Today's word is: Communism!

               The children all filed in one by one. The room had been laid out into each individual desk, all facing inward toward a bowl of sweets, which were all the same size. Graham stood at the back of the room and waited for his class to file in.

               “What’re we doing?” Toby, a very short ginger boy missing all of his front teeth, asked.

               “Today we’re going to learn about different societies and how they share, or don’t.” The children all looked at each other, and then around the room. Half of them were already staring at the bowl of sweets in the middle.

               “I want everyone to take a seat. Girls on the green seats, boys on the blue ones. Quickly.” He was doing his best to sound authoritative but it just came out a little pleading. Already the class troublemaker, Neil, was complaining.

               “This is stupid-..”

               But before he could keep going, Graham held a hat out to him filled with ‘jobs’. “You can go first then.” Neil looked at Graham warily and sat on a blue seat. Tentatively, he put a hand into the hat. One could hear a pin drop in the silence.

               “Policeman.” The boy read out, wiping his mop of unruly hair from his eyes. “Does this mean I’m in charge, Mr Daggerly?”

               Graham turned around to Mr Daggerly, who was taking notes in one corner. “I don’t know, Neil. Why not ask your teacher?”

               The kid’s face ranged through several emotions. All eyes were on Graham, suddenly, and he could feel them burning into him.

               “Well… err... yes-.. No!” He shook his head, before walking into the centre of the room and picking up the bowl of sweets. “Who knows what “communism” is? Has anyone heard that word before?”

               No response. Emma and Brad were doodling on each other’s books, while Toby was now looking at the ceiling. The class was getting restless, the plan falling apart. But slowly, a hand rose.

               “Isn’t it where everyone gets paid the same for doing different things ‘cause every job is meant to be worth the same?” It was Neil. Graham raised an eyebrow, eyeing the lad speculatively. For weeks, Neil hadn't spoken so much as a whisper to him unless he wasn't supposed to. It’d been a nightmare, but why had he changed his mind so quickly?

               Graham cleared his throat. “That’s more or less correct.” He offered the bowl to Neil, who seemed perplexed, before picking out an orange chew. “Can I have it now?”

               Chuckling, the prospective teacher nodded.

               “This week, everyone’s going to be assigned different roles. Because we’re pretending to be a communist state, if you do your job, whatever it may be, you will be ‘paid’ for you efforts.”   And like that, the attention had been drawn back. Mr Daggerly made a long note and smiled, rising up from his chair with a grunt.

               “I’m sure you can take it from here, Mr Westerk.”

Today's word is: Axis!

               The room was dark, that was for sure. Not badly lit… just… dark. It looked as though someone had poured Vimto over everything, and then added skulls and spikes to whatever remained. The curtains had little bones hung in them, and a box beeped sinisterly in the corner.

               “Tell me again why you want the position?” That snapped my attention back. The interrogator had a pointed black beard that could’ve been made from plastic as easily as it was from hair. His moustache bristled whenever he spoke, and occasionally the air was punctuated with a sneeze as his facial fur tickled his nose. I felt a little let down. A wall chart to my right denoted how many evil deeds they had done, each one marked with a tiny sad face.

               “Well, I want to provide the world with my power. We are the true leaders, after all.” The line was rehearsed, and I hastily shook my sleeve over my arm to cover up the biro. The man in the middle leant back, pressing his fingertips into a chapel. “You think you’re that good?”

               I know I am, but you obviously don’t. The woman to his right arched her drawn on eyebrows. “Well, prove it then.” Ah balls, telepath. I’d forgotten that. Her head was big enough, I’d totally forgotten. I couldn’t even see her scraped back hair behind that huge forehead.

               “Prove… how?” I blanked. I didn’t think my audition would involve a practical exam.

               “If you want to join our organisation, you’ve got to show your worth! Prove to us your intent for mayhem!” Her voice was like a cat with a chainsaw up its arse. Profoundly annoying.

               “Please, I don’t deal in mayhem.” I stood up, my lab-coat falling into place. I straightened my goggles upon my head and drew back my left sleev-.. No! the right one, that one was still covered in scrawlings.

               “This is a crowd controller.” I said simply, showing off the device on my wrist. It looked like a regular watch, except about three times bigger, and I had designed the ‘face’ into a one way reflective mirror. Sound-waves come out, but anything that could foil my plans would be bounced back. “I designed it myself, it’s state of the art, and cuts all that mucky ‘making people panic’ crap out.”

               The last of my three judges stayed silent… well, as silent as you could behind a respirator. The mask was shaped like a tube, almost like a gas-mask, but a foul-smelling gas eroded at my nostrils each time he came close. It smelled like a mixture between toe-goop and an unclean kitchen. Anyway, he leaned toward my arm for a closer look, and I seized my chance.

               I sharply flicked my wrist, and the coalesced sound wave spun from behind the mirror into the face of the masked man. The other two recoiled suddenly, covering their ears. My masked puppet stood up, and I laughed a high, false laugh.

               “He’s more or less completely redundant now. Observe.” I moved my wrist back, and he stumbled forward, his arms swiping clumsily for my controller. He missed, obviously, and crashed into a cheaply reformed table from Ikea, knocking over a globe pricked with tiny black flags in the process. It’s not exactly an evil looking shop, after all.

               The bearded man stood up, and cast his hand forward, as if throwing dice. “Enough, let him go.” Oh really? I don’t really think so. I raised my wrist and shot another sound-wave, this time at the bearded man, who immediately lost consciousness and collapsed in a heap.

               The woman raised her arms, giving up. “Fine, what do you want from us then? Are you from the good guys, or something?” I swooped down and placed the bearded man back into his chair. Mask boy was still fumbling on the floor, dragging himself like a zombie toward my wrist. I shut the crowd controller off and grinned, brushing my hair out of my eyes.

               “I’m taking over. The Murky Brothers is just so…. Ugh.. It sounds like we’re doomed to fail.” I walked behind their bench, and eyed the flag, a purple splodge on a black background, before tearing it down, and replacing it with my own, which I produced from inside my coat. It was the only white thing in the room besides my own coat, the centre reflected with silver thread to shape a seven pointed star.

               “Henceforth,” I said, shaking the bearded man back to life, “We are the Axis of Brilliance. And we will blind humanity with our glory."

               "But why "Axis?" Big-head asked, while Beardy still attempted to make sense of what was happening. I walked to the globe, now on the floor, and spun it on it's poles. "Because, my planet-headed lady, humanity will revolve around us. Now, who wants me to use my crowd controller to make some business executives perform a scene from Twilight in their underwear?"

Today's word is: Spout!

               It lay in pieces.

               The handle was smashed beyond repair, and a few shards still dug into the wall from the throw. It was difficult to tell why I was so choked over just a china teapot.

               I couldn’t hear footsteps, and none of the doors were opening. The same calm had settled as if I had stepped outside after a snowstorm. Muffled. The air was dusty, mingled with a tang of iron and her favourite aromatic ginseng. I cast my gaze from where I laid. Chairs were tipped in every direction, the table itself was on its side. At some point, the crystalline light above had been taken down, but I couldn’t see where it was.

               The light from outside dampened the room in pastel shades, not really bright enough to show me what happened, but enough that I saw every picture of me that hung around the room was ruined. A fork stuck out of my forehead in the family photo above the sofa; and that triggered everything.

               Darrel told me I wasn’t his father. He screamed for his brother and screamed for himself. I remember I told them the truth, and they blamed me for it. I think I do too, really.

               The back of my hand was chafed, a little raw. It was Julie’s locket, open with me and the boys inside. What else could I tell them? It clicked shut, but I knew I couldn’t really shut her out. I’m not even supposed to yet; I’m still new to being widowed.

               Everything I felt must’ve hit Darrel over a hundred times. The room was evidence enough of that. I wish I knew where he was, he was ever the delicate child. I wanted to sort the chairs, fix the pictures. But I needed to get my priorities straight.

               My face was lined from the grooves in the planks on the floor. Did I sleep here all night? Probably. I just hope everyone else found somewhere to stay. I must’ve been out for the count. Dirt drifted off me as I rose, but as I did, I felt a dagger between my ribs. Shaking, I looked down.

               Part of the teapot stuck out, cut through the cotton, skin and flesh. I wondered how deep the thing was lodged. It was kinda funny, in a way. It trickled blood a bit like the dregs at the end of the pot. I grit my teeth and yanked. A spray of blood, but it wasn’t that bad after all.

               Still. It wasn’t that which hurt the most.

Today's word is: Defenestrate!

               “Now, I call this meeting in the name of our Lord, and his majesty King Rupert IV,” the Archbishop continued, eyeing the table with disdain. “and for all of your sakes, I hope you’ve got better news this time.”
               The knights all looked at each other, apprehensive. What exactly could they say? The man claiming to be a wizard was just an old man with a sock on his head. He was harmless, and definitely didn’t need executing.

               Sir Archibald stood up, his chainmail rattling in the draughty stone room. The evening sun was sinking, and without any help, the ‘wizard’ would be killed at dawn. He looked toward the grand north-facing window, frowning. “Well, Archbishop, he’s… well.. not a wizard..?”

               The Archbishop’s face turned puce. He seemed really eager to kill something that day. He turned the tiny window frame of gold that hung around his neck, glaring at Archibald down his crooked nose.

               “No. Execution! I want to see that man fly from the tallest room in the tower!” there was a little ball of spit-bubbles resting at the corner of his lip. Another knight got to his feet.

               “I hate to say it, your excellence, but you’re horribly outnumbered.” Sir Quincy rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. Two more of the knights took a stand behind him. “We can’t let you murder an innocent man.”

               By now, the Archbishop’s prune-face was the same colour as an off tomato. A vein in his neck threatened to burst. “That’s it! You knights don’t understand the Lord of Window’s power! I, Archbishop Hubert von Vierecken will demonstrate his powe-..”

               Sir Archibald grabbed the thin man by his shirt and whispered, “You mean defenestrate, right?” For a second, a spasm somewhere between incoherence and embarrassment crossed his purple cheeks. “What do you-…”
               And with a crash, Sir Archibald shattered the north window with the Archbishops frail body, depositing the useless twit onto the cobbles below before wondering what to have for tea.

Today's word is: Familiar

               He could only see a face staring back at him. Vaguely lined, looking a little drawn maybe. It was difficult to tell if he was an old or a young man in the dark; the dank curtains were only letting in a few shards of light at a time. Graham watched as the man rubbed his face, leaning on the grime-stained sink before him. The same set of curtains could be seen behind the man, billowing slightly in front of open windows. The bed standing behind the other guy caught his attention, a tangled mass of linen covered a girl with equally as tousled blonde hair. He wasn’t sure who she was, but she seemed familiar.

               Birdsong flew through the window, and for a second everything seemed peaceful, up until it was utterly drowned out by an angry sounding jackhammer. The grating of steel on stone rattled Graham’s brain, and without thinking, he popped a headache tablet in his mouth, copying the man stood behind the sink. What exactly happened last night anyway? In flashes, he remembered being at a club; one of the really dingy ones. There was a girl…. Oh, the girl in bed.. he hoped nothing happened. The final flash brought an image to mind. He couldn't place it, but he remembered being really freaked out by something. The more Graham thought about it, the harder it seemed to recall what it was.

               He looked up, and stared directly at the man behind the mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, and watering a little bit, and his reflection’s ruffled hair matched his own. But as Graham began to yawn, the other man spoke up.

               “Do you want to see what’s behind the glass in the mirror?”

               Graham's stared with disbelief. Rubbing his eyes did no good.
               Is this what happened last night?

About Sudden Fiction Sundays

Sudden Fiction Sundays are all about exploring a single word to create a piece of flash fiction.

For those who don't know, flash fiction tends to be a piece of written work, anywhere between one sentence  to about a 500 words long, and contain all the things of a longer story, like characters, a plot, and structure, but are hyper-condensed into bite-sized, easily read pieces. 

Now, what I plan to do every Sunday is to open a dictionary at a random page, and write a piece of flash fiction about it. And hopefully this will be as entertaining for me as it is for you.

The first Sudden Fiction Sunday starts tomorrow (03/03/13) so I hope you're ready for a thimbleful of plot-twists and drama!

- The Sudden Scholar