So did you notice that tonight’s starting sentence came from dk Levick ‘s 5MinuteFiction based off of Tuesday’s prompt? Good stuff, huh? So check out his book too, OK? 🙂
Good, very smart of you. Now, on to tonight’s finalists! Thank you for stopping by for our Special Evening Edition of 5MinuteFiction. We got some new faces, authors who have never been able to participate before so YAY and welcome.
From among these fantastic entries, the following finalists were chosen.
Chris Blanchard, @blanchardauthor
So give them a read, give them a vote, and send all those you love and hate, to vote as well.Voting is open until noon tomorrow.
Then be back tomorrow at 12:00pm, EDT, to find out who WINS!
He’d lie awake, chilled from the cold sweats that troubled his infrequent dozing. His abominable fear of the dark hadn’t gotten better with age, as everyone had promised. He was still sure that his death waited in the shadows. He didn’t fear a monster under the bed or in his closet. He knew those were fantasies, fancies of a little boy. No, now he feared black widow spiders, snakes, things that were real, things that could make their way through cracks, pipes, lurking out of sight, waiting to bite.
It was pure paranoia, but he turned on his lamp again anyway, waking his latest girlfriend. They were all so considerate at first, but after a few night even sleep masks weren’t enough for most of them.
“Chester?” she asked groggily. “Oh, did I turn that off. I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t mean to.” Tossing she rolled over and hugged him across the chest. “You leave it on, and I’ll stay to make sure you wake in the morning.” She yawned and adjusted the mask on her face. “Go to sleep.” She started to hum until it faded into heavy deep breaths that were soon echoed by his own.
He hoped Laurel wasn’t like the others. He hoped she’d stay till morning, and the morning after, and the morning after that.
He’d lie awake, chilled from the cold sweats that troubled his infrequent dozing. The body still lay on his kitchen floor, no matter how many times he went to make sure it was really gone as soon as he closed his eyes his mind told him it was still there. He could no longer sleep.
He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face. The water ran off bright red, he screamed, jarring himself back to life and back to the swirling clear liquid running down the drain. He could not feel clean. He turned on the water to full hot then stepped out of his clothes. They were still sticky with blood even though the clothes he had been wearing were buried —in the kitchen— along with the body. He scrubbed again, it was his fourth shower since he returned, the bottom of his bathtub was caked with mud and blood and hair and nothing, he had used two bottles of bleach but it all kept coming back.
He used the barbecue brush to scrub off the evidence again. This time the water ran red for real as layers of skin peeled off his body. The blistering heat numbed the pain in the shear volume of pain recepticles it overloaded, still he scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed.
Chris Blanchard, @blanchardauthor
He’d lie awake, chilled from the cold sweats that troubled his infrequent dozing. He was doing it again now. Richard sighed and sat up, giving up on trying to get back to sleep, afraid of what would happen if he did. He hadn’t had a good nights sleep in nearly a week now. Not since the incident. Not since the Man in White invaded his dreams. Every night, it was the same thing. The man in a white suit, with a long white, fur lined coat, white had, white sunglasses and white cane would appear. He even had white hair. All he did was stare at Richard. An intense stair, despite not being able to see his eyes. It always made Richard break out in sweat, both in and out of the dream. He would turn to run, but he never got anywhere. The Man in White was always in front of him, no matter where he turned, laughing a maniacal laugh.
Richard sighed again, and pulled a Red Bull from the mini fridge he kept in his room. He flicked on the computer, and once again did a search on every search engine he could find on a Man in White, in dreams, out of dreams. And once again, found nothing. He needed to figure this out soon. He needed some sleep.
Up above Richard’s room, looking in through a small window that was invisible from below, a man dressed all in white looked down at him. He smiled, lifting his walking cane to his lips, he flipped the top open and pressed a small red button.
“The experiment is proceeding well,” he whispered. “I am ready to proceed to phase two.”
He’d lie awake, chilled from the cold sweats that troubled his infrequent dozing, going over that moment again and again. Picking it apart, looking for any tiny way that he could have altered the outcome. What if he had left the office on time instead of stopping to talk to the pretty new girl? What if he’d called in sick that morning? What if he’d walked that day instead of taking the car? If he had done any of these things, would she still be alive? Or would someone else have taken his place in delivering that fatal blow?
Every time he closed his eyes he’d see the fear in those young green eyes as they came through the windscreen. She had appeared out of nowhere, and now she would never be anywhere ever again.
He’d lie awake, chilled from the cold sweats that troubled his infrequent dozing. It was a rare night that saw him get three straight hours of sleep, and a rare morning that saw him eat breakfast with a spoon that didn’t tremor. This morning was not one of those mornings.
The buzzer at the door hummed, as broken as he was.
“Ben!”
He stared at the intercom. Someone using his name.
“I found her.”
He hadn’t left his apartment in three months, but in that moment he soared, out of the window, across the overcrowded city, taking in every human breath, every sigh, every wish. His chair scraped across the kitchen floor as he raced across the room to press the button.
“Can she do it?” he asked the box. “Can she stop it?”
[poll id=”55″]
