2023

by Monica Marier

The bitch is back! I'm jumping back into Friday Flash after a LOOOOOONG hiatus. Hopefully this is the start of more beautiful magic in my life. Wish me luck.



The city outside was hidden in a cloud of whirling green particles. The advisories today were all code-red warnings coupled with 2% visibility. “Civillians strongly advised to stay indoors,” Jamie repeated under his breath, in time with the broadcast. He didn’t care. He had to see Anh today. It had been five days of code reds and the school holidays were almost over! Desperate, he and Anh plotted to meet at the mall today. Both of them were going to get in a lot of trouble for it, but they both decided that it would be worth it to see each other. His mom would simply block his G3 access for a week, and with school starting in two days it wouldn’t matter much.
It was dangerous; Jamie was deemed a “high-risk citizen” by the board of health and one slip-up could be fatal. There were stories on the news everyday about people like Jamie who had “just gone out for a few hours,” and never made it back. He would have to take every precaution if he wanted to make it back home alive… so his mom could kill him.

Jamie tiptoed to the mudroom and got ready to go outside. His mom would be in her room until she finished her first pot of coffee, so he had a good twenty minutes. He would need every second. First came the brown canvas coveralls; his fingers trembled as he did up the snaps. He double-checked, then triple-checked to make sure all the snaps were done tightly and there were no gaps. He tied his boots and secured the cloth wraps around the cuffs of his pant-legs. Jamie set his headphones to the playlist Anh had made him and pulled up his interior hood. He checked to make sure his goggles were clean of smudges and smears before putting them on; he wouldn’t have opportunity to clean them until he was safely at the mall. Goggles in place, he checked the filters on his respirator and hooked it on. He also grabbed one of the outdoor-kits full of water, emergency protein, glow tubes and adrenaline injections. Then came the large hooded serape which he draped over all. It was bright orange to combat the low visibility of the green storm and the second hood and face-wrap protected the gear from prematurely wearing out. Last of all, he put on the clumsy gloves and wrapped the ends around his sleeve cuffs.

“Jamie,” came a voice from his mom’s bedroom. “Jamie did you check the dryer for your clothes?”
“Uh, they were still wet so I restarted it,” lied Jamie, hoping his voice wasn’t too obscured by the respirator.
“Okay,” said his mom.

She didn’t call for him again, so Jamie seized the opportunity to slip into the detox chamber and run outside. He forgot to brace himself for the wind and nearly toppled over as a blast of air and debris slammed into him. He shook his head at his own idiocy and began his slow march to the mall. The visibility was too low to drive. As he plodded down the sidewalk, he noted that there was no one else on the streets today. There was only whirlwinds of green fuzz that danced in circles, or shambled in clumps down the high street. Jamie concentrated on his playlist as his heavy boots plodded through the yellowish drifts.

He was almost at the mall when he saw the car. Someone had been stupid enough to try to drive today. A Chevy Quasar had careened off the road and smashed into a lamp post. It was only superficially damaged, but peering through the broken windows, Jamie knew that the driver was dead. The moron hadn’t been wearing a respirator; it was lying on the passenger seat next to him. He’d probably thought he was safe enough in the car with the filter running full blast. Jamie shook his head and flinched at the sight of the swollen black face lying lifeless in his seat. Jamie’s dad had always made them wear respirators in the car. He knew that it only took a few seconds for the car’s filter to hiccup and leave everyone exposed to the lung-choking particles. Jamie was growing hardened to the sight of dead people covered in a dusting of green, but it was never easy and it still made him feel horrible.

Jamie’s mom assured him that this was a good thing. It was a sign that he was growing into a good person.

Mom had often told him that it hadn’t always been like this. She remembered when the green storms started to make life unlivable for people. She said that when she was a girl, it had been different.

Jamie had already walked into the detox chamber before he realized he was at the mall. The blast of purified air shook him as it removed the green motes stuck to his clothes. Then the blast of icy air froze and killed the particles. Lastly the, mild chemical shower rinsed him off. He stepped out of the chamber and unhooked his respirator and goggles.

“Jamie!” cried Anh.

She ran to him dressed in similar orange and khaki, she too had livid red marks on her face from where her goggles and respirator had dug into her face. Jamie smiled and took her hand. They hugged and clumsily kissed each other.

“Anyone here today?” asked Jamie.
“Yeah, there’s a few shops open— ooh! And both the Starbucks and the movies are open today,” said Anh.
“Cool!” said Jamie. This was better luck than he expected. “I was afraid that everything would be closed again.”
“I know. But shop-owners gotta eat I guess.”
“Last day of holidays,” sighed Jamie. “Why did spring have to come so early this year?”
“But the news said pollen season will be over earlier too. We should be back in the school building by late April this year!”
“That’s true,” said Jamie with a grin. “Let’s just enjoy this afternoon before we go back home and get our asses flayed by our folks.”
“Yeah,” said Anh resting her head on Jamie’s shoulder. “I hate pollen season.”
“Me too,” sighed Jaime.

Outside, the green storm raged.

Campus Spirit

By MONICA MARIER

“You’re a witch?” I asked, goggle-eyed.

Sandy just shrugged and pulled a lock of ash blond hair away from her mouth.

“Yeah,” she said.

It took a while before I could say anything else. One fact kept poking me in the back of the head like a pencil.

“BUT YOU’RE A REPUBLICAN!” I blurted out.

Sandy snorted and rolled her eyes. “So? Doesn’t matter.”

“I thought you couldn’t be both,” I insisted. There was something about Sarah Palin the NRA paired with incense and crystals that didn’t mesh.

“Look, you’re born a witch. It’s not a lifestyle choice like who you vote for or what color socks you wear,” she told me.

I shrugged, but I tried to thoroughly examine my roommate without staring.

It still looked like Sandy Parks: a skinny but rather plain-jane physical therapy major, with horsey teeth and freckles. She still had a drawl after moving here from Norfolk VA —not that it mattered. Her genuine snakeskin boots (that had seen better days) and straw cowboy hat was a dead giveaway.

She told me that she envied my “striking features” and overflowing EE cup, but I didn’t believe it for a second. Who’d want to be a big fat marshmallow when they were a size 2? You can fix bland features with a little makeup (which Sandy never tried to do) but you can’t fix fat.

And then this happened. We were on the floor, eating Milanos (hers) and watching The Last Unicorn (also her movie on her TV) when we suddenly announced she was a witch.

“Alright prove it,” I said, REALLY hoping she wouldn’t.

“’Kay,” she said. She pointed to a box of Pop Tarts (hers) on the shelf and said, “Cthinos h’yel meh taftut.”

 If anyone ELSE had said it without a thick Southern Accent it probably would have sounded really cool.

The box flopped over and remained on its side.

“Pshh. Is that it?” I asked.

“Just wait,” she said and my eyes returned to the box. A rustling sound indicated that something was happening to one of the shiny foil packages. I stared as the rustling got louder and louder until—

“HIT THE DECK!” shouted Sandy suddenly.

 Sandy and I ate the carpet as two shapes went whizzing overhead. There was a dull thudding sound as the room shook and I tentatively got up.

“Sorry,” said Sandy looking abashed. She rose and straightened her denim skirt. “I lost control a little.”

“A LITTLE?” I asked looking at the white cold walls.

Sticking out of the cinderblocks, like ninja throwing stars, were two perfectly toasted s’mores-flavored Pop Tarts.  I gingerly pulled one out of the wall, after it was cool enough to touch. The icing was now a caramelized brulee, but otherwise intact. How it managed to fly into the rock-hard wall without crumbling and showering us with molten sugar was beyond me. Gingerly I bit off a corner that wasn’t covered in plaster. It tasted fine.

“Cool,” I said warily. “So what else can you do, other than fire ballistic pastries?” I asked.

She winced at my comment and I felt ashamed of myself.

“Sorry. I can’t turn the snark off sometimes,” I mumbled.

“Yeah, I know,” she said shaking her head indulgently.  “Well, there’s a reason I told you I’m a witch, now that you ask me.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I asked.

“I need your help with something.”

“Like what?” I asked, uncertainly. I was worried this was going to get uncomfortable and fast.

“I need you to help me get to a book,” she said.

Oh, thank GOD. She doesn’t want me to do something dumb with colored candles and silver knives, I thought.

“What kind of book. Is it expensive?” I asked.

“It’s priceless,” she said nodding. “It’s kept under lock and key at the library and only certain majors can get access to it.”

I nodded. There were a few of those. Our University was one of the oldest in America, which was really one of our only claims to fame these days apart from a champion ping-pong team.

“So where do I come in?” I asked.

“Well you’re a history major, minoring in archaic lore, right?”

“Yeah…” I said, growing nervous again.

“The book I need to get access to is the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred. I think MU has a copy of it in the Library.”

“Oh,” I said my stomach sinking. Maybe colored candles wouldn’t have been so bad. “Well, see, that’s going to be tricky. They kind of don’t let any students see that book anymore.”

“But they used to!” she cried.

“Yeah, but every time they did someone went bonkers! I think they were theorizing that the book had lead ink or fungoid spores in it — something that was making people go nuts. It’s sealed up in storage now.”

“Shit,” Sandy cursed a rare thing in itself. “Now what.”

“Well, they sell the English version in the campus bookstore,” I said.

Sandy looked up. “That might work,” she said, her eyes hopeful. “We can try anyway.”

“Well, okay. Let’s go — I could use a latte. What do you want it for any way?”

“Well you know how kids have been attacked on campus at night?” she said slowly.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I think the book might give me some clue as to how to stop it.”

I stopped dead as I strung the two factors together. Kids were getting attacked on Miskatonic campus behind the science buildings and Sandy wanted access to occult literature.

“What… are you saying something …weird is attacking students?”

“Rosemary West, what do you know about the reanimated?” Sandy asked me.

CHICKEN SH*TFACED PART 2 of 2

By Monica Marier

This is the conclusion of last week’s story, which can be found  HERE

A special thanks goes to PJ Kaiser for helping me post this on her blog today in a time of techno-drama.

The night was in full swing when the two men trod shivering through the black soup of darkness. The lantern swung erratically in large arcs casting ghostly fairy lights and demonic shadows across gnarled trees. He and Vilori had followed the tracks as they led with distinct purpose to apple orchard that marked the edge of Uncle Red’s farm.

“Think the chickens got peckish and decided to have a late tea of apples?”

“Chickens don’t eat apples, Vilori,” said Harcourt. A thought suddenly occurred to him. “But I hope for our sakes they’re trying.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cause if they haven’t stopped at the orchard, and they’re headed due South… that means that they went into The Terrible Woods.”

“Which terrible woods would that be?” asked Vilori.

“That one! The Terrible Woods! Capital ‘T’—The Terrible Woods.”

“Is that really its name? How unimaginative!” cried Vilori in disgust.

“Yes. It was named by a town of very unimaginative people… WHO KEPT DYIN’ in the woods,” hissed Harcourt.

“What, is it Haunted? Do the ghosts come out at night?” asked Vilori with a snort.

“Ghost nothing! It’s full of dense bracken, sudden drops, peat bogs, wolves, bears, griffons, and dragons, AND poisonous spiders.”

Vilori stopped dead.

“How big are the poisonous spiders?” he asked in a hollow voice.

“They’re poisonous! Does it really matter how big they are?” replied Harcourt.

Vilori nodded. “I concede your point.”

They walked a few more yards in silence, following the razor straight lines of chicken feet and trying not to think of spiders. 

“Oh bugger,” sighed Harcourt. The lantern light bounced in his hand, but Vilori plainly saw the chicken tracks leave the soft earth of the orchard and trail into the tall grass bordering it. The grass had been trodden and bent in a tiny thin path no wider than an arm’s length. It led with mathematical precision to the forest. Vilori snatched up the lantern to examine the tracks.

“Well it looks like this wasn’t done by any man, Har,” said Vilori agog. “There’s no signs in the grass that anything bigger than a chicken has gone through here.

“Which means what?”

“Um… the chickens are in on it?” supplied Vilori uncertainly.

“What, like they’re?” asked Harcourt in disgust.

“Well, I don’t know!” mobilzin’ cried Vilori, waving his free arm in exasperation. “What other explanation have we got?

“A spell?” asked Harcourt.

“….yessss,” nodded Vilori nodding his head. “I’ve never heard of chicken magic before.”

“I have,” said Harcourt seriously. “I heard of men in the hot islands that puts paint on their faces and dances around fires and sacrifices chickens. ‘Hoo-doo’ they calls is. Barbaric,” he added.

Vilori sniffed in similar suspicion. “Ah, well that’s foreigners for you. Sacrificin’ all manner of things. As if pidgeons and goats and virgins aren’t good enough.”

“Goats was good enough for me granddad.”

“Indeed. So you think it’s some foreign hoo-doo thingummy stealing chickens with magic?”

Harcourt scratched his sandy chin. “Dunno. It’s better than your idea of mobilizin’ chickens.”

“Yeah, that was stupid, sorry,” sighed Vilori, flushing red.

“S’alright. I know it’s just ‘cause you’re pissed.”

“And how,” mumbled Vilori stifling a belch. “Well, into The Terrible Woods then,” he said tramping through the tall grass for the tree-line.

“You coming?” he asked when he noticed Harcourt lingering behing.

Harcourt nodded. “Yuh. Alright,” he said in a high voice. “Only be careful. The sudden drops in there can break your neck... and the spiders…”

“What do the spiders look like?” asked Vilori warily.

“They look like leaves.”

“Grand.”

***

“Is that a spider?”

“No.”

“Is that a spider?”

“No.”

“Is that a spider?”

“Would you give over already, Vilori!” Harcourt said through clenched teeth. He was trying to keep his voice down, but with Vilori buzzing around him like a gnat it was hard.

“Is that a —”

“SHH!” Harcourt waved at Vilori to shut up. “DO you hear something?”

The men strained their ears for the slightest sound when they both heard it. It was a warbling susurration, like the sound of hundreds of tiny voices having hushed conversations.

“What is that?” asked Vilori.

“It’s chickens! Must be hundreds of em,” said Harcourt advancing slowly. Vilori observed sweat trickling off his friend’s brow in the growing light. “There’s a light up ahead,” he said.

 “Someone’s got a fire lit, I reckon.”

“You were right! There’s Hoo-dooing and dancing afoot, no doubt!” hissed Vilori.

“Well the chicken noise is coming from there, so we’ll see.”

“Good. I’m ready to finish up and get to bed,” yawned Vilori. The night was getting colder and a thick mist was starting to rise from the forest floor, undulating in ghostly shapes in front of the lantern. They grew closer to the fire, and unsheathed their swords. Swords could only do so much in the face of magic, but they could generally sever a head from a neck, which was sometimes enough.

Cautiously, they peered over a bramble thicket to see what they were dealing with.

Both men dropped their swords in shock.

“Is that…?”

“It looks like…”

“Dear GODS.”

A large clearing was occupied entirely by chickens.

There wasn’t the slightest sign of human involvement; only avian. They weren’t milling about in typical chicken fashion, but they were evenly spaced in a circle, five deep around a ring of standing stones. Large fires had been lit in key places around the field casting a weird orange glow on the perfectly still birds. In the middle of the ring was a large flat rock lying lengthwise on the ground.

It was currently empty.

“How do chickens light fires?” wondered Harcourt aloud.

“What is this place?” Vilori managed in a terrified voice.

“It’s the faerie ring! It’s older than…than… really old stuff! It probably predates the word ‘old’,” Harcourt stammered, his face ghostly white.

“The chickens aren’t doing anything! They’re just standing there!” squeaked Vilori.

“No, see. They’re all looking outside the ring on the southwest side…. They’re waiting for something!”

“For what?”

As if in answer a loud roar shook the air and made each man cower with his face in the dirt. It sounded like someone trying to saw a bottle in half with cello string.

Vilori and Harcourt gibbered momentarily before rounding up enough sanity to look at what was approaching. Their swords were still on the forest floor, untouched.

A dark shape sillouetted in the firelight descended on the avian crowd. It walked upright like a bird, but there was something distinctly mammalian about it. It had a snout full of cruel teeth despite its coat of feathers, and its feet were definitely paws. It let loose another shriek, similar to a dog’s howl, but there was no mistaking the consonant and resounding “BWARRRRRK!” that shook the tree tops.

 Harcourt and Vilori were suddenly more sober than a teacher on Monday.

“It’s a cock-a-doodle,” said Harcourt.

“A what?” asked Vilori.

“Part dog-part rooster. Distant relative of the cockatrice.”

“Cor,” said Vilori. “What’s it got there in its paws?”

Squinting in the gloom the men could make out something round and flat with something lumpy on it. It was clutched awkwardly in the cock-a-doodles forepaws as it approached the flat stone in the middle of the ring. The beast then lay the object in the middle of the stone.

“I don’t like this…” said Harcourt, trembling.

“Why what’s he got?” asked Vilori, trying to make heads or tails of the dim shapes.

“That’s the carcass of the chicken we had for tea tonight,” he said.

Now that he knew what he was looking at, Vilori could indeed see a former chicken picked clean with bits of sage still stuck to its insides. It was even on the willow-ware patterned platter Harcourt’s Aunt had served it on and surrounded by wrinkly cold potatoes.

The cock-a-doodle roared again, and the susurration of idle chickens stopped. Silence blanketed the clearing, and even the crackle of the fires seemed to have stopped.

Then the cock-a-doodle began to utter strange sounds in a low monotone drone. After he began the chickens would answer him, all clucking in perfect unison to a strange rhythm.

“BWAARK BWARRK BWARRRK”

“Bok-bok bok-bok b-bok bwaark!”

“BWAARK BWARRK BWARRRK”

“Bok-bok bok-bok b-bok bwaark!”

“It looks like…” began Harcourt, afraid to finish.

“It looks like a ritual,” answered Vilori.

Harcourt and he exchanged glances of pure horror, before watching the birds and their master again, helplessly captivated by their own curiosities and the mounting terror of events.

The standing stones began to glow an unearthly green and the light channeled by the outlandish carvings in the stones fed into the oblong stone table where the sad remains of dinner sat. The boks and bwarrks grew louder, faster, more fervent as the light grew brighter. Vilori felt the hairs on his arm stand up and felt his ears block up as an oppressive cloud of energy grew around them. Just as the chickens were so frenzied that they seemed about to break out of their orderly ranks the last of the light flowed into the now-glowing dead chicken. Silence reined again.

The men held their breaths as they stared at the carcass. If birds could hold their breaths, it was very likely the chickens were doing the same. Only the cock-a-doodle seemed cooly confidant.

Then it happened.

It was subtle, but every eye, beady or otherwise, caught it.

One of the naked wings began to twitch.

Harcourt and Vilori didn’t know how they got back to Uncle Red’s farm. To Vilori it was all a blur, and if Harcourt remembered, he wasn’t saying anything. Uncle Red and Aunt Primula took it with the resigned attitude of “boys will be boys,” assuming it all to be a drunk hallucination and were kind enough to never bring it up again. It didn’t seem there was any harm done anyways, since all the chickens were back in their coops the following morning.

Although… and this was the strange thing…

…It seemed there was one extra bird.

#Twitterpocalypse

The rash of bots has made me paranoid. This story is the brainchild of that paranoia. Enjoy.

Image of Fail Whale by Yiying Lu


The sky was blue, an unnatural neon shade that made one see bright orange upon blinking. White puffy clouds dotted the celestial dome like darling cartoon sheep, only they stayed fixed in the air, unmoving.

The four figures stared up and blinked at the static, sunless sky. With a deafening fanfare and an explosion of fireworks, they saw it. Descending from the sky, suspended by a multitude of chubby birds was a large whale. The leviathan nodded benevolently at his small assembly as the birds (with no small effort) lowered him into his tank. It sang a few bars of “Pokerface” and then turned to his men. Whales cannot giggle, but a cetaceous squeal of mirth was piped in the air as it breached.

“WELCOME!” said the Fail Whale. “I’ve invited you three to this special hashtag chat (#twitterpocalypse) because as denizen of this social media network, I have grown bored. I believe that Twitter has evolved beyond its purpose and must be destroyed. What started out as a neat way to stalk celebrities and piss off people with abbreviated sentences has turned into a place for people to connect and share ideas and promote and support each other. It makes me sick. That being said, with my awesome Fail Whale powers I hereby begin the destruction of Twitter! That’s why I have called you four together! What say you?”

The four avatars looked either unimpressed or ignorant of what was going on. The Whale eyed them critically. One was a smiling man in his late fifties standing on his yacht in Eddie Bauer shorts. Another was a Young woman with far too little clothing, who kept shifting into poses she probably thought was alluring. One was a badly sampled image lifted off the internet of a Cat with a Lime rind on it’s head. The last was simply an egg. The egg confused the whale most of all.

“Um, guys?” asked the Fail Whale. Perhaps they hadn’t heard him.
“‎"We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose." - Bishop Desmond Tutu” said the man on the boat.
“i wood totally have hawt sex w. lady gaga!! ; )” said the young woman.
“GLENN BECK IS THE DEVIL WE SHOULD STAB HIS BRAIN WITH A TOOTHPICK!” said the cat in all-caps.
“writers wanted: http.tiny/iouoa9357q9ls.fke” said the egg.

“You’re not the traditional four horsemen are you?” asked the whale with sinking realization.
“Visualize the “you” you want to become. You are only as strong as that positive image!” said the man on the boat.
“OMG! Jus Beiber iz cuttin hz hair!” cried the girl.
“OBAMA IS A RACSIST WARMONGER!” shouted the cat, beginning to foam at the mouth a little.
“Protect your computer,” said the egg, who then posted another link.

“Who the heck ARE you guys?” asked the Fail Whale in despair.

The be-shorted man blinked and briefly got off his yacht.
“We’re the four horsemen of the Twitterpocalypse. My name is “Life Coach.” You’ll have to forgive me, I don’t interact with people much. I generally just post quotes by other people and platitudes.”

“Why do you do that?”

“I like to think that if I follow several million people and one million of them follow me and find my quotes inspiring that I can feel educated and superior.”

“But they’re not your thoughts or words. You haven’t posted one original idea!”

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." - Sir Winston Churchhill”

The whale shook his head sadly. Life Coach would not be his lead horseman. He lacked initiative and originality. Maybe the others would make up for it. He eyed the scantily-clad girl with enthusiasm. She was evil, there was no doubt.

“Would you like to bring this media site to its knees, um… are you ‘Porn?’”
“Um… kaynothnxbye,” said the girl in annoyance. “Im, StalkR. I foloo pple I like an post evry aticrle, video, and link abot thm. I alzo offr my body daily to thm in the hopes tht they aknoldg me or evn block me.”

The Whale had trouble deciphering the string of consonants and creative spellings, and eventually stopped listening.

“Why can’t I understand you?”

The girl flipped her hair and scoffed. “YU tri tweetg whl drivin, ass! Itz fcking HARD!!!1”

The Whale lamented that the one word the girl had bothered to spell correctly was “ass” and moved on to the cat. He hadn’t much hope for this one. His doubt was justified.

“Alright. Who’re you?” he asked the cat.

“COLD WATER GIVES YOU CANCER! THE LIBERALS FUCKED THE WORLD! MY FOOT HURTS! WHAT IS A GLEE? GLENN BECK IS HIDING ON MY LAWN IN A PANZER!”

“Oh, you’re a Moron. I get it,” said the Whale. He swam a few inches away from the glass walls of his tank in case the cat attacked. Breaching again, he cursed his luck. How could he bring about total destruction with a small army of paranoid, elitist, illiterate ass-hats? He looked at the egg.

“Okay, egg. Impress me.”

The Egg Robot spun a little on it’s wide base and glowed. It then began shouting a strange litany in a monotone voice.

“United Church of God, Masses Weekly! (link) RT this ad to get a pink iPad 2 (link)! Real estate Prices are crashing! Get your forclosure today! (link) Obama wants to pay you to go back to school! (link) Why you need liability insurance! (link)…”

The whale froze in awe of the robotic voice devoid of emotion trying to reach the hopes and fears of hopeless mortals. The egg spun faster and glowed brighter. The Whale could feel the glass heating up from the shear energy and turned his large head. After a blinding flash of light, the whale dared look out the glass again.

There were millions of them.

A million eggs. Each spinning and glowing and making more eggs. An army of eggs. An invasion of cold, unattached mercenary eggs.

The Fail Whale looked out at the egg robot army and nodded his approval. It was good. He would lead this army to the ruination of Twitter.

It was the dawn of the Twitterpocalypse. None would be left in their wake.

Parody picture by Sabrina @introvertedwife