“Long before you joined, Featherstone, something happened to me.” Old McMoneagle shifted in the red leather armchair.
“Sir?”
“I was young, fresh out of Oxford. Master’s in agriculture. Anyway, on my first Christmas Eve here we’d gone to the Wheatsheaf before the service at St. Mary’s. It was snowing heavily.” He paused. “You remember Mary Skellern? Well, she’d passed me over for Jack Broughton, but I didn’t want jealousy to stop me going.”
He continued, “it was a cheery affair, us chaps belting out carols with gusto!”
I imagined the happy scene in the tiny rural church.
“Due to the beer I soon needed a pee. Outside it was frightfully cold and completely silent, snow everywhere. I made my way round the side and relieved myself. On my way back something peculiar happened…”
“What?”
“Someone grabbed me from behind – I couldn’t move! Then the ground shook with an earth tremor and some huge tiles fell a few feet in front of me. If that fellow hadn’t held me I’d probably’ve been killed.”
“Who was it then?”
He shook his head. “There wasn’t anybody there!”
“There must’ve been!”
“That’s just it Featherstone, the snow behind me was pristine, no footprints anywhere…”
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Please note there is a 500 word version of this story. Click HERE to read it.
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Don’t forget to check out some of the other stories on my blog. There are over 100!
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Hey! You’ve been very specific and expressing with your words. Would like to read more!
That lead up to the “Realization”- Very nice bud 😉
It’s not a very lengthy post and that’s good, in my opinion, cause I don’t usually have time to read through a long one lol. Are you going to be continuing this story??
Your pal,
Benjamin
http://www.projectbiy.com
Hi Ben, no, I’m not a fan of lengthy posts either so I like the flash fiction genre. For my 200 worders I usually write a first draft of around 300-500 words and edit it down to 200, saving the long version in most cases. Then I have used the longer versions for a couple of flash fiction competitions, making them up to 500 words or whatever.
I just re-read the first draft of this one and found I had to cut out a lot that I liked, so maybe I might write a longer version of up to 2000 words or so – it might make a nice Christmas story to send to magazines! However, I don’t have any plans to continue it past the ending I gave, although plans can change!
Tis’ true! Totally understand about cutting and the pain of it. It’s like we’re removing a few of our babies lol but sometimes, we DO add on “Extra lines” that isn’t necessary without realizing it hahaha. I’m guilty of that whenever I write XD
As long as we keep working on it though, things will work out somehow, right?
So keep it up man 🙂
Your pal,
Benjamin
Hiya Ben,
Yes, a book I’ve got (The Short Story Writer’s Toolshed) calls it ‘murdering your darlings’! I.e. cutting words and phrases that you really like in order to get down to the word limit. Had to murder a few in this one!
I’m just starting a new category of 300 words so that’ll give a bit more leeway!
Keep on writing!