prompts

Before I get into the real purpose of this post, I’d like to mention that Flux (Book 1.5 of The Sunless World) is looking good for a January 15th aka This Friday release (hooray!). So grab the sparkling cider, the confetti, and the party hats, and I’ll see you then!

Having wrapped up the fairy tale prompt project, I feel a great need to make a list. And I’m sharing this list with you in case you missed a story. If you didn’t… well, keep reading because there’s something for you at the end of this post.

First, the List:

• To Grandma’s House (Red Riding Hood/Boxes)
• A Sackful of Treasure (Puss in Boots/Pinecones)
• Another Adventure (Little Mermaid/Gyrocopter)
• One Shot (Sleeping Beauty/Tranquilizer)
• Stitches in Time (Rapunzel/Yarn)
• A Royal Encounter (Frog Prince/Rose)
• Unforgiven (Rumpelstiltskin/Charging Bull of Wall Street)
• Home Before Midnight (Cinderella/Birthday Cake)

Next (and last), I would love for you to vote on which of the eight was your favorite. This isn’t an idle question–I have a cute idea for the winning story. What is that? Wait and see!

I haven’t quite decided what to do for blogged fiction this year. Once I’m past the launch of Flux (and finishing the first draft of Flare), I’ll do some thinky-thinking and figure out my options.

Until then, catch up on the stories you missed and pick your favorite.

The final prompt, requested by unboundscribe! Sorry it took so long. I made a false start that would’ve turned this from a flashfic to a short story. I liked the idea, but it defeated the purpose of these prompts, which was to to practice writing short.

The prompt is Cinderella/birthday cake. And since the Happy Birthday song is no longer under copyright, I took great glee in including a lyric or two. 😉

Enjoy!

Home Before Midnight

After her stepmother and stepsisters left for the ball, Ella disappeared into the kitchen in a flurry of ingredients and a clatter of pans.

Her first cake fell flat.

Her second fell to pieces when she tried to take it out of the pan.

Ella glared at the recipe as if it had personally betrayed her.

Then she rolled up her sleeves with floury hands. Her face set in an expression of determination her family would’ve instantly recognized—and realized they could do nothing but stay out of her way.

Right, then. Third time’s the charm.

Ella was elbow-deep in batter when her fairy godmother appeared in a shower of confetti. “Mind you don’t get any in my cake!” she warned.

“Ella, dear!” Her fairy godmother looked on disapprovingly. “You should be at the ball! Get out of the apron and I’ll change you into something suitable.”

“Not now.” Ella gave a final stir, then licked batter off her mixing spoon. “Delicious!”

“You’ll get sick doing that.” On that dire note, her fairy godmother disappeared in a puff of blue smoke and silver tinsel.

Ella shoved the cake into the oven. “Wake up!” she called to the dozing hearth salamanders. She shoveled food into their open mouths. Soon they were glowing red and contentedly humming.

Ella mixed frosting and sliced strawberries, one eye on the clock. Just after eleven.

There’s still time.

The cake came out of the pan perfectly. Ella flapped her apron above it. She didn’t know if it would help it cool faster or not, but she couldn’t sit still.

At quarter to midnight, Ella slathered the cake with frosting. Her ears strained for the rumble of carriage wheels.

Where are you? Time’s almost up.

At ten till, Ella arranged berries on the cake. Hooves clopped outside, John Coachman called to the horses.

Nearly there. The front door opened and footsteps pattered in the front hall. Ella stuck candles on the cake in a lamentably haphazard fashion. She held a taper for the salamanders, then lit the candles. Her stepsisters’ voices drifted into the kitchen, urging their mother to rest in her sitting room a minute.

Perfect.

Ella lifted the cake and carefully made her way through the corridors. The sitting room door opened before her; Anne winked and stood aside.

Ella entered the sitting room, singing behind a blaze of candles. Anne and Margaret joined in. “Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Mama…”

Her stepmother opened her eyes and sat straight and astonished in her chair. She looked at the grinning Ella. “I thought you had the headache and that’s why you couldn’t go to the ball! And Anne, weren’t you feeling faint? You insisted we come home right away.”

There was a babble of girlish voices.

“For shame, Mama! You think we’d forget your birthday?”

“The cat got into the cake we ordered from town earlier.”

“You were so worried about getting us dressed for the ball, we couldn’t sneak into the kitchen at all this afternoon…”

“…so Ella volunteered to stay home and make a cake…”

“But what about the Prince?” Mama asked Ella, genuinely distressed.

“It’s not like I won’t see him every day when we’re married, Mama.” Ella placed the cake in front of her stepmother. “But this is your last birthday we celebrate while I still live in this house.” As Mama’s eyes misted, she added, “For all two minutes that are left of it! Make a wish and blow out the candles!”

With a little laugh, surrounded by the vivacious faces of her three daughters, Ella’s stepmother did so.

Hope you enjoyed this and the other prompt-based stories. I had a lot of fun writing them and many thanks to all who participated.

And now for something a little different. I love writing stories just to share with you all. A rough count shows that I blogged 13 of them in 2015, comfortably meeting my one a month goal. For those of you who’d like to support my short fiction efforts, I’m including a Buy Me Chocolate button below. Because, yanno, chocolate leads to good things (and I don’t drink coffee).

Here’s to more short shorts in 2016!

This is for C. M. on Facebook, who prompted Rumpelstiltskin/Charging Bull of Wall Street.

Unforgiven

The immortals don’t forgive and they certainly don’t forget.

I didn’t take much from them: only a small ability to change a tiny handful of straw into a minute amount of gold, once a month, under certain strict conditions. If I was lucky.

And for that, they sent the Bull.

The first I knew of it was in India, by the banks of a brown-snake of a river. The Bull charged out of the churning waters, trailing plagues and curses and death. The people of the mud-brick cities fled, and so did I, into Persia.

The Bull followed me there and then across the plains, flattening mountains, gouging valleys.

That was only the beginning.

I never knew what form the Bull would take. I never knew whether it would steal up to me by night or come roaring after me by day. Sometimes it was enormous, blotting the sun. At other times it would slip on a cloak and hide in a crowd.

It charged me, horns lowered, eyes reddened, at an island festival. Men and women laughed as I leapt over its back, thinking I was one of their honored bull jumpers. It stalked me in a labyrinth under a palace on two legs, bull head heavy on a hairy man’s body.

The immortals disseminated their own warnings about theft from the gods. They told stories of foolish kings with golden-statue daughters. They turned me into a twisted dwarf with a ridiculous name, swallowed up by the earth.

Finally, I fled across the ocean, to the New World. The Bull pursued me there, across the mountains and the plains to the ranges of the west.

There I waited.

We fought our biggest battle in that place, a silent, secret struggle within mountain caves.

When it was over, the Bull was dissipated and I walked free.

I went east afterwards, where the buying and selling of hopes and dreams and the movement of numbers from column to column enthralled me more than gold ever had. I lived and breathed stocks and shares for decades, and smiled to see my old foe represented as a bronze statue on the streets I walked as a secret king.

Let it be a symbol. Let it be a good luck talisman.

In fact, I rubbed its nose bright every time I walked past it. I may have, in my most defiant moments, even grabbed it by the… horns.

Until last night.

Last night, as dusk fell, I walked past its hulking shape. As usual, I reached out for its nose.

My fingers never touched the metal.

They froze an inch away. The hair on the back of my neck rose.

The eye of the statue gleamed with the Bull’s red fury.

I felt hot breath on my neck. I heard the snort of the Bull’s hatred, the stamp of its hoof, the sizzle of its acid drool on the pavement.

I heard it straining to break loose.

And so I’m leaving.

I’ve packed a duffel, booked a ticket, moved money to secret accounts.

Tomorrow I’ll have a new name. A day later, I’ll be in a different place. After that, a new face.

The immortals never forgive and they never forget. They are implacable.

So is the Bull.

And he’s coming for me.