MAN MADE FLASH FICTION BLOG

I froze. It was gone. I'd only laid it down while I stopped to survey my new location. But someone had just lifted it from right under my nose and now all the secrets it contained were in hands unknown. I hoped it was them who took it and not some hapless street thief looking for a way to finance their next fix.      It became crucial for me to get out of public view. I needed to avoid CCTV cameras, step away from passers-by and go somewhere I could think. On finding a busy cafe, I ordered coffee and took a corner seat well back from the plate window and the glare of the street outside.      The papers it contained were innocent enough, just fake contracts waiting to be signed by equally fictitious companies. Nothing damning there. But the laptop was an entirely different matter. Sure, it was encrypted - but if it was they who'd now got their hands on it, the game would be over for me. And if it was anyone else took it, they'd eventually be targete...

John climbed the unlit staircase with caution. A smell of old polish filled his nostrils, adding to the damp odour rising off his lambswool.      The top step was the only one out of the entire flight that had creaked and John now turned to search for the right room: It surely had to be the one spilling light out from beneath its oak-panelled door.      He found the door unlocked and walked in, his breathing still labouring after the stair.      Inside what constituted a library sat a man huddled over an old colonial style desk upon which he dealt cards to himself. A cheap cigar hung from his bottom lip. He didn't look up.      "You bring it?" the man grunted.      "Sure," said John. He took off his hat then reached into his inside pocket to pull out a long slim package.      The man gestured towards a cracked leather chair sat opposite his own. "You ready to play?"  ...

Saturday night and Rock Ridge Saloon was in full swing. The ladies from upstairs were plying their trade on the cowhands gambling and drinking away their wages. In the corner a honky-tonk player rattled the keys. The hubbub suggested a good night being had by all.      Then suddenly a cowboy burst through the swing doors shouting, "Big Mongo's a'comin'! Big Mongo's a'comin'!"      Silence hit the room like an express train.      "Big Mongo's headed this way, and he's mad as hell," panted the cowboy.      Everyone in the room drained their drinks and made for the exit.      A few minutes later as the saloon owner finished closing the shutters and made to bar the doors, a huge beast of a man, seven-foot-six at least, barged his way in.      "Whiskey and a small beer," barked the hulk.      "Mister, you can have a whole bottle of whiskey and as much beer as you want. C...

Thing is, this pandemic didn't in fact infect a single living being, certainly not anyone that anybody knew personally. The alleged virus didn't seem to exist anywhere other than in the media, in the mouths of politicians and the so-called scientists, and, of course, in the minds of gullible citizens.      Indeed, the only people suffering injury or death turned out eventually to be those gullible citizens who had taken the jabs, aka the needle, aka the poisoned spear.      Meanwhile, those who resisted by refusing the spike and disobeying orders to stay at home suffered zero unusual symptoms - except perhaps struggling mental health as the world went insane before our eyes. Nonetheless, we dissenters were vilified across all strata of everyday society.      The whole thing was a clear and obvious hoax. It was a charade, a cynical exercise in manipulating the masses worldwide. It was a criminal act of a government occupied b...

John grew up in a small town with his four sisters and two stepsisters. Perhaps unsurprisingly he was considered the black sheep of the family.      During his early years John showed a keen interest in art. By his teens he was skilled at drawing, painting and sculpture. The introverted boy flourished as his artistic talents developed and got noticed.      Once he was able John flew the nest and made for the big city. Soon he was exhibiting his work and making a name for himself as a highly talented artist.      After studying at a prestigious art college John received an offer to work there as a lecturer. This brought him into a higher sphere of society and to a circle of people that included his soon-to-be wife.      For years the sisters back home heard little from John, just snippets of his new life via short letters he sent sporadically, many of which he'd decorated with pencil sketches and doodles. ...

"Is it me or is everything getting more miserable by the day?"      "In what way?"      "It's one step forward, two steps back all the time. Whatever I receive in one hand gets taken away by the other, like my life is being manipulated, as if everything's being controlled at every turn."      "Who do you think is behind this?"      "The same people trying to burn the word down right now? I dunno, there does seem to be a connection."      "Every war, if that's what you mean, is certainly a blood sacrifice, one that's part of a greater ritual. Misery makes this world go round - or, rather, flat, ha ha."      "Meaning what?"      "Do you believe there are 'chosen people' carrying out the will of some greater being, on behalf of something in the spiritual realm?"      "Eh ... it does seem that way ... Hey, wait a minute ... You mean ...?" ...

The boy watched starfish wiggle their tube feet, observed tiny seahorses tread water, saw crabs as big as dinner plates, found the world's ugliest monkfish, came across eels injured by perhaps propeller or fishing knife. Each animal could only wait it out until a tide would return and lift it back into the freezing Forth, perhaps eventually right out to the North Sea.     The boy  passed much of his childhood out on the same rocks where an uncle he never knew had drowned as a boy. Both males aged eleven, one's life had ended long before the other's began.      A woman could sometimes be seen. A distant speck farther out closer to the low tide. Stooping, the boy's mother raked for sea-coal, placing any bounty into old hessian sacks. Even the usable coal needed separating from the larger stone it formed part of. Much of her find was unusable. Her labours represented the geology of direst economic necessity at work.      At home, sitting near t...

This tale takes us back to the early 1970s. The Troubles One day, my mother took me the five or so miles walk up from our home on the coast inland to her friend's from work. That woman was either a divorcee or a widower, with two children of her own but no man about the house.      My mother and I were both quite fit in those days - us from walking everywhere, her from daily labour. Her rheumatoid arthritis came later as reward for picking potatoes, cauliflower, sprouts, lettuce, whatever was ready for harvest at pittance wages, bent over in east-coast Scottish weather.      I was still too young to realize we might have taken the local bus instead. Terry Wiles's blue and yellow single-deckers covered routes that Scottish Motor Transport's green coaches didn't run on, where Lothian Regional Transport's maroon livery was not yet evident anywhere east of the Scottish capital Edinburgh.      But we had fallen too poor for even the b...

The pagan spell worked its charm on the sea of ice cream faces now turned away from boat burning and other abominations to board late home-bound trains that will carry their home-bound bodies mostly fuelled by a day of battered fish, soggy chips and diluted beers. These pugilistic Scots will re-tread well-worn arguments, thereby tormenting tired eyes towards salty tears and ultimately into submission. And any of their children, those not yet asleep, those keeping schtum, might just turn face outwards to witness a much higher God displaying the merry dance of his northern lights on this coastal summer night. CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh Psalm 19:1 - KJV

My mechanical clock says five-thirty-seven as I raise the blind on this light summer morning, Across the street a gull asserts its weight over a magpie and three jackdaws, all of them foraging fruitlessly for their breakfast on a damp patch of pavement next to an overflowing bin. Chased by the gull, mister magpie complies and moves on, as magpies tend to do, while the playful jackdaws seem game for a spot of teasing - for they are used to dealing with bullies. But eventually the third jackdaw gives up and struts away in search of more fertile ground. From behind my open window I ponder which of these different personalities I most identify with (probably that last jackdaw, or maybe the magpie). While I drift through such thoughts a car hisses by and elsewhere gulls cry out in unison like a gaggle of distressed children. Eventually the kettle comes to boil, snapping me back into focus. Black coffee, oatcakes and thick-cut orange marmalade. It's going to be a fine day today here on ...

Ross had heard the footsteps since moving in seven years earlier. Whenever he went through to his kitchen or to use his bathroom he would hear one or two steps follow him, then total silence. It could happen morning, afternoon, evening or even well into the wee small hours. Sometimes he just noticed a tell-tale creak right above his ceiling.      The elderly lady in the flat above was called Brenda. She was quite deaf and had a housekeeping routine that suggested obsessive compulsive disorder. Ross got on quite well with her.      Both of them were very private people. Neither made much if any noise, despite their homes being flimsily built, and both enjoyed quiet solitude. There were never any weekend parties.      But Ross hated feeling as if he were being monitored, his observer hidden, especially when visiting his bathroom.      But he'd never spoken to Brenda about the issue - that is, not until he did.  ...

The animal had pointy ears and a sleek body covered in short hair. One might have seen something like it in ancient hieroglyphs or as a carved statuette raided from some pharaoh's tomb. A thoroughbred of some sort, it belonged to my brother's friends.      Keith was looking after it while they were on holiday. He was used to the cat, and it knew him.      Never having been spayed, instead being used for pedigree breeding, the cat had balls that any large dog would have been proud of. Whenever on all-fours it had the gait of a prowling lion.      However, Cat, the name it answered to when wanting fed, also liked to drape itself over people's shoulders, wrapped round their necks.      Keith indulged Cat in this. ~      "We're back home. Want to bring Cat and have dinner with us?"      "OK, what time suits?" said Keith.      "Come over this afternoon if you fancy...

i wake up from my armchair still drunk but silent in a cool summer night to see my once-upon-a friend and his woman sat opposite looking at me with concern etched over their faces | next i wander in a white infinity curve landscape always ahead as they follow me leaving piles of yellow coins i do not want to find later in the back seats of several stationary convertibles | then you appear most beautiful woman i knew all those years and we are afloat on a raft of a mattress together and utterly alone in our very own intimate darkness where i can only marvel as your red hair shines and your sleeping face smiles in the light of a warm narrow beam that streams from behind pulled heavy curtains | sweet Lord Jesus give me more and tell me what it means ... CC BY-ND 4.0 Russell Cavanagh Acts 2:17 - KJV 

BACKGROUND: The year was 2029 and martial law now covered what was previously considered to be the civilized world. This started with Emperor Stump suspending the US Constitution a couple of months before the 2026 mid-terms - elections he knew he'd lose heavily if they went ahead. It was Stump's intention to take advantage of worldwide chaos that arose from illegal wars raging across Europe and West Asia. Those wars were started on behalf of a species of degenerate parasites called the Apestein Class. That species, aliens who'd become the ruling class on Earth, had been considered contrary to all mankind almost since the dawn of time. CURRENT : A report received by the Edinburgh station, a hub of New Scotland Enforcement, said that grid surveillance had detected a possible anomaly in the system. That anomaly was a person of interest, a man who needed investigation and, if necessary, dealt with - a subject of the New Imperial society who wasn't conforming. A...

The young English woman came with her female dog and stood directly in front of Rich. Despite facing him, she stared over his left shoulder - obviously hoping to elicit a reaction, clearly daring him to say anything to her, anything at all.      They exchanged short hard looks. Then, apparently satisfied, the woman moved back a few yards and turned away. Rich merely resumed his thoughts, soaking in the rural summer morning and savouring nature's sweet bouquet.      Now recognizing the dog, Rich recalled how a few years earlier he'd made some warm remark to the woman about it being cute, not least as it had looked at him, wanting to be petted. She'd reacted by yanking the poor beast away, quite violently and unexpectedly.      Then, as now, she'd glared at him as though he were an abomination, some shameful pariah, some criminal worthy of hanging, a miscreant deserving a birching, a plague-carrier to be driven out by peasants brandishi...