micro fiction

Selkie

Georgina JefferyLeave a comment
Selkie pixabay.jpg
Image Source

 

The door slammed open in the force of the storm. The fisherman shrank away from his new bride, his retreat blocked by the invading tempest. She sat, demure, fragile; big seal eyes staring out from under long lashes.

‘I didn’t know,’ he moaned. ‘God help me.’

He watched the fur coat slough off her body like shedded skin, revealing naked flesh beneath. She held out a plaintive hand and barked, a seal’s bark.

He trembled, caught like a fish in a net. Her kiss was colder than the sea. It turned his blood to salt on his tongue.

 

 

This is another short I wrote for the 2018 Southam Flash Fiction Competition, which required stories to be under 100 words and to contain the prase ‘the door slammed’ somewhere in the work. I set myself an informal ‘folklore’ theme to tie my stories together. They were a lot of fun to write.

A friend told me that she laughed out loud at the selkie’s ‘bark’ in this piece though. Not quite the effect I was going for…

Exultation

Georgina JefferyLeave a comment
Lonely Gargoyle pixabay.jpg
Image Source

 

Rain gushed over ancient tiles, overflowed from dilapidated gutters, and dripped off the end of a cold, stone nose. A church congregation filed in under the cross-eyed gaze of the gargoyle.

The people were drab, in both colour and spirit. The door slammed, locking them in with their sins. Guilt should not be tangible, but the gargoyle tasted it in the rain.

It tasted anticipation, too.

An organ gasped geriatrically to life.

One by one, lonely voices joined into a growing chorus. The music swelled, and took a stone heart soaring upwards to heaven.

 

 

It strikes me that it must be rather lonely to be a gargoyle.

I wrote this as an entry to the 2018 Southam Flash Fiction Competition, which required stories to be under 100 words and contain the phrase ‘the door slammed’ somewhere in the work. I had a lot of fun with the theme and will share some of my other entries here as well.

 

Happy 2019, by the way. It’s good to be back.  😉

 

Sepia (Flash Fiction)

Georgina JefferyLeave a comment

Sepia image

Sepia

From the yellowed pages of a leather bound journal, I stare outwards with unbridled, ugly jealousy. On a cold November day I was captured, unwilling; immortalised in the shutter click of a camera. Frozen between pages, between seconds, and left to gather dust.

Now, fifty years on, she is still living my life outside the photo album, while I, in my sepia prison, must endure the grubby caress of her grandchildren.

If you enjoy writing prompts, post your own story on the theme of Photographs in the comments! 100 words or less 😉