Flash Fiction Friday 2023 – Week 11

Flash Fiction Friday continues in 2023. New pieces appear every Friday on my Patreon throughout the year. The minimum pledge to read them before anyone else is $3 per month. and the number of pieces available is tied to the monthly pledge total so the more you support my efforts, the more you’ll get to read. Find out what they’re all about and check out some excerpts from this week’s update in this post.

Excerpts

Drinking Game

It was always a good day to drink beer at the O’Malley household, but St. Patrick’s was special. The Irish family that had been living in New York for the last twenty years liked to use the occasion to hold a drinking contest. Friends and family were invited to chug down as many pints as possible and whoever held out the longest received hefty prize money. Ten years had gone by since the first edition and, during that time, no one had ever been able to defeat Connor, the oldest son of the family. His tolerance was legendary and he always came out on top.

“Not today,” Maria said, leaning by the living room door. “I bet I can take you on.”

“You’re joking, right?” Connor replied.

“Does it look like I’m joking?”

“Hey Scott, you should put some sense in your girl’s head before she says anything else she’ll regret.”

(…)

Playing Along

Daniel was confused. Of all the fun things he could be doing on a Friday night, kneeling in the kitchen of Emma’s place was not one of them. She sat in front of him, dangling her thigh-high vinyl black boots as if they were irresistible hypnotic pendants which wasn’t that far from the truth.

“Please, let me go,” he asked, his legs feeling as if they were made of lead.

“Hmm, how about no?” she teased. “This is fun.”

“For whom?”

“For the only person that matters, dear: me.”

“But I don’t want to do this,” he shook his head from side to side.

“Your mouth may say that but your body and mind are proving otherwise…” she giggled.

(…)

The Cycle

So… here we are once more. You said you were done with hypnosis and that you would never fall for any of my tricks again and yet here you are, practically begging me to be my subject again. Do you know why that is or do you need me to explain things to you like you’re a five-year-old? Okay then.

I suppose that the best way for you to understand what it’s been happening to you as of late is for us to go back to the day we first met. Do you remember that? I do. You were halfway through your morning jog in the park when I accidentally ran into you and we both fell on the ground laughing. Such an innocent little mistake, right? Yeah, well, sometimes coincidences are just that but, sometimes, they’re planned.

Yes, dear. Before that day, I had spent six months scoping you out from a distance to learn what you liked and disliked so that when the time was right you would immediately feel drawn to me, and you did.

(…)

We Love You

It all began with a spell. Not a run-of-the-mill second-grade knockout incantation you can find on the center pages of a mystic magazine but the real deal, a power of old that should not be wielded by any human being on the face of the planet, let alone a college student who only desired to be popular for once in her life.

When Kelly read from the old grimoire her mother gave her shortly before she passed, she expected to unleash something powerful yet shortlived, a love spell that would give her the attention she craved for a while before dissipating into the ether, but she was wrong. The exotic swirl of magic enveloped her and then exploded in every direction, causing all the city lights to go out at the same time. When they came back on, the world had changed forever and so had her presence in it.

She noticed something was odd when her friend Marnie called her, saying,

“I love you.”

(…)

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