. She went down the trap door, out of view. The door slammed shut and he could hear her muffled screams below.
He was in total darkness. His mind was racing. The phone! Had the light gone out? Where had it fallen? He suppressed his bodies urge to cry while fumbling around him for his phone. Then he felt something grab him by the leg.
Read on… -
Hello SpringRead on…
It was the first day of spring. And that meant that Tabby Longfoot had to leave her warren. The previous night she had celebrated the coming spring with the whole fluffle of bunnies. There had been carrot cake and music and the little bunnies had put on a play. Admittedly the "play" consisted mostly of them jumping in circles and sometimes into each other, but much fun had been had.
Afterwards, most of the fluffle had gone to their respective homes. Diego and Bonks had stayed, kissing and cuddling on the big swing until they'd fallen asleep. And Mommy Longfoot had stayed to get a head start with the cleaning. She was gathering together the crumbs and fixing the decorations that had come down in the whirlwind of celebration.
Tabby had also stayed. She had hidden in the old stump. She had a big lump in the throat. Not just now that the festivities were over, not now that she could hear the terrifying calls of the owls in the distance. No, from the beginning when old Jollywig Earwag had held his opening speech Tabby had felt terribly lonely and scared.
The worst part had been that she had nobody to talk to about it. It would have been extremely ungrateful to bring down everybody's mood with her feelings, especially when they were doing it all for her. The "Hello Spring"-celebrations weren't for anybody specifically, but over the years it had become custom to especially highlight and celebrate those bunnies of the fluffle that had come of age and would be leaving the next morning.
This year Tabby happened to be the only one. Most of her friends had already left last spring. And of those younger than her she had only befriended a few. And then everybody had been celebrating her! There'd been "Tabby carrot cake", some of the very young bunns had made a floral crown for her, Zippy had been her personal waiter and the play had been titled "The Fearless Tabby Longfoot." She was the centre of it all, laughter and displays of joy all around her.
And all she wanted was to cry. To throw up. To drown herself in the river. Now, sitting alone in the old stump she permitted herself to start slow and began sobbing. It was tough, after a long evening of keeping up a façade, to finally let her guard down. At first there were only a few sniffles. Her throat tightened and the first tears rolled down the grey fur of her cheeks.
Finally she was able to let go. It wasn't dramatic crying, it wasn't loud. But she sobbed, sniffled and cried her heart out. She grieved the friends and family she would leave behind. She grieved the place she would leave behind, the burrows, the river, the trees and the old stump. She cried for a long while until she finally fell asleep exhausted.
When she awoke a couple of hours later she found the community area completely empty. Her mother must've finished cleaning and Diego and Bonks must have also found their way home. The only thing she spotted was a knapsack directly outside the old stump. Mommy Longfoot must have prepared it for her. Tabby briefly checked the contents—some leftover carrot cake and a piece of soap. Then she swung the bag over her shoulder and set off eastwards, towards the rising sun.
Read on… -
The Dead LordRead on…
Detective Sumai locked the door. "Ladies and Gentleman, we've had a lot of excitement this evening, but I have figured it out. The murderer is in this room. But who is it? Each and every one of us had a motive to kill Lord Winslet.
The obvious suspect would of course be the wife, Lady Winslet. Earlier today I noticed some white chips of paint under her fingernails. At first, I thought nothing of it, but then I saw the chessboard in the master bedroom. Black had won. A chess match turned deadly? Mayhaps.
But let's turn our attention towards the next suspect, the gardener. While taking a leak at the back of the shed earlier, I noticed that for the past six weeks the Lord had been buying cheaper soil than before. Surely that was punishment for the shoddy work the gardener had done on the hedge around the back terrace. The gardener got angry and stabbed the lord with his garden clippers.
Could be. But maybe the fact that the lord wasn't stabbed but shot tells a different story.
The butler has resented Lord Winslet for a while now. You are probably wondering how I know that. Well, let me enlighten you. When I arrived earlier this evening and the butler took my coat I noticed him pulling on it a bit too hard for my liking. This leads me to conclude that the butler is letting his frustration shine through in the subpar butlering he's doing.
Or maybe it was the worker that installed the windows in the mansion's guess bedroom. I noticed a very slight draft there. Not enough to tip off a regular person, but only one as observant as myself. The original goal surely must have been to get Lord Winslet to catch a cold from the draft and die from that illness. When this turned out to be a slow process which relied on a lot of chance—such as cold weather and the lord spending lots of time in the guest bedroom—you decided to hasten things along with a bullet to the temple.
And I don't want anyone to think I'm not being rigorous in my work, so let's talk about my motives. Everyone knows Lord Winslet and I go way back. He loved to make fun about my excellent observation skills when he thought I wouldn't hear him. In a letter sent to his son he accused me of being nosy. And he called me a nitpicky complainer. To which I would reply that being nitpicky does already kind of imply being a complainer and that I don't agree with such a characterization of myself. Would I kill over it? Maybe. But I didn't.
Lastly, Lord Winslet himself. Did he have motive for a suicide? I'd argue that the letter provides reason. There's an embarrassing amount of blood on here. And the text itself reads pretty cringe as well. Listen to this:
Oh God. It's that Sumai guy again. Why does he always come visit? He just complains about drafts in the house, the way the butler does his work, imperfect hedges, and he calls my wife's nails unclean. I have also seen him open my mail. He's making my life hell and he keeps ignoring the restraining order I put on him. I see no other way out of this. Sorry to my wife and son. I know you two understand.
Yikes."
On "The Dead Lord" | 2023-11-09
I wrote this story on my phone late in bed last night (and am writing this journal the next morning). I want to try out a breadth of genres with this project and landed on "mystery" for this story. It's still a parody of the genre and not a real attempt. Maybe I should challenge myself to write something without a punchline or twist at the end.
The joke of this story also changed a couple of times until it settled on an obnoxious detective. I had the idea of the presented motives becoming increasingly strenuous until a completely obvious suspect is revealed at the end (e.g. "Or was it this masked intruder holding a smoking gun?"). Another idea was for the detective himself to have killed him.
I'm unsure if I've managed to sell the idea of the detective being some obnoxious nitpicker. It's a trope anyway so I don't know if a reader going in blind would pick up on it.
Open post… -
The Buddy ProgrammeRead on…
Okay, I know the challenge was to write a piece of fiction every day, but I wasn't feeling that spark today. I know it doesn't bear well for things to come to run out of juice after a week, but we'll see.
Anyway, I thought I'd just tell an autobiographical story from my past. I've told it at parties a couple of times already, but maybe I can up the quality in the process of writing it down.
I went to school in Germany where secondary school runs from grade five (around age 12) to grade twelve (around age 18).
In my own second year the school introduced a "buddy programme" where older kids form grade eleven were paired up with the newly arriving kids from grade five. The goal was to give these new arrivals a person to turn to if they had some trivial problems. The young kids were referred to as "buddies," the older kids as "mentors". I was in grade six already, so I didn't get a "mentor," but I did see these odd couples walk around the school yard during recess.
Obviously most of these Buddy relationships quickly stopped and the kids found friends within their own grade and age group. But a number of them didn't. I remember being confused by seeing some of the little kids still tagging along with their "Mentors" a couple of weeks in. And the strangest thing was that these Buddy couples were the ones that seemed the most dysfunctional: The little kids would often be berated, made to carry backpacks or would awkwardly hover around a conversation their mentor was having with their friends.
In hindsight I recognize the manipulation tactics that are now so often reported on in the context of toxic (often romantic) relationships. Back then it just seemed odd. But what elevated this oddness to a completely new level was when two "mentors" got into an argument. I never found out what the original dispute was about, but the important thing is that the two decided to settle it by having their little "buddies" have an actual fistfight.
The poor kids were in too deep already and it only took minimal convincing for them to have at it. I can't give you the details of the fight as I wasn't present (and also it's two 12 year olds hitting and kicking each other), but I did see the loser after. He was just a bit bruised and mostly just a bit muddy.
I was surprised to find a lot more buddies pairing up with their mentors again after that. When I asked a class mate about it she explained that the mentor of the winner had rewarded his performance by doing his homework for a week.
There had been a couple more fights (all unprovoked, "just for fun", as I could tell) until the mentors all got together and planned a big tournament to find the "best Buddy."
Thankfully the teachers caught wind of that before it actually happened and the buddy programme was shut down. When that didn't stop the buddies from tagging along with their mentors a rule was put in place that forbade "association of children more than two grades apart."
They had teachers policing the school yard and splitting up buddy-mentor couples. There still were four more fights before all of these relationships were ended, at least on school grounds.
Read on…