Flash Fiction Friday No. 4: Elephants never forget

Challenge: This sentence - The elephant found me. Bonus points for using the phrase: stinky smelly stenchuous odoriferous elephant dung.


Photo:


Elephants never forget

They say that elephants never forget.
They know what they are talking about.

It was a job. I mean, I needed to work and there weren't too many places that would take an ex-druggie ex-con. But there was the zoo and they needed help.

So, I applied. I was thinking I would be working in the office - after all, I participated in the prison job training program and learned to type (okay, "keyboard") and got pretty good at MS Word and Excel and all. But, no. It was manual labor for me.

Specifically, the cleanup crew.

Yeah, that's right - I was the guy with the broom. Cleaning up the messes they didn't want the public to have to see.

Can I just say one thing? Stinky smelly stenchuous odoriferous elephant dung.

You have no idea how much those things can poop. And pee. I'm talking a flood of Biblical proportions.

And I was the one cleaning it up.

So, I got the bright idea to feed them a little supplement - you know, like when a human gets the runs. It didn't work out. I got fired (of course). My parole officer wasn't amused. I can't find another job.

But that's the least of my worries.

I've been having these dreams. I'll be walking down the street, turn around and there's one of the elephants from the zoo. They follow me in my dreams until I turn a corner and walk into a dead-end alley.

I know these streets pretty well from all that job-hunting, and there aren't any dead-end alleys where I've been, but there are in my dreams. I don't want to think about what happens next.

So, here I am, just walkin' down the street and I turn around ... nothing. There is no elephant. But I can feel my dream creeping up on me. So, I go around a corner and - you guessed it.

The elephant found me.

Flash Fiction Friday No. 3: The Upper Crust

(This week's challenge was this:
Your assignment, should you chose to accept it, will be to write the very worst short story, between 750 and 1000 words, you can. Must contain at least three of the following words: putrefy, jewellery, encephalogram, aardvark, banana, and zombie. Extra points for using all of them. Yes, I know I'm evil, why do you ask? :D

Cliches are nearly required, as are excessive use of adverbs, sentence fragments, run on sentences... Extra points if you include the opening phrase "It was a dark and stormy night...")

The Upper Crust

It was a dark and stormy night and the zombies were wandering. Ashley Turrington-Smythe closed the curtain - after looking out at the windswept scene of storminess at his ancestral estate. He turned around and looked around his spacious study at the other people in the room.

His father, Ashley Harrington-Smythe, was eating Bananas Foster while sitting in a chair near the fireplace, which had a fire burning brightly in it. Ashley Turrington-Smythe's wife, Ashlee Smythe-Turrington, was nervously fingering her jewelry: necklace, earrings and rings, a matching set of bright rubies. They were waiting, anxiously waiting, for a knock at the door.

Ashley Turrington-Smythe paced around the room and gazed at the luxorious furnishings. He stared at a stuffed aardvark brought back from a trip made by his grandfather, Ashley Livingston-Smythe, in the 1940s. It had been badly stuffed and began to putrefy soon after Ashley Livingston-Smythe installed it in the room, but for sentimental reasons, because he had run over the aardvark the day he met his future wife, they decided to keep it anyway, despite the smell, which by this time was just a faint whiff.

"Did that thing move?" he asked, pointing at the aardvark. The others looked, but didn't see anything.

"Never mind," he said. He resumed pacing.

Finally, the long-awaited knock occurred. All eyes in the room swung toward the door. Ashley Turrington-Smythe took a step forward, then stopped. He started toward the door again, but before he reached it, the door opened and a woman stepped into the room.

"Hello, darlings," his mother, Ashlan Smythe-Harrington, as she stepped through the door into the brightly-lit study. "Did you miss me?"

"Of course, Mother," replied Ashley Turrington-Smythe. "We were a bit concerned that you might have some difficulty returning home, considering that the zombies are wandering and all."

Ashlan Smythe-Harrington laughed and said, "Oh, you know Jeeves can navigate his way through the worst of it."

Ashlee Smythe-Turrington stood and asked, "Shouldn't we get started? It's getting late, after all."

The others nodded agreement as they proceeded toward the table on one side of the room.They sat down and Ashley Harrington-Smythe began shuffling the cards. As they played, they heard thumping noises outside as the zombies bumped into the sturdy stone walls of the stately manor house.

Ashley Turrington-Smythe looked around the room. "Did you hear a noise in this room, sort of a scratching noise?" he asked. None of the others had heard the noise to which he referred. They resumed playing.

A whiff of unpleasant odor reached the table. They looked around and saw the aardvark closer to the table.

"I think the aardvark has been infected by the zombies!" exclaimed Ashlee Smythe-Turrington excitedly. "We have to stay away from it!"

"That belonged to grandfather and has enormous sentimental value. We can't destroy it," said Ashley Turrington-Smythe.

"What can we do?" asked Ashlee Smythe-Turrington.

"We can give it an encephalogram," said Ashlan Smythe-Harrington. "That will establish whether it is an actual zombie. The problem is getting it to the hospital for the test."

Ashley Harrington-Smythe disagreed. "The problem will be getting the hospital to do the test. We'll have to donate money for another wing before they will agree to this test. You remember they insisted they couldn't do the test when my father, Ashley Livingston-Smythe, exhibited signs of being a zombie."

Ashley Turrington-Smythe nodded. "And then they couldn't help him with the problem. Poor grandfather."

The four looked toward the window, where they could hear faint sounds of zombies hitting the wall.

"I have an idea," Ashley Turrington-Smythe said. "Let's take the aardvark outside. Maybe grandfather is looking for it."

"That's a capital idea!" exclaimed his father, Ashley Harrington-Smythe. "Perhaps father is lonely for his aardvark. We could kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I'm just wondering exactly how we are going to get the zombie aardvark outside without getting infected ourselves."

The four thought for a minute, then "Jeeves!" rang out from four throats. They rang for the butler.

Flash Fiction Friday No. 2: Totem

The Totem

"Totem Poles are monumental sculptures carved from great trees, typically Western red cedar, by a number of Native American cultures along the Pacific northwest coast of North America. The word 'totem' is derived from the Algonkian word Dodem, roughly translating into a spiritual non-human or animal guide."

Roger heard the guide's voice from his hiding place near the totem pole. He looked at his watch. The full moon was going to rise soon, and he needed to be in place.

The group moved on and Roger relaxed. The tours came every 15 minutes. He had just enough time to perform the ceremony before the next group.

Roger placed the items he had collected around the totem. Bear claws had been easy to acquire. The eagle feathers were more difficult - it was illegal to own them without being Native American.

The last item was most important. When he had his wisdom teeth removed as a teen, he had kept them. At the time, he didn't know why. This ceremony was the furthest thing from his mind - until now.

All the re-enacting events he had attended, all the times he had "just hung out" with members of various Native American tribes, all the risks he had taken - everything hung on this moment. He was going to invoke the spirits of the totem and gain their power.

Roger chanted and danced around the totem pole. He could feel the hairs on his body rising with electricity. He saw a glow around the totem. He started moving closer, as if he was being pulled.

"No!" Roger yelled as his body touched the totem and was enveloped.

"Totem Poles are monumental sculptures carved from great trees, typically Western red cedar, by a number of ... " the guide's voice trailed off as she looked at the totem pole. She shook her head. "I could have sworn this pole only had two totems on it."