flynnfromblakely

  The last time I felt beautiful, before, was when I was twenty years old. That was when that mugger cornered me in the alley, armed with the horrible attitude of a desperate man and a bottle of what the police later told me was homemade acid. He got all of twenty-five dollars, but I lost so much more than that - my left pinky, although my face suffered the brunt of it. I got a prosthetic pinky, but - well, my face was harder to fix. And even when it was fixed, after a haze of surgeries, consultations, and more surgeries - it still didn't look  right.  It looked like - I was some horrible photocopy, slightly to the left of my own self. I lived like this for a year or two. I suppose - I don't know if anyone would want to hear about it. I withdrew from everyone. It was partially their doing, of course. Sideways glances, quiet whispered conversations about how I had changed. I guess they thought the acid had wrecked my ears, too. And eventually, I took the hint. I stopped go...

  She was tired. She assumed he had to be tired, too - it had been too long already, walking mile after mile after mile, and she resisted the urge to drop the bag she had just to walk faster, and finally lose the noise.   Oh, right. The noise. She had almost, for a brief, merciful moment, forgotten about it entirely. In trying to forget about their lives for a couple days, they had found the noise instead - a strange, one toned hum that had almost seemed pleasant at first.   “What is that?” She had asked, blinking up at him from their small breakfast - he had gotten the idea to camp in a field in the first place, and set up a picnic blanket so technically, they’d have a picnic-only diet for the whole vacation. “And don’t pretend you can’t hear it too - you scared me enough last time.”   She always enjoyed hearing his laugh, though, even though it was occasionally at her expense. “But it was only a cat last time. One of your cats.”   “Aristotle knocked the chair ...

 We both sat there, on opposite sides of a table so polished I was almost surprised I couldn’t see my reflection in it. The lights were dim, but still brighter than the phone flashlight I had been using to navigate. I blinked, waiting for my eyes to adjust. I wasn’t being recorded (at least, I didn’t think I was), but this was an interrogation, no matter how much he tried to hide it.   He folded his hands neatly in front of him. He wore gloves, but I knew he probably manicured his nails just like Max did. Or he taught Max to while growing up. But his whole demeanor was much less genuine. Finally, he spoke. “I hope things have been going well, Ms. Bishop. I am truly regretful we had to meet under these circumstances.”   His voice was warm and reassuring, without a hint of menace or malice. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, if there ever was one.   I felt a lump in my throat and tried my best to ignore it - he wouldn’t hesitate to have me landed in prison or Meadowbrook if h...

 My dreams have always frightened me. Even if they weren’t nightmares, they had something… off, about them. Faces were uncanny, surroundings too clear compared to the foreground, objects warping and changing in my hands as I tried my best to hang on to them, only for them to slip through my fingers. They say that you can’t just make up a face – that every face in your dreams, you saw somewhere. I wonder where I saw them first.   My dad was always more than willing to comfort me after nightmares – read one of the thousand books that I had shoved under my bed out of a fear of monsters. They can’t hide where they can’t fit. At least, that was the logic my nine-year-old self eagerly accepted. I was still terrified of the closet, though.   But the dreams were the worst. The weird thing was, I never watched scary movies, or read ghost stories, or any stuff like that. I was the stereotypical girl – I was never as social, but I wore skirts and headbands and kept a little purple d...

 It was stupid of me to be excited for that trip, I guess. Derek had invited me out to his cabin for the weekend for some camping - if you could call it that. Fishing, hunting - we were planning on watching the game on Sunday, too. I packed a couple of CDs to listen to on the way there - it was five hours away, but then again, you wouldn’t pitch a tent in the middle of a city, right?   I was able to watch the sunset as I drove. I’ve seen my fair share of sunsets on the road, but this one looked nicer than usual, painting the trees below it. Real novelist vocab, I know, but that’s what it looked like. Night didn’t settle in until I reached the trees, and the pines were dense enough to block out any light that was there in the first place. I had my high beams turned on, and they still seemed dim.   After driving for an hour or two along a road so bumpy it made corrugated sheet metal feel like polished marble, I saw the hand-painted sign for his house, and turned onto the eq...

Unless otherwise noted, all works here are fiction, and similarities between characters, settings and storylines shown here and preexisting works are purely coincidental, unless used as an homage or parody. Please enjoy your stay. -F.B. P.S.: If you'd like to support my work, you can provide a donation or commission a work here:  ko-fi.com/flynnbates