Yes once again I am posting another flash fiction. I'm having a great time writing these and they are all good practice, Plus I'm getting some great ideas from them. please enjoy "Why?"
Why?
By Kev Webb 2010 ©
Edited by Penny Springthorpe
I ask myself ‘why’ so many times each day. Every time I look at my watch I wonder what she would be doing now. I think about her, still lying in the king-sized double bed.On more than one occasion she has sent me pictures from her phone to mine. In the shots all I can see is one long, beautiful leg stretched out and resting on the bedclothes. How many times have I run my rough calloused hands over that leg? To me it always feels like being able to touch one of the things in life I know I shouldn’t, even though I’m allowed to. With the touch come the soft croons and the softer touch of her lips on my ear as she whispers for me to be bolder with my caresses. Nothing can be this beautiful; everything has a catch.
My heart jumps as a spike of adrenalin hits with sudden impact, forcing me to catch my breath. My body quivers with anticipation as in my mind her breath caresses the nape of my neck. I don’t want this to ever end. The simple joy of a soft touch – just the suggestion of tasting the forbidden fruit is enough. I don’t have to actually bite into it to taste the nectar; I taste it every time I close my eyes and think of her. It leaves its bitter sweetness on my lips; it leaves it there for me to taste and to savour.
Why do I deserve this wanton attention? Why is this lust pointed at me? Why does she look at me in a way that no one ever has before?
She is Vixen.
The kiss — the soft touch of her lips against mine, the heightened excitement of us both as our body heat rises in time with the urgency of our kisses. She’s got me again.
She has the right name: Vixen by name, Vixen by nature. I can’t resist her; I want to be a part of her. I want to feel her silk and velvet as she rises to meet me. The excitement in her low sighing moan weaves its magic as we work together to become one. I feel my heart hammering in my chest as she wraps her arms around me and pulls herself even closer. Her eyes close as she softly bites her bottom lip. Excitement bursts from her as a rapturous exaltation of breath; her eyes open and dilated pupils constrict as the light forces them to pinholes. She smiles as desire turns to wanton lust. It’s time – time to put it into overdrive, time to please her.
Virtual
Interactive
eXtensions for
Empathic
Neurons
VIXEN!
Empathic neurons…artificial empathic neurons that connect directly to our brains.With the artificial neurons being empathic, they actually adjust completely to our genetic make-up. They are locked to our code and are completely sympathetic to our personalities, meaning that each man who is subjected to Vixen gets the woman to match his needs and wants. It’s pretty cool when you think about it, but living it is a different story.
They told us the technology was there to help us. They told us Vixen was safe and that various studies into the effects of hypersleep dictated that a program like this had to be instigated for the mental well-being and stability of the crew. That’s all well and good but where does that leave us all now? We can’t live without her. None of the other crew – not one! – has a family to go home to. Vixen is our family. The more cynical crew members believe it’s a company conspiracy to keep us here, and come to think of it, in the five years I’ve been here no one has quit.
The point is, if we go we lose the one thing that is the most precious to us all: Vixen. She’s always there, always eager to please, never says no, never has a headache, and always wants to be with you. Is there a woman in this universe that could compete with that? The company told us we would never get lonely on the long flights. They said they had incorporated a program into the hypersleep mode that would ensure none of the crew would go crazy from the extra-long periods of loneliness during the extended sleep.
Even though our bodies sleep the mind is still active. It needs constant stimulation or it shuts down and turns to mush. The company had lost dozens of employees over the years to hypersleep sickness. Then, through the studies they did, they found out that sexual stimulation was the best way to keep the brain in perfect working order.
That’s where Vixen comes in. Each man is asked to pick a virtual woman when he signs up. The virtual women may look different but they are all the same, just ones and zeros all creating the same algorithm. They said she was safe, they said she would be our saviour, but instead she’s our captor and we’re willing prisoners of her whims.
We haul liquid diamonds from the gas giants in our solar system, and each trek is a two-year round trip. We spend ninety-nine percent of that time in hyper sleep, so like lambs to the slaughter we go to the coffins for our extended periods of slumber and can’t wait to have our neurons pumped full of Vixen.
Why?
Monday, January 25, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Walking The Dog
I have another flash fiction to post this week I hope you like it. This time it's horror. Once again it has been edited by the wonderful Penny Springthorpe.
Walking the Dog
By Kev Webb 2009 ©
Edited By Penny Springthorpe.
The dreamer, the unwoken fool
In dreams no pain will kiss the brow
The love of ages fills the head
The days that linger there in prey of emptiness
Of burned out dreams
The minutes calling through the years
The universal dreamer rises up above his earthly burden
Journey to the dead of night
High on a hill in Eldorado.
‘Eldorado Overture’
Electric Light Orchestra
The beads of sweat gather as the eyes flicker and dart beneath the closed lids of you, the sleeper. A dream pervades your darkness, a dream no one else sees, a dream that is life changing and terrifying. A dream that you may never wake from: you are walking the dog.
Your eyes open as if pulled by strings; your heart hammers in your chest while your eyes scream for the safety of light. Why can’t you move? It’s as if someone is sitting on your chest, holding you down; your arms and legs feel paralysed. Only your eyes move in their sockets. They flick around the room looking for any sign of danger. This is the perfect time for attack, the perfect time for the murderer waiting in the corner to step forward and slice your throat, the throat of the so-called innocent.
Feel the warmth of the blood as it escapes and sprays around the room, as the murderer oh so gently slices your skin with the stiletto blade, exposing your open throat to the world. The blade is lifted towards your failing eyes, dripping with your precious life’s blood. The only sound you hear now is the gurgle of your own breath as you draw it in through the gushing blood of the gash at your throat. Your hammering heart pumps your body dry in seconds, rendering your mind and body useless as oxygen is depleted, blood ebbs and your brain dies. Death is mercifully quick.
Or is the murderer somewhere else? Did you check under the bed before you lay down? Is there a blade poised beneath you waiting to pierce your spine, severing your spinal cord? Has this happened already? Is this why you can’t move? What’s that sound? It sounds like a shuffle of feet. Get up! Get up! Don’t just lie there. Move, scream, do something, anything, or you’re going to die.
Have you ever stopped to wonder what these dreams are all about? Why you feel so wrung out afterwards? Did you think they were just dreams with no meaning? Wrong! You are slowly being dragged down the dark road of torment by the hounds of hell. Each dream brings you another step closer to the burning gates. How many times have you woken up with fear ringing in your ears, clutching at your chest? Each dream shortens your life; each dream draws you further in, kicking and screaming, ever closer. Each quickened heartbeat is another one you won’t get back again: another one taken from you. You are born with only so many heartbeats. The more the hounds use up, the less you have to live with and the faster you are dragged to your inevitable conclusion. You don’t even realise your breaths are being stolen. Once you start walking the dog the hounds are always at your side: unseen, undead, unclean, relentless in their pursuit. They have a malevolent master that demands they perform their duties without the need for interference or overseeing.
You could be forgiven for thinking it’s just one of those things. Write it off and go back to sleep. But back in the restful arms of slumber the hounds are waiting. They need you to re-enter the dark world of sleep because that’s when they can drag and pull your soul towards their goal with ease.
Be thankful that the hounds are mostly unseen. They are horribly disfigured and battle scarred. These foul, dark creatures of the underworld are ferocious and dangerous. Rotting flesh hangs from old wounds and bones are visible through tears in their flesh. Maggots drop from the wounds and writhe on the floor, lost now they no longer crawl in their own enzymatic solutions.
The hounds sense the end is near; you have been walking the dog for a long time and didn’t even know it. Now you know, but it’s far too late. You’re at the burning gates. The ground shakes and heaves as the gates are pulled open by the malignant spirits that guard them. You are dragged to your wicked fate and the massive gates swing back and close with a shudder that courses through you, mimicking your own violent shudder. The hounds release you and you struggle to your feet. You look at your surroundings: everything is on fire or smouldering, and the foetid stench of rotting corpses and sulphur fills the choking atmosphere.
The murderer is in front of you, the murderer from your waking dream. He rushes you with the slashing blade and you have no defence. He knocks your hands away and carves at your face; the blade travels cleanly through the skin of your cheek and catches your ear, then is swiftly brought down in one stroke to your jaw. The attack is relentless, you are in hell; nothing you have ever known has prepared you for this. Nothing ever could.
Eternal damnation is just that: you do not die because you are already dead, and you go on suffering the way you are now. Wounds hang open and expose raw nerves. You cannot see through all the blood, and the pain is unbearable.
Where is he? You ask yourself as you try to rise, but then you collapse and pass out with fear still clutching at your breast.
You wake to the sound of a familiar voice.
‘Hey come on, wake up. You sleep like the dead.’
‘Huh? What?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be walking the dog?’
Walking the Dog
By Kev Webb 2009 ©
Edited By Penny Springthorpe.
The dreamer, the unwoken fool
In dreams no pain will kiss the brow
The love of ages fills the head
The days that linger there in prey of emptiness
Of burned out dreams
The minutes calling through the years
The universal dreamer rises up above his earthly burden
Journey to the dead of night
High on a hill in Eldorado.
‘Eldorado Overture’
Electric Light Orchestra
The beads of sweat gather as the eyes flicker and dart beneath the closed lids of you, the sleeper. A dream pervades your darkness, a dream no one else sees, a dream that is life changing and terrifying. A dream that you may never wake from: you are walking the dog.
Your eyes open as if pulled by strings; your heart hammers in your chest while your eyes scream for the safety of light. Why can’t you move? It’s as if someone is sitting on your chest, holding you down; your arms and legs feel paralysed. Only your eyes move in their sockets. They flick around the room looking for any sign of danger. This is the perfect time for attack, the perfect time for the murderer waiting in the corner to step forward and slice your throat, the throat of the so-called innocent.
Feel the warmth of the blood as it escapes and sprays around the room, as the murderer oh so gently slices your skin with the stiletto blade, exposing your open throat to the world. The blade is lifted towards your failing eyes, dripping with your precious life’s blood. The only sound you hear now is the gurgle of your own breath as you draw it in through the gushing blood of the gash at your throat. Your hammering heart pumps your body dry in seconds, rendering your mind and body useless as oxygen is depleted, blood ebbs and your brain dies. Death is mercifully quick.
Or is the murderer somewhere else? Did you check under the bed before you lay down? Is there a blade poised beneath you waiting to pierce your spine, severing your spinal cord? Has this happened already? Is this why you can’t move? What’s that sound? It sounds like a shuffle of feet. Get up! Get up! Don’t just lie there. Move, scream, do something, anything, or you’re going to die.
Have you ever stopped to wonder what these dreams are all about? Why you feel so wrung out afterwards? Did you think they were just dreams with no meaning? Wrong! You are slowly being dragged down the dark road of torment by the hounds of hell. Each dream brings you another step closer to the burning gates. How many times have you woken up with fear ringing in your ears, clutching at your chest? Each dream shortens your life; each dream draws you further in, kicking and screaming, ever closer. Each quickened heartbeat is another one you won’t get back again: another one taken from you. You are born with only so many heartbeats. The more the hounds use up, the less you have to live with and the faster you are dragged to your inevitable conclusion. You don’t even realise your breaths are being stolen. Once you start walking the dog the hounds are always at your side: unseen, undead, unclean, relentless in their pursuit. They have a malevolent master that demands they perform their duties without the need for interference or overseeing.
You could be forgiven for thinking it’s just one of those things. Write it off and go back to sleep. But back in the restful arms of slumber the hounds are waiting. They need you to re-enter the dark world of sleep because that’s when they can drag and pull your soul towards their goal with ease.
Be thankful that the hounds are mostly unseen. They are horribly disfigured and battle scarred. These foul, dark creatures of the underworld are ferocious and dangerous. Rotting flesh hangs from old wounds and bones are visible through tears in their flesh. Maggots drop from the wounds and writhe on the floor, lost now they no longer crawl in their own enzymatic solutions.
The hounds sense the end is near; you have been walking the dog for a long time and didn’t even know it. Now you know, but it’s far too late. You’re at the burning gates. The ground shakes and heaves as the gates are pulled open by the malignant spirits that guard them. You are dragged to your wicked fate and the massive gates swing back and close with a shudder that courses through you, mimicking your own violent shudder. The hounds release you and you struggle to your feet. You look at your surroundings: everything is on fire or smouldering, and the foetid stench of rotting corpses and sulphur fills the choking atmosphere.
The murderer is in front of you, the murderer from your waking dream. He rushes you with the slashing blade and you have no defence. He knocks your hands away and carves at your face; the blade travels cleanly through the skin of your cheek and catches your ear, then is swiftly brought down in one stroke to your jaw. The attack is relentless, you are in hell; nothing you have ever known has prepared you for this. Nothing ever could.
Eternal damnation is just that: you do not die because you are already dead, and you go on suffering the way you are now. Wounds hang open and expose raw nerves. You cannot see through all the blood, and the pain is unbearable.
Where is he? You ask yourself as you try to rise, but then you collapse and pass out with fear still clutching at your breast.
You wake to the sound of a familiar voice.
‘Hey come on, wake up. You sleep like the dead.’
‘Huh? What?’
‘Aren’t you supposed to be walking the dog?’
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)