Sobering Spirits #FlashFiction

18 Feb 2021 33 Comments

by Ritu in Fiction Tags: , , , , ,

A little silly story from me!

Sobering Spirits!

Now, this is a situation I’ve never been in, before.

I’ve worked at plenty of conferences, in my time: A bunch of stuffy business-people, meant to be listening to the pearls of wisdom of the overpaid speakers, instead, talking over one another, filled with self-importance.

Then their evening ‘dos’.

The cheap alcohol flows and minimal food means that we are left trying to empty the venue of extremely drunk folk more often than not.

I’m used to it now. To be honest, it’s ruined my enjoyment of a good drink.

Tonight, however, we had a unique gathering of individuals. I can’t really call them people. More, erm, ‘beings’.

You see today we had the first-ever Spirit Spooktacular event; there were ghoulish ‘spookers’, spectres, phantoms – basically, I was in a room full of ghosts.

It was impossible at the door.

They have no idea about queueing.

No, I lie. Some did, but there were the ones who simply floated through the queue and went in. One or two floated through the walls straight into the hall!

And there was absolutely no point in us having a seating structure for them either. They hovered, or suspended themselves wherever they saw fit, to listen to whichever spook was spooking!

It was the evening event though, that really got me.

What a bunch of lightweights.

The thing is, spirits are not designed to ingest spirits. Or any alcohol.

I know how to get most drunken humans to sober up; by giving them a bit of food, water, fresh air, and on occasion, I have been known to pour said water over certain stubborn heads (but don’t tell my boss!) – it works.

But not for sobering spirits up.

For a start, they don’t eat. I was surprised they drank, to be honest.

And the thing with being a ghost, you don’t have a body, so it only took a couple of sips for their vapours to become intoxicated.

I can reach a drunk person, laying on the floor, or sat, propped up on a chair. But what do you do with the spirits who are drunkenly floating up against the ceiling?

We needed to clear the hall and set up for the next day’s event.  I’m not sure whether the estate agents would appreciate ghostly residue during their conference – though maybe they wouldn’t mind. After all, some had to sell haunted houses…

Back to now, though.

Anyone? Got experience with sobering spirits?

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Finish The Story 2 – Boardroom Manoeuvres – @Tanmay_and_Jain @darthnid

29 May 2019 15 Comments

by Ritu in Challenges, Fiction Tags: , , , , , , ,

Thanks so much to Tanmay Jain for including me in this collaboration and it’s the turn of Nideesh Samant, with the final prompt of the month.

Prompt  – A standard corporate boardroom meeting is underway, but the boss has hidden motives…

Boardroom Manoeuvres

The boardroom was like an oven. It had been a long meeting, and it was about time to wrap it up.
Clive Burnett, the Managing Director, cleared his throat to get everyone’s attention.
“Ahem, right, thank you. That has been a productive meeting, and I’ll be sure to get Mandy to send the minutes out to you all tomorrow. Oh, and one final thing. There appears to be a glitch in the system, and it seems to have muddled up everyone’s contact numbers. I need you all to write your names and your contact numbers on this piece of paper.”
“But Mr Burnett, don’t you have our numbers on your own phone anyway?” Dennis piped up.
There’s always one, trying to be clever.
“Actually, my phone syncs to the system, and I can’t get any of the numbers either. It’s a simple fix, but we just need them all, now, from you, so the system can be corrected. Everyone in the room, please.”
The paper was passed around, with some of the attendees rolling their eyes as they scribbled down digits.
The paper made its way back to him.
“Thank you everyone. I’ll give this to IT and get it sorted ASAP. Thanks again and good evening.” Clive smiled.
He folded the paper and pocketed it. Good job he was the MD and no one questioned him too much. He’d been dying to ask that new girl Alisha for her number, but GDPR meant HR wouldn’t give it to him…


Nideesh Samant

A weaver or short stories, mostly dark ones…
Blog – https://thedarknetizen.wordpress.com
Twitter – www.twitter.com/darthnid

Finish The Story 2 – Phone Memory @Tanmay_and_Jain @talesOfsuchita

23 May 2019 16 Comments

by Ritu in #tjshouseholdhaiku, Challenges, Fiction Tags: , , , , , ,

Thanks so much to Tanmay Jain for including me in this collaboration and it’s time for another prompt, this time from Suchita Aggarwal.

Prompt – The last thing I remember …

Phone Memory

Leela frantically searched her bag. Where was it?
This was not good. Where was her phone?
Everything. Everything was on there. Her whole life.
Phone numbers, photos, her calendar, address book, her banking.
Oh God! Head Office were meant to be calling her this morning too, about the promotion. She had to find it.
Come on, Leela, think…. When did you have it last?
The last thing she remembered was checking her emails on it at the café, while waiting for her coffee. She used the app to collect her points and put it down…
Not in her bag, but down, on the counter… Jeez! Stupid woman! She’d left it there!
She glanced at her watch. The train was due in 7 minutes. She might just have time to get to the station café to rescue it.
Leela quickly made her way against the throngs of commuters who were headed on the same train as her.
The café was busy. She jostled past the line of irate caffeine addicts, feebly explaining herself as she went, and got to the front.
But there was no phone.
Someone must have taken it.
Her shoulders sagged. That was it. Life was over. What would she do without her phone?
“Leela!” A voice calling her name registered in her mind. Andre, the barista behind the counter smiled at her and held his arm aloft, holding something. “Looks like you left me an extra tip today!”
Her phone! Thank goodness for being a regular customer! 

 Suchita Agarwal
A writer and content creator, Suchita Agarwal believes words are where the magic is. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram and WordPress. She goes by talesofsuchita.

Blog - Tales of Suchita

Blog Link - https://talesofsuchita.wordpress.com/
Twitter ID - https://twitter.com/talesOfsuchita
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/talesofsuchita/

Finish The Story 2 – Murder Most Ordinary – Flash Fiction – @Tanmay_and_Jain

16 May 2019 10 Comments

by Ritu in Challenges, Fiction Tags: , , , , , ,

Thanks so much to Tanmay Jain for not only setting up this challenge, but for giving us the next prompt in the series.

There was something extraordinarily ordinary about murder that people just didn’t get!

Murder Most Ordinary

“I could murder a cuppa, luv. Go stick the kettle on.”
John heaved his weary frame in through the front door, catching a glimpse of Nora’s figure heading towards the kitchen.
Hands washed, freshened up, he sat on the sofa and clicked on the remote, to get his favourite programme on – Garden World.
*
Nora placed a cup on the table beside him, glancing at her husband’s tired face. “Why you can’t just switch off, I really don’t know. Look at you. Exhausted, I’ll bet your back is aching again too, and you still put the telly straight on to the gardening programmes.”
She worried about John all the time. He wasn’t getting any younger, and this new gardening job seemed to really be taking it out of him. More than most, actually. She’d often find him in a world of his own, and her voice would jolt him into action again.
*
He knew she was worrying about him. Natural, he guessed. But how could he even begin to explain the complexities of the new job?
His new employers were important people – though rather unsavoury.
And the reason his back ached so much was because of the rather suspicious bags he was asked to bury, and cover with mature shrubs… If he wasn’t mistaken, they might have even been body bags.
Still his job was not to wonder why… just to dig, cover and plant.
And anyway, all the money was paying for his retirement cruise.

Ritu 2019

Tanmay Jain is a blogger, book reviewer, writer and bibliophile from Jaipur, Rajasthan. He has been reading books since he was a child and hasn’t stopped since. He started his first blog in 2016 and since that, after many unsuccessful attempts at managing a successful blog, he landed on his current and most successful blog, Scion of Society. Tanmay dabbles mostly in fiction writing but sometimes wanders off to poetry, book reviewing and writing tips. He is an editor for his school magazine, X-rays. He’s a teenage writer, aspiring author, and a budding blogger.

Blog Link – www.bookinton.wordpress.com

Twitter ID – www.twitter.com/Tanmay_and_Jain

Facebook ID –  www.facebook.com/TheBookintonBlog

The Day The Moon Began To Disappear – Speculative Fiction – March Edition

06 Mar 2019 72 Comments

by Ritu in Challenges, Fiction, Thoughts Opinions & Memories Tags: , , , , , ,

Diana has another intriguing photo for her March prompt…

The Day The Moon Began To Disappear

A fine dust was falling from the sky, coating everything with a light, ethereal film. The dust settled on the ground like a warm snow fall, yet as I stepped upon it, my feet sank, as if in sand. The powder swallowed each foot and released it as it took it’s next step, leaving not a blemish upon its surface. A strange smell filled the atmosphere.

And that moon… it drew me closer and closer. The eerie glow from the eclipse was almost hypnotic.

I reached the point at which it looked like I was standing directly below this usually friendly satellite of the earth, then squinted upwards. The advice was to never look directly at the sun, but the moon was in the way so I felt no fear.

Until I realised that this dust appeared to be falling directly from the moon..

And that the moon was actually nowhere near the sun…

And that there was indeed a little man sat on this sphere…

Grating.

It all began to make sense… and yet it didn’t.

Now we know for sure that the moon really is made of cheese. The parmesan, stinky sort. That is what the smell had been.

And the ethereal feel of the earth?

Those shavings had taken away a side of the moonlight and laid it upon our surface instead.

Leaving the moon with a dark, dull face.

https://mythsofthemirror.com/2019/03/01/march-speculative-fiction-prompt/

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