Hide in Plain Sight

© Jean L Hays

Hide in Plain Sight

The man screamed and jerked as the cattle prods jabbed into him until he lay still.

The cloaked, hooded figures enveloped him like hungry crows, before grabbing his feet and dragging him into their black windowed van.

I leaned against my door jamb on shaking legs and watched another of my friends heading for repentance camp.

The Inquisitors were getting better at finding our sacred artefacts. I had told him simple concealment was no longer enough.

A shadow fell across my window. I froze, my hand seeking seemingly innocent contact with stained glass Air, Earth, Fire and Water.

I prayed.

100 words

@nickjohns999

This story was written for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields' Friday Fictioneers Challenge

 

All My Sins Remembered

 

All My Sins Remembered

I could not see her body, just a head in a hatch.

It hung there, in the gloom, like some desiccated trophy, exquisitely positioned by a capricious witch, to serve as a warning to others.

What had she been before her terrible fate had overtaken her?

I made a surreptitious study of the evidence whilst pretending to browse.

Where were the traces of her innocent girlhood that many women show in their aging faces? Nothing but faint salty stains, memories of long dried tear tracks, betrayed her past.

Had thankless children etched those lines around her rheumy eyes?

Had the absent husband been ushered into an early grave by the stodgy food that dulled her own pasty complexion? Or had he left her, run away to sea or driven into the arms of a voluptuous vixen by her relentless, disapproving frown?

She regarded me, unblinking in the eye straining half light of the kiosk.

I would not buy anything I knew, even as I continued my listless survey of her yellowed stock.

What sin she had committed to have been consigned to this half life existence?

The atmosphere smothered me like a musty pillow and I fled for the door. Even the bright ding of the bell at the door was diminished, swallowed by the hungry shadows.

I gasped like a drowning man as I burst into the daylight, leaving the woman wallowing in her monochrome misery.

240 words

@nickjohns999

This story was written for LitReactor's December Flash Fiction Smackdown

Flash Fiction Daily - Feature Story

My Story 'Mr Dark's Designs' was one of the featured cover stories in Flash Fiction Daily. 

This daily newsletter is a useful snapshot of what is going on in flash fiction. It contains links to stories and other items of interest. Well worth subscribing to.

Flash Fiction Daily

I got a couple of stories included in Flash Fiction Daily today.
 
You will see a number of different stories from a range of writers are flagged up in each issue.

Well worth subscribing to.