Terminal

PHOTO PROMPT© Jan Wayne Fields

What had started as a tiny whisper, barely heard among the unrelenting hustle and bustle of his thoughts and aspirations had slowly grown—so slowly that he hadn’t even noticed, save for the occasional headache. As it’d grown, so had the whisper, eventually turning into a thunderous, agonizing roar. Michael could feel the awful thing camped out inside his head, at the base of his skull. Terminal, his doctor had called it.

He fled to the forest when the thing inside started stealing control of his motor functions. There in his tent, he left the world on his own terms.

—

Monsters come in all shapes and sizes. Some even sneak up on you and make your body their cozy, little den. I wrote a story last week too, but never got around to posting it. Not the first time. Probably won’t be the last either.

Written for Friday Fictioneers.

Click here to read stories from the other Fictioneers.

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He Slept On Her Floor

He slept on her floor night after night to protect her from the monsters that she believed lurked under her toddler bed, just waiting for an opportunity to snatch her away. There never were any monsters, but she didn’t know that.

He slept on her floor because she had asked him to. She’d never asked to be sick, but life isn’t always fair.

He slept on her floor to spend as much time with her as he could. There would come a time, all too soon, when he wouldn’t be able to. She was his world, and he would be lost when she was gone, but until then the greatest gift he could give her was his time.

He slept on her floor because he loved her.

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Written for The Short Story and Flash Fiction Society’s Flash Fiction Contest #6. I was going to write a horror story for the contest, and in a sense I guess I did just that, just not the horror I had originally planned. I seem to have gone with a real life horror instead.