Flash Fiction Friday: The Cat Did It.

Last week, Chuck Wendig challenged us all to come up with the first line of a story, one compelling enough to get our fellow Wendigos to choose to write the story.  This week, we wrote those stories.  I picked a line by "jebdarsh" which lent itself to my style (I don't have to tell you what the line was, since it's what?  The opening line!).   It wasn't an easy choice--there were several lines I could have run with, but this lent itself best to my kids' stories.

Here's the result:

The Cat Did It

Now, I’m not saying the cat was plotting to kill me.  But.

It started with football practice.  I’m not really supposed to be there anyway, since no one thinks a girl should play football.  Mom says nobody should play football, and she was only letting me play as long as it was flag football.  That gave me one more year.  After that, the only options were to convince her I could play tackle ball or quit.  Maybe I could find a rugby team.  Bet Mom would love that!

But at practice last week, we were horsing around, tackling each other and wrestling and stuff, only I looked around and saw my cat.  He was just sitting on the sidelines watching us, but he wasn’t supposed to be there at all.  He’s supposed to stay in the house.  He raised a hind leg to wash his backside, and I started to turn toward him.  I meant to catch him and take him home so he wouldn’t get hit by a car.  I mean, I was trying to keep him safe, even though I don’t really like him.  But just as I turned, Jakob hit me.

I was all off balance and twisted up, so I fell and hurt my ankle.  By the time I finished yelling at Jakob, Boswell—that’s what Mom named the cat—was gone.  And Coach said my ankle might be sprained and he called Mom to take me to the doctor.  She had to leave work early and she chewed me out all the way to the hospital.

That finished my season, probably the last season of football I’d ever get to play, and I missed the last two weeks.  I was stuck with a taped-up ankle and a pair of crutches mostly good for whacking people.  Jakob was off the team for hurting me, too.  I thought that was pretty unfair, since he hadn’t meant to hurt me, and I’d actually started the rough-housing.  But I didn’t feel as bad about him as I did about me, because Mom said I wasn’t playing any more blood sports, whatever she meant by that.  She said I should learn to play tennis.  Tennis!  No way am I putting on one of those silly short skirts.

Then the cat started in.  Mom says poor Boswell just wants attention, but why does he have to come looking for it when I’m on the stairs?  He’d come and rub around my foot and my crutches, and Mom said he was just being a cat, and I needed to be careful.

I’ve always suspected him of wanting to do away with us all, if only he could figure out the can opener.  And yesterday he scored again.  I was pretty sure he’d managed to get my ankle sprained.  He probably had hoped I’d break my neck, but I’m pretty tough.  Anyway, it was definitely his fault I was hurt, sneaking out and over to the practice field and all. 

But yesterday morning he got down to it and started really playing dirty.  He’d figured out that I wouldn’t start down the stairs if he was anywhere around, so he held off his attack until I was already halfway down.

Lucky for me, he waited a little too long.  I was only three steps from the bottom when he came out of Mom and Dad’s room like a furry lightning bolt, and flew down the stairs right into my left crutch, just as I was making the move from the third step to the second.

Boswell knocked that crutch out from under me, and bang!  Down I went.  Then he walked up to me where I was lying on the floor yelling, and gave me an evil look.  He said one loud “Meow!” then sat down and licked his butt in the most insulting way.  He stalked off when Mom came running.

Of course, Mom didn’t believe me when I said Boswell had done it on purpose.  She told me to be more careful, and brought me an ice pack for where I’d bumped my head, and another for my ankle because it was time to ice it again anyway.

Then she left me on the sofa and went off to work.  As soon as she was gone, Boswell padded back in and sat on his haunches and just looked at me.  I knew what he was thinking.  At one point he tried to dash up and lick my face.  I mean, ewwww!  I’d just seen what he used that tongue for!  I got my hands up just in time and shoved him away, pretty hard.

Every time I got up to go get a snack or pee or anything, he was right there underfoot.  Mom says he felt bad for hurting me and rubbing up against me was his way of showing his love, but I know better.  Cats don’t do remorse, and they love food, not people.

I’ve taken to whacking him some with my crutch, so he’ll stay away.  Mom got mad when she saw me do it, but I’ve taught Boswell I’m not going to go without a fight.    I’m just afraid he’ll manage to get into my room while I’m asleep.  He could smother me in my sleep and I’d never know it.  He’s always tried to sleep on my face. 

I know he’s plotting to kill me, and I know why.

I’m just a practice run.  He and his cronies—I hear them all yowling about it at night, when Mom thinks he’s safely in his basket behind the dryer—are plotting to take over the world.  I saw Boswell with three neighbor cats yesterday.  They didn't’ see me looking out the window—I stayed out of sight behind the curtain.  But I saw them, and I know what they’re up to.

I’ve seen it.  The cat is plotting to kill me, and anyone else who won’t become the willing slave of catdom.  I’m guessing they’ll keep Mom around to run the can opener.

Flash Fiction Friday: In the Valley of the Baleful Stones

Chuck Wendig is not a nice man.  This week he gave us a list of random words, ten of them, and told us to use them all in a story.  All ten!  That's just mean.  I was doing pretty well with the list and my fantasy setting until I got to the last one.  You'll know when you reach it.  I'll give you the whole list at the end of the story, just for fun.  Feel free to see how many you can guess without cheating.  Then visit Chuck's blog and check out how some others used them (warning: other bloggers may not be suitable for youngsters, or work, or polite company.  I can't make any promises).  990ish words.

In the Valley of the Baleful Stones

Gorg left the Iron Desert through a narrow canyon, a tight, stony gorge just too wide to be a slot.  Nothing grew there but stones.  After days crossing the unyielding iron of the desert, the stones represented life to Gorg the Troll.  Being stone himself, mostly, he grazed happily on chunks of granite and basalt as he strode along, with an occasional conglomerate for a relish.

The midday sun beat down, turning the canyon into an oven.  Had a human chosen that route, there wouldn't even have been a corpse left for the funeral.  They'd have been cooked to nothing and picked clean by the vultures that waited on the high cliffs.  Though even the vultures might have waited for night to cool things down a bit.  The troll just kept moving, even humming a little--a sound like a cross between a rockfall and an elephant in distress.

The canyon broadened and straightened just a bit.  In the distance Gorg could now see a lone willow--sure sign of water.  He didn't need water; trolls didn't drink except for fun.  But it told him he was nearing the end of his journey, and he picked up the pace.  He had a date to keep with Duke Bale the Artichoke-Hearted, and he didn’t want to be late.  Duke Bale had been responsible for several members of Gorg's family being turned back into the stone from which they'd been born, and his Uncle Grk had, in the next heavy rain, been dissolved back into the clay of his home mountains. Gorg had vowed that the Duke would pay.

A league beyond the lone willow, Gorg found the road to the Valley of Baleful Stones, Duke Bale's family holding.  The name held a charm that would captivate the ordinary troll, but Gorg knew that all he would find in the land of Bale would be deceit and disappointment.  Probably even the stones would be untrustworthy.  He turned west on the road, and switched his giant stone war hammer from his left shoulder to his right.

He knew he grew close when he began to smell rotten eggs.  The Baleful Stones of the valley's fame were the disfigured sulfurous mounds deposited by a volcanic vent that ran length of the north side, and the entire valley stunk of it.  Gorg thought it only fit, for the heart of Duke Bale stunk still worse.

Now he could see the castle in the distance, and he shifted his war hammer back to his left shoulder, and tried not to breathe too deeply.  Even trolls disliked the sulfurous brimstone, and would neither eat it nor live near the volcanic vents that produced it.  Only Duke Bale, banished nephew of King Celery the Half-Wit, would do so, and he, Gorg thought, only because he'd been sent there by royal decree.
#

In the depths of the ugly castle that crouched as far as it could from the sulfur vents, the Duke studied his plans for the thousandth time.  Soon, his fool of an uncle would know that Bale was plotting to dethrone him.  But by then, it would be too late.  He studied the device that the sorcerer Stenrick the Brilliant had made for him.  Soon, he would have Stenrick go out to meet the pesky troll, that persistent annoyance of a Gorg.

Bale hadn't meant it to work this way when he'd sent Mergle to kill the group of trolls that had stumbled into his secret mines.  But Gorg had proved useful.  Mergle thought too much of himself, and had attracted the attention of the swordswoman--what was her name?  And what had become of her?  She hadn't caught Mergle.  Gorg took care of that one.  But Mergle had drawn the attention of the King, and so had become a liability.  Gorg, poor stupid troll, had done him a favor, Bale reflected.

Now Gorg was coming here, and would meet with Stenrick.  One or both would be killed, and Bale rather hoped it would be both.  He would have to take care of whoever was left before he could take care of the King.  Ordinarily, Bale would have been no match for either a sorcerer or a troll, but Stenrick, the fool, had given Bale all he needed, and now Bale no longer needed Stenrick.

Near the edge of the valley, in a cleft well hidden from the road, the half-magical balloon swayed gently, its silk bag filled with the gasses from the vent it covered.  Bale would be high in the basket suspended below the balloon when Stenrick blasted Gorg into a pile of rubble with the spell he called the "Atomic Blaster," whatever he meant by that.
#

Gorg came on into the valley, and didn't falter when he saw the billowing robes of the sorcerer approaching.  Stenrick was a far greater sorcerer than Mergle had been on his best day, but Gorg knew what he could do.  Shifting the war hammer once again to his right shoulder, so as to leave his more powerful left hand free, Gorg scooped up a selection of stones.

The first stone to leave the sling struck the wand from Stenrick's hand.  The second slew the sorcerer as he stooped to retrieve it.  Gorg came on, stepping on the man just to be sure.  No one survived a troll walking over them.

Gorg's remaining stones were flung after the balloon which suddenly rose from the rocks nearby and soared into the sky, Bale leaning over the edge and jeering.  Those that hit the balloon bounced uselessly off.  Only one stone struck something solid, and Gorg didn't know of that.  The wind carried Bale out of sight before the Duke discovered that Gorg had put out of action the magical appliance that controlled the balloon's flight.

He was at the mercy of the winds.  Gorg had won another round.

#####

Okay, here's the list: 

Funeral, Captivate, Deceit, Brimstone, Canyon, Balloon, Clay, Disfigured, Willow, and (I'm sure you guessed this one) Atomic