Hell Has No Wrath...

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: Story must be contain a doll, scissors and a pair of socks.

Hell Has No Wrath ...

In the dim light of the small lamp, Deana held a pair scissors in one hand and what appeared to be a raggedy doll in the other. On her lap was a book of undeterminable age other than the fact it was obviously very, very old. A randomly placed bookmark said “Thanks for shopping at the Wizards Book Shelf.”

She had been a very busy girl tonight, this Deana. Her sewing table was littered with special ingredients. There was a bundle of steel wool sparkling brightly in a cup holding a burning candle. Several spices, some hard to find, had been ground together into a fine powder that was now brewing in a pot of water on the oven. The smell was somehow rotten and sweet at the same time. Other items such as tape, lipstick and a toaster all waited patiently for their turn in the dark ritual.

The curtains to the front window were closed, shutting out the streetlamp that was trying in vain to push back the darkness of a moonless night.

Yes, she had been a busy girl … and the night was still young.

The next morning, across town at the Thrift Inn, a detective scratched his head as he attempted to brief his boss on the grisley scene in one of the rooms.

“It’s the strangest case I have ever seen Chief. We got a call from that girl over there who claims to be this guy’s mistress. She said she woke up this morning and he was like this. There is no weapon and no one else heard anything.”

The Chief glanced at the mangled body. The victim was only wearing a pair of socks with the bottoms burned out of them.

Across town, Deana slept. It had been a long night.

Recollectionless

Written for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge with a word limit of 300.

The prompts: Story must be contain the line "I wonder where that came from."

Recollectionless

Buckley stared at the ceiling with one clear thought, Where the hell am I?

His head rolled over to the right bringing something big and brown into his line of site. Focus was slow in coming, hindered by a competing brain-signal that screamed PAIN!

He was no stranger to hangovers so the source of the pain held no mystery. The brown thing was starting to look like his ratty old sofa standing on its side. Buckley sat up while gravity resumed its job of holding the furniture to the floor.

Rightly assuming that the presence of his sofa meant he was in his own apartment cleared up some of his immediate questions. Rolling to his stomach, our hero managed to get to his hands and knees; he had a porcelain god to pray to and it wasn’t going to come to him.

As he made his way down the hallway, he came across what appeared to be a large stuffed beaver wearing slippers and a motorcycle helmet. I wonder where that came from? he thought only mildly surprised. He had seen stranger things.

His mind rolodexed backwards hoping to find that the activities of the night before justified this morning’s “head-o-death” feeling that pulsed in time with his heart. Flashes of bright lights, taxi cabs, women and something that reminded him of a unicorn all flashed through his mind in nightmarish fashion. Nothing made sense.

With no coherent memory, he took stock of what he could. Aside from his head, he seemed to be physically intact. The apartment, while untidy, was basically undamaged. He had to admit that the beaver added a sense of exotic curiosity to his otherwise drab abode. No harm, no foul …

Time to deal with the pain, he thought, reaching for the Jack Daniels.