Category: Friday Fiction

by Smitty

“It’s just a flesh wound! Come back here & I’ll bite your leg off!”

“Sir, no time for Python. Only by some freak of the geometry that the shockwave left six floors. Obviously no nuke. Maybe a MOAB?”
“Yeah, this means that I can quit working on that stupid budget slide deck!”
“Look: have you got toys in the attic, sir? We need a casualty assessment, comms with HQ, and stand by to carry out emergency destruction procedures.”
“HAHAHAHAHAHAH! Destruction? Can’t you see that’s done?”
“OK, Sir. Sit down. Jenkins, see if there’s coffee. I’m assuming command until the CO recovers.”
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

READ PART 1 OVER AT Victory Girls

When the mob came to the power plant, that Master’s Degree in Improvisational Propaganda came in to focus for Stevens.

“My friends, I have struggled against the weight of Ungeheuer’s greedy capitalist inclinations for years. His oppression killed Carl Simmons outright, and drove both Henry Jones and Tom McTaggert away.

He swindled the community out of the maintenance money that should have kept us warm.

Now the plant has ground to a halt.

If you are cold, you know who to blame.”

None of which was even vaguely true, mused Stevens, as he tried to count the pieces of Ungeheuer.

by Smitty

On that fateful Autumn eve
‘Neath a moon so full and bright
Moon maidens would dance and weave
Offering an eldritch sight

That was until Saint Thorgun came
Caught them at their pagan toil
Dared their awful prance to tame
And their magic cloth to coil

For though their wanton wiles were strong
They could not tempt a heart so pure
That was too young to know their wrong
And could long their sorceries endure

But even though his soul was smooth
And walk away in triumph true
Their cloth would his undoing prove
As material things so often do

—
via Darleen

by Smitty

He buried the accelerator pedal in the floorboard. The truck was already redlined.
He is concentration was all on the road; the destination, the hospital a few miles ahead, was a fixed point. He seemed to move the vehicle by force of will against the wind to get there.
The storm outside was reduced to flashy detail; the intricacies of the lightning were as flat as the road to his single-minded focus on the hospital.
Moaning in the passenger seat was his motive. If he could just get his pregnant, hemorrhaging wife there in time, his future might be saved.
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

The downpour masked the tears of despair. After six months in the brothel, she was dead inside. She ached from the abuse as she limped through the neon jungle to the little closet that was hers. It was only a matter of time before the exposure to strangers gave her one of the incurable sicknesses. Why had life become this?

She reached in her pocket and felt the paper.

It was an invitation to something called a “church service”.

She’s been walking to the brothel yesterday when a missionary handed it to her.

If awake in time, she’d try it.
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

“We left our Safe Space a week ago,” started Randy, striding with his walking stick.
“Yes. The legend said Progress Tower lay toward sunrise. It was true,” replied Jeff.
“HALT! YOUR. PRESENCE. ON. THIS. PUBLIC. LAND. IS. NOT. AUTHORIZED.” a ‘bird’ above their heads made swift, perfect circles and shrieked metalically.
“Is that a LawDrone?” asked Randy.
“I’ve never seen one that small or maneuverable.”
“DISPERSE. YOU. ARE. UNAUTHORIZED.” chided the drone, maneuvering to hover before them at eye level.
Randy swung his stick rapidly. Would have been a homer. The drone traced an arc; crashed; exploded.
The Uprising began.
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

The right eye looked outside of the perimeter. The neural coupler beneath the feathers picked up the signal and transmitted it back to the FOB control center.

A drone. It passed for a bird at a glance, but its flight pattern was too erratic, even with the latest enemy AI. More coming with the dawn, sun to their backs.
The AI suggested it, but his finger already stabbed the alarm.
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

“It’s wet,” he mumbled, working with a patient fury. Innocuous.
Guards scowled. The forty prisoners in the castle bailey were to work on pottery for their own use, and for Geneva Convention reasons of fair treament, they were told. They knew a trace element in the clay was killing them.
He shaped his piece with shaking hands. It’d been obtained and smuggled in at great risk while they were out burying the dead. They’d little time or energy. He looked at his conspirator, pale and feverish, who’d the detonator.
Nodded.
Ran to the wall.
Guards yelling.
Charge set.
(BOOM)
Freedom!
—
via Darleen