January is National Blood Donor Month!
With that in mind, I thought we’d choose blood as the theme this week. While that may sound initially sound morbid, remember that blood doesn’t necessarily mean “gore” (although there’s nothing wrong with that); blood sustains life.
As such, I’ve chosen some people and creatures and locations that, for better or for worse, we often associate with blood.
Side note: Although I’m not judging this week, I’ll have you know that I do frown upon the depiction of bats as evil creatures. No, really. Please be creative!
As usual, our contest will begin with three things: character, setting, and genre.
We spun, and our three elements are character: doctor, setting: battlefield, and genre: romance.
Feel free to write a story using those or spin a new set of your own. Be sure to include which three elements you’re using.
- vampire
- doctor
- patient
- soldier
- serial killer
- vampire bat
- hospital
- cave
- castle
- battlefield
- dungeon
- insane asylum
- horror
- fantasy
- romance
- drama
- comedy
- poem
Judging this week are last week’s winners, AV Laidlaw and Steph Ellis. 🙂
All submissions should be 100 words in length, give or take 10 words (90 – 110 words). You have until midnight, New York time to submit.
(currently available in the US, the UK, Australia, and other territories), or a similarly priced book of their choosing; alternatively, winners may elect to have the monetary equivalent donated to World Reader or another literacy-related charity.If you like, you may incorporate the following photo prompt (not required).
Did you know that donating blood can save up to three people’s lives? It’s an amazing gift you can gift someone! Interested in donating?
US – http://www.redcrossblood.org/ or http://www.unitedbloodservices.org/
Canada – https://www.blood.ca/
UK – http://www.blood.co.uk/
Organizations in other areas – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_blood_donation_agencies
Name: @dazmb
Twitter: @dazmb
Words: 102 (Not including title)
Elements: Vampire bat, cave, poem
Title: Beliefs about God
There is a cave, where shadows gather.
It’s full of the things you cannot name,
a leather wing beat, a skittering echo,
skimming the pulse of the night.
And it’s not the dead it hopes to find,
but rather a blurring light
sensed deep within the Earth’s arterial stink.
and a juddering amnesia, to gently lull you
as it inches through a straggle of hair
to feed, blood warm, on echoes of pain and sweetness.
Gently unpicking the face of your fears
renewing their fabric,
until you wake the next day
and all you can remember
is the iridescent radiance
of hummingbirds.
Lovely. Skimming the pulse of the night is a beautiful line, but the whole piece is really good.
This is lovely.
Final Farewells
Lieutenant Jeffers crawled over the trench, ill-trusting the Germans to respect a flag of truce, even though they also used it to gather their wounded.
As he wormed his way through the mud and detritus, he was viscerally aware of how his white coat must stand out. He couldn’t bear to waste time divesting himself of the garment, not when he’d seen Petersen go down.
Nearing the location, Jeffers called out, Kraut snipers be damned. Feeble movement caught his eye, and he corrected course.
“You’re a dashed fool, coming out here. There’s nothing to be done.”
“Quite so, ” he said, wrapping Petersen in his arms one last time. “Hush.”
Doctor/Battlefield/Romance
108 words
@davejamesashton
Oh, this one made me cry! Well done.
You paint a good picture with the description of the white coat. I enjoyed reading this.
Ah, Lieutenant Jeffers’ is a hero in his white coat. So sad …
Dream Doctor
@hollygeely
Doctor, battlefield, romance
109 words
Jim was lying in a ditch in a pool of blood. He insisted he’d been dreaming of war. The blood was from the soldiers, he said, because he had to bandage their wounds.
Ed had been in love with Jim for years, but he was a cop.
“Who’s you kill, Jim?”
“It was the dream! Please believe me.”
Ed wanted to, but he was banned from the case due to conflict of interest.
Jim was tied to the disappearance and implied murder of several war veterans. He wasn’t sentenced because they found him dead in his cell.
No one could explain the bloody bandages he used to strangle himself.
Love a bit of mystery. And great twist at the end! I didn’t see that coming, even with the title.
Nice, I didn’t see that twist coming at the end.
Just realised I’ve edited out the bit about it being a blood-red rose. LOL
That Which We Call A Rose
When the unexploded bomb was dug up on the allotments, the authorities evacuated the area. Frank, however, wasn’t prepared to have his prizewinning rosebush, named after his wife, blown to smithereens by some relic from the past, so he snuck through the cordon to save it. But he wasn’t quick enough and became caught in the controlled blast.
Miraculously saved from serious harm, he was discovered hanging upside down from the runner bean’s netting. After having his minor injuries checked over by a doctor, Frank become something of a local celebrity, living off tales from the allotment for the rest of his life; always wearing a blood-red rose.
Doctor/Battlefield/Romance. W/C 109 @carolrosalind
Deleted the other one for you. 🙂
Thank you :–)
This is fun. Sweet and romantic. I like the addition of the rose.
Night Shift
It was a slow night in the ER and Dr. Bela Lukacks glanced at the clock. She tried not to think of her hunger, the irresistible urge that was even more addictive than the craving for sugar the nurses were always joking about. She went outside for a walk around the parking lot to calm her nerves.
The paramedic lounging by the ambulance was young and handsome. He had a taste for older women, too.
Tonight, the full moon would bring out the crazies, and there would be gunshot victims. There would be more blood. Dr. Lukacks wiped her lips and smiled. No question she had to cut down.
@voimaoy
109 words
doctor/hospital/horror
I like the idea that blood’s even more addictive than sugar . I also liked that line, he had a taste for older women, too. I enjoyed reading it.
Thanks so much for reading!
Sorry–the elements should be vampire/ hospital/ horror
Ha, another vampire doctor. Yours seems to be enjoying herself more than mine, I reckon. I love the “more addictive than sugar” line 🙂
Thank you!
Brilliant! Love that last line. 😉
Thanks, Sal. Much appreciated!
Long Term Plans
100 words
I associate colors with emotions. It’s easy to do and means I don’t need to over-think things. Pale blue is calm; dark blue, depression; deep red, anger; orange, confusion. The list goes on.
Carl is wearing pale blue. He’s trying to project calm, but it isn’t reaching as far as his eyes. They are tight and hard, holding back his anger. He has never looked so handsome.
“You’re co-operation, Duncan, is mandatory if you want to stay out of twenty-four hour lockup.”
Such a pretty flush on his soft cheeks. When I escape, I’ll kill him last.
Elements: Serial Killer/Insane Asylum/Romance
@clivetern
Ooh! Starts of calm and then you go in for the kill, I like it.
Well-done! Great character in so few words.
Clever. Great final line.
Crazy Making
“The trick is, of course, to keep a healthy balance. The right number coming in; an equal number refreshed.”
“Doctor, you sound like a travel agent?”
“There are similarities, Nurse Droll. Real life is hectic. Here, at the Sunshine and Lollipop your Pills Retreat for the Temporarily Unhinged, we offer a gamut of creature comforts, unsurpassed pharmaceuticals, and the most soothing Muzak. Mouskouri, Mantovani, and, of course, Der Bingle.”
“It sounds too simple, Doctor.”
“The outer world bleeds them dry, Droll. We pamper rich, wilting, woebegone roses. Put colour back in their sagging cheeks. If we perform our glorious calling well, they will always come back.”
“Always?”
“Yes, Droll. Always.”
110 Pacebos
@billmelaterplea
http://www.engleson.ca
Doctor/Insane Asylum/Comedy
Funny! Love the name of the establishment and enjoyed the meaning and sound of ‘our glorious calling’ I particular.
The Clinic
Her eyes focused on the pink roses by the bed. She was here for a tummy tuck. And liposuction. And she’d been persuaded to have her nose done. Three for two. As she became more conscious she wondered why it was so dark. The bright walls, lilac curtains and pastel paintings were gone. Everywhere was black and dripped with slime. Flaming torches and rattling chains. Groans, howls and the smell of blood. A row of noses on a shelf. Jar upon jar of yellow fat. Hanging faceless carcasses. A swathe of pale stretched skin had replaced the bedcovers. She put her hand to her sticky face. Something was very wrong.
Patient – Dungeon – Horror
110 words
@SalnPage
#FlashDog
This is real horror! That last line is terrifying.
Emily Clayton
@emilyiswriting
100 words
elements: patient, battlefield, horror
Meadows of Deception
See their eyes? They’re watching me. Waiting for me to stumble. Waiting for the moment they can rise from blood-drenched forms, grab rusted daggers, and drive each point deep into my belly.
They’re coming! Dragging twisted flesh and jagged bone, the rot, the sludge, the stink.
You reach out to soothe fears. You see the battlefield as it is; I see it how it was. How it still is beneath sweet meadow grass and swooping meadowlarks dotting the sky.
Gopher hole opens; your ankle sinks deep.
I shriek and flee, knowing by your screams each time the dagger strikes home.
A Lovely War
A.J. Walker
Alfredo trudged back to his tent, trying to forget the young Private’s face as his life had slipped away in the battlefield.
Sobbing was coming from his tent; he wasn’t expecting a visitor. When he entered he saw it was his beautiful Wendy.
‘Oh Fredo, it’s the worst news!’ she blurted.
He placed both hands on her hips. ‘My love, what’s wrong?’
‘It’s the war. I’ve heard it’s over,’ she gasped. ‘We’ll never see each other again.’
Alfredo felt he’d been punched. Home to his wife; Wendy back to her husband.
‘I suppose it’s been four years. We’ve had a good run.’
‘Is it wrong to hope for another war?’
____
@zevonesque
WC: 110
Battlefield, Doctor, Romance
I rather like Alfredo and Wendy. Yeah, let a few more thousand people die so they can stay together! And two semi-colons in 110 words … good work! 😉
Adam, Eve, and 5E+10 Spectators
Dave @ParkInkSpot
100 words. soldier, cave, (bloody) romance
—————–
“It’s entire other civilization like ours. Hurry, we’re almost there.” The corporal’s blood thrummed with feverish eagerness.
Tiptoeing carefully through the Stygian darkness, his ears strained in vain for any sound other than the echo of his own footsteps. Fortunately, senses better than his own were providing active guidance. When he rounded the flowstone outcropping, a patch of luminescent rock illuminated the mud streaked, disheveled face of an adolescent girl.
“Corporal, meet the only other surviving civilization of the Romeo and Juliet War, about twenty five billion nano-enhanced lymphocytes—and their macro scale host, of course. Her name is Susan.”
“Thirteenth Victim”
Serial Killer—Cave—Fantasy
100 words exactly
@patrickjstahl
His heavy breathing echoes, bouncing back from the cave’s terminal slope to chill my neck. I claw for a crevice in the rock. Sweat trickles down my brow. One drop sweeps into my eye, and I let out a tiny whimper.
The wizard sighs, a haggard cough. He mutters some ancient word; every muscle in my body contracts. My lungs pop in my chest.
“I’m sorry,” says the wizard. “Your head is not aright, and that is not your fault.”
The blackness squeezes tighter and stiffer. My head crushes into a granule of agony.
I chose my thirteenth victim poorly.
Monster
Blood everywhere – were it not for her special smell-filtering face mask… She pushes the thoughts away.
Focus.
One fatality: the shooter himself. She needs to work faster than ever to keep the body count from rising, given some of the victims’ injuries.
‘Dr. Smith, there are too many, even for a super-surgeon like you.’
She pats the nurse’s hand.
‘We’ll see.’
She will save everyone. But once she’s done, people will ask questions – that speed, it’s inhuman. She’ll have to pack up and leave.
Again.
The gunman did this damage. But if people knew what she is, they’d call her monster.
_____
@_supersonya
100 words
vampire — hospital — horror
that should be “special smell-filtering face mask” in the first line…
I updated it for you. 🙂 Should the word count be 101, now?
Thank you! Yes, it’s 101 words now, I suppose.
Great story! You create real sympathy for this character–who is the monster, indeed.
Excellent! And I’d love a ‘special smell-filtering face mask’ 😉
Blood. Lust.
As the gunshots echo through the hills I feel my heart racing. I pray today will bring me what I need.
I push that thought to the back of my mind. I need to end this obsession. It can’t continue. I have an outlet for my desires on the battlefield, but what about when I go home?
I hear screaming. That’s promising. A group of young men rush towards me, dragging their comrade. I shiver as I see the red streaks and smell the metallic tang in the air. Femoral artery. I immediately dig my hands into the wound, feel the warmth, the pulsing.
Thump thump, thump thump, thump….
Heaven.
@todayschapter
110 words
@firdausp
(104 words)
Serial killer/ insane asylum/ romance
‘Madly in love’
I knew I had lost my mind the day Rose was stabbed.
I cried.
Six months in the insane asylum was taking its toll.
Blood oozed from her finger. I cried for her pain trying to hug her. She shrieked like a hyena, slapped me and got blood all over my face.
Ahh! The smell of blood. It felt good as I rubbed it in.
The guards took me to the head.
“I didn’t do it,” I insisted, “I love Rose.”
“Where did you get the knife?” He kept asking.
Stupid fool!
I eyed the pen, sticking out from his breast pocket.
Perfect weapon!
Please could you correct that to insane asylum instead of mental asylum. Thankyou.
Done. 🙂
Thankyou 🙂
— Dining In The Donjon —
“Come on, Vincent, sup up while it’s still hot!”
Vincent blinks at his tiny plate.
“Night after night, Mum, always the same. Couldn’t we have some fruit, say?”
Mrs Desmodus forces a high-pitched squeak.
“Please eat, darling. I got it from the guard after he fell asleep. I regurgitated it especially for you.”
“But Mum, I can’t take any more blood. I might even be…” He pauses. “Vegetarian.”
“Vincent, love. This was always going to happen. Me and your late father tried our best to bring you up like us. But the truth is, Vincent,” and she strokes his wing, “you’re adopted.”
—
vampire bat / castle / comedy
107 words
@edbroom
So funny! Well done!
TERRITORY
@jes3ica
doctor, battlefield, romance
110 words
Pit stop: Rosebud Battlefield. Lu’s muscles cramped from her pickup’s bucking hindquarters.
That time-folding of historical sites revealed the hydrology of war: bloodied soil transpiring to clouds which gather as blooddreams of setting suns.
Lu knifed her palm, brought it to the soil’s dry lips.
She watered battlefields across South Dakota. In Mankato, Lu cut too deep. She curdled with shame at her forearms, yardsticked with scabs. But the doctor cleansed each battlewound—a ritual creating a second tribute.
“Where’re you headed?”
“East. Backwards. My westward expansion didn’t go well.”
“So you’re…unsettling.” The doctor laughed hugely, unprofessionally. Lu fell in love with her, far above the thirsty ground.
—————
_(I feel I should get extra credit given that I rescued a bat in my office building this very evening…)_
Red Letter Home
I fear this to be a mortal wound. The marauders did not spare one of my fellow doctors or non-armed serviceman. My dearest Molly, you’ll forever be in my heart.
Love,
Henry
The Major collapsed on top of the handkerchief he had been writing his letter on . Dead.
His writing instrument, a thin shaft of wheat from the battlefield, fell back to the earth as his body released. The vial of his precious Molly’s blood that had been around his neck was now nearly empty. The contents of this morbid keepsake had been spent writing one final letter to his betrothed.
102 words
doctor, battlefield, romance
@BradyTheWriter