fiction

BG 168 – The shriek

A chilling shriek cut through the cold foggy night.
She was startled. What was that? A woman? She muted the TV, held her breath, and listened.
She heard nothing at first, but just when she had to breathe again, the muffled sound of running shoes echoed down the deserted street, followed by a charged silence.

What was she supposed to do? Go out to help?
Did someone really need help, or had she just imagined that cry of terror?
She turned off the lights in her living room and studio. Now only a faint strip of light from a street lamp shone in, where one of the shutters no longer closed properly. She walked over, bent down and peered out through the opening.

At first glance there was nothing to see.
Again she held her breath to listen carefully.
For a moment she thought she heard another scream, but it turned out to be the sound of an owl in the poplar behind the house.
She scanned the front yards across the street, the empty street, the strip of grass with young oaks and driveways on this side, the sidewalk.
Wait, she saw something! There was something on the sidewalk in front of her house. It hadn’t been there when she had closed the shutters earlier in the evening.
Was it…, was it a human?

She decided to go and have a look.
Quickly she put on her shoes and coat, she left the house through the back door and carefully walked through the cold mist in the dim light.
Wow! Out! The lights went out just as she reached the front of her house!
Ah yes of course, the streetlights always went out at this time. Usually she wouldn’t notice because she would have already gone to bed, in her bedroom at the back of the house.
She listened tensely, her eyes slowly adjusting to the dim light of the stars.

Moaning! Human moaning!
There was no longer any doubt, someone in need was laying there.
She wanted to quickly take the last few steps that separated her from the figure, but her legs wouldn’t move. Something, a signal from the primitive part of her brain, stopped her.
She had to make it clear that she was standing here, that help was on the way.
She cleared her throat. When there was no response, she coughed.
The figure moved a little and moaned again.

Why was she still standing here hesitating? They needed her help!
She took the last steps and bent over the person in the thick black winter coat. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked worriedly.
No, of course she was not okay. No one would lie on the sidewalk in the damp cold at night for fun, duh.
The woman, she now saw that it was an older woman, lifted her head with difficulty towards her and moaned unintelligibly.
‘What did you say? Don’t worry, I’m here, I’ll help you.’
As she dropped to her knees and moved even closer to the victim, they suddenly clamped two hands around her right wrist with astonishing force. “Now!” the woman cried in a loud voice.

The footsteps she had heard before came running their way again. And before she could react, two strong hands closed around her throat.
After a short struggle, she lost consciousness.

Since then, an older woman and a younger man have lived in her house. They use her car, her bed, her computer and her bank account. And nobody seems to care.

BG 145 – 100 Words Fiction

Two steps

He nearly broke his neck when late at night on the small wooden stairs in front of the bookcase on his right tiptoes he reached for a thick old book on the top shelf. When he had regained his balance and stood firmly on the steps again, he opened the book in a random place. Strangely enough, it felt as if the open page had been calling to him all evening. The text described an elderly man who excitedly leafed through an antique book and discovered very valuable information in it, just before he made a fatal fall.

BG 141 – The Swing Realm

“Not too high on that swing!” shouted an unfamiliar male voice behind her. But she didn’t care. The construction creaked every now and then, but it was able to support her almost mature body just fine. With her hands tightly wrapped around the rough ropes, sitting on the smooth-worn oak plank, she swung her legs straight forward and hanging in the ropes with the wind through her hair she went higher and higher.

At the highest point she felt for a moment like her intestines made a little jump, then she swung back down again. Past the lowest point she pulled her feet up toward the plank. High up at the back she hang motionless for a split second before whizzing forward again with even more speed and stretched legs, pulling on the ropes.

She went higher and higher. She felt like she was flying, like she was being released from the ground, from this playground, from her old neighborhood, from her narrow minded home.
Woohoo! Higher and higher! Forward – stretch, backward – fold.
Stretch – fold, stretch – fold, stretch – fold.
She could already look over the trees in the distance and see miniature houses and tiny cars and tiny people moving.
A sense of ultimate freedom washed over her.

“Not so high on that swing!” the same male voice called from behind her. Oh no? …

Read More »BG 141 – The Swing Realm

BG 125 – 100 Words Fiction

New route

This time everything was different. The route, the feeling, the arrival time, the destination. She walked along the deserted track and felt the cold rain, but in the distance there was always the mountaintop, sometimes shrouded in mist or watered by rain, more often silvery gray in the distant sunshine, while she walked in the shadows. Last time, on the previous route, she was he. He walked elsewhere, in another time, towards another fate. Initially, today was more promising, more challenging, but in the end still normal, as always. She walked close to where he used to walk.

BG 70 – 100 Words Fiction

Even though that isn’t true

You have said that – oh yes – you would like to camp in a tent in the garden. That you like that, almost under the open sky, with your almost naked body, when it is as warm as it is now. You have said that you – yes of course – want to continue, even though your girlfriend has canceled. You have said that you have no problems with itchy and buzzing bugs and that you can sleep well on such a thin mattress on the uneven ground.
And that you fortunately never have to pee at night.

BG 63 – 100 Words Fiction

They pretended to be smugglers

That they were smugglers, she had said, that that was ‘ooh’ exciting! That they had to watch out for customs. He didn’t know who that was, customs. Luckily, she had said that she would come back later to get him. He had believed her. That she had had to take his coat of course, as proof. It was cold. That he could find the way by looking at which side of the tree trunks the moss grew. But it was dark. She would come back to get him. He wasn’t sure he still believed her.