To commemorate the centenary of the Battle of the Somme and show some love and appreciation for all those who gave their lives in that terrible conflict, I've decided to publish some of my flash fictions ahead of time for free download. Homecoming is 250 words long and although I wrote it over two years ago, still brings a tear to even my eye!

A rainy day, a retired man, his spend-thrift wife and a gas meter.  What could possibly go wrong?
Meter Man is a short story with a dark humour and a sinister open ending.  It will leave you questioning the most mundane of happenings.

Rib-eyed Break

How do you feel about family camping holidays?  Love them or hate them, trust me, they could be worse.
Rib-eyed Break is a short story that preys on the unsuspecting bickering family as they opt to spend summer cooped up together in a car and a tent.  As if that in itself wasn’t nightmare enough!

Snippet: "There were two men inside the shed and they were discussing something he couldn’t quite hear.  One of them drew a hunting knife from a sheath on his belt and pulled aside a heavy plastic curtain.  Sam almost fell through the door.  Hanging by the wrists, gagged and bound were people, some of them older, some of them young, some of them fat, some of them thin.  He watched, wide-eyed as the man with the knife lifted down the first in the row, a girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen.  She stirred slightly and groaned then seemed to come to a little more and tried to shout out though the gaffer tape across her mouth.  Her eyes were wild as she tried to wriggle free.  The man held her fast and didn’t seem at all concerned.  He slung her, face down over a wooden structure with a white plastic half pipe below it.  The other man was on his feet now and pulled out a stopper in the half pipe.  Sam tried to see what was going on but couldn’t quite make it all out.  The knife flashed and the first man grabbed the girl by the hair, stretching her neck, using his body weight to keep her steady and then slit her throat."

Body Count: We never find out for sure
Blood Spilled: Lashings
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Melissa is a sensitive, often called a witch but she’s not so sure about that.  She writes a journal when things look like more than she can handle. Shadows is a short story written as a journal.  What are the shadow things Melissa writes about and just what does it mean?

Sabbatical
In the future, you can take a sabbatical from life.  From five to twenty-five years deep sedation or suspended animation.  What if the things you put in place to improve your life when you woke up had far-reaching consequences?  What if you accidentally changed the world? Sabbatical is a short story of a man on the edge of a breakdown.  His best shot pays off in ways he only ever dreamed.

Snippet: “The day arrived for Michael to go to the Sabbatex resort.  He drove out to the building about ten miles from the city, a large new building standing alone in the middle of nowhere.  It was built of simple red and yellow brick with mock Corinthian columns at the entrance, a black tiled roof sloping down like a rain hat.  Windows sat at regular intervals, mirrored on the outside reflecting the sky back at him.  It looked like some vast cartoon character with hundreds of watery blue eyes, he thought, half expecting it to turn and look at him.  Thick, black, cylindrical ventilation conduits were bolted on to either side for arms and two smaller, canopied entrances with large black metal doors looked like upturned feet where the building sat among carefully constructed grounds.  If it had stood up and stretched its legs he would have been only mildly surprised."

Journal of a Cat of Leisure (by Foobyevsky)
'Slight' departure from the murderous mindset writing for my own entertainment as Fooby Cat in her guise of Foobyevsky.

Snippet: "The servant has been unfaltering in her attentiveness this past week.  I call her servant but in truth she is a slave.  She receives no payment for performing her duties although I upon occasion express my thanks by means of showing a certain degree of affection.  I do not overstate either thanks or affection, you understand.  There must always be an air of distance between Cat and slave.  I go only so far as to wash my whiskers appreciatively if she serves food that is agreeable or to brush my face against her leg.  The latter, of course, ensures that she bears a mark both of my scent and of my excess fur, and by that there can be no mistake throughout the neighbourhood that she is my slave and no-one else’s.  But I digress."

Body Count: 0 (1 enslaved)
Blood Spilled: None (but some juice)
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