Aliens and Ice-Blocks
A short rant about my experience with hyperemesis gravidarum (HG) during pregnancy.
“My body has become a treacherous landscape of nope. Within mere weeks the alien has taken command and turned all my senses traitor. My memories of food are full of pot holes and landslides and precarious roads that lead to a rather strong gag reflex unlike anything I’ve so far experienced.”
Catching Frogs
Two siblings try to catch the green tree frog that has gotten loose in their house on their birthday.
“The little frog wriggles, protesting my evil laugh. My hands are too small and I can’t keep hold of it. It springs free, bounding away. I curse my hands. Why was I so small? I’m seven now, I should be bigger. I should be able to hold a little frog. Besides, it’s my birthday. Doesn’t that silly slimy frog realise?”
Stand alone character study set in the Extinguish universe.
Featherweight
A short story about a drunken birthday girl. (Tell me, do you think the narrator is a boy or a girl?).
“For a moment I consider hauling her up to her room, but she looks so content. Calm. Calmer than she’s been in a long time. So I go to the kitchen and fill up a glass of water, pop two aspirins and leave them on the coffee table.”
Girl Problems
Tim finds himself out of his depth when he stumbles across a young girl who thinks she’s dying.
Thankfully, she’s not turning into a Zombie. Turns out not all problems at the end of the world are life or death. Some of them can be solved with a box of tampax and some contraband chocolate.
“She landed on her feet, lost her balance and fell on her arse. An arse that was covered in a pair of old, dirty, loose blue jeans. Blue jeans that had a very, distinct, unavoidably obvious patch of red.
Tim sighed. He looked up at the ceiling. He waited for the earth to open up and swallow him whole.”
Stand alone character study set in the Extinguish universe.
Happy Birthday
A micro fiction about the sometimes painful repetitious nature of life.
“July thirteenth.
I want to tear at the letters. I hate that date. I hate Fridays. Every remark about luck, or lack of it, grinds my teeth and tears fresh holes in my heart. How do I move on?”
Sunrise
A young Werewolf wanders from the pack one night, in search of a place to go to the bathroom.
“Then the first hint of orange spills over the horizon, and the world awakens with dappled shades of orange, red, pink and yellow. Warm, soft, and mellow. The world breathes out its breath in misty clouds and cool drops of dew and all is beautiful as the day begins.”
Wilder
Conner, outside the bunker at night for the first time in his life, takes refuge in a laneway shrouded by bushes and reeds. There’s a girl in those reeds. A girl who has never lived inside the safety of the bunker.
“I don’t exactly know why, except that the last gong sounded and I didn’t make it back home in time. So now I’m left out here. ‘Here’ is a place I’ve been so many times I know every crack in the road; but I’ve never been left out at night, and the fear that strikes me is too raw to think through.”