By The Hour

In honor of the growing popularity of flash fiction, I wanted to try my hand at a new test:  one hour, uninterrupted extemporanea.

The goal was to keep it within a 1000-word limit, to not plan a single bit but rather write entirely off-the-cuff and see where it went, in hopes of having a complete story (or reasonable facsimile) by the end of the hour.

It worries me a bit that, each time I try this experiment, I wind up in the areas of horror or suspense, with the occasional foray into dark fantasy.  Somehow the first thing that comes to mind when I give myself the abstract order of "Write!" is never light-hearted romance or the unabashed fluffiness of kittens.

This must be how Steven King feels all the time...

Without further ado, here it is:  
___

"Alexia?" Bryant's voice echoed into the dark room.  A sliver of light peeked through the boarded-up windows.  Old dust swam slowly through the air, disturbed by his intrusion.

No answer came from the empty study.  Bryant narrowed his eyes at the spines of the books on the corner of the desk, unable or just unwilling to cross the doorway and violate the sanctity of the scene.  It had taken all his courage just to enter the house in the first place, but he needed answers, and this was the only place he could hope to find them.

He could barely make out the words "Spirits and Soul Trafficking" staring back at him from the cracking binding.  The warped leather of the cover belied the tome's relative youthfulness.  It wasn't difficult for Bryant to recognize the signs of forced aging.  Years in his uncle's library had made him all too familiar with the lengths people would go to to foster antiquity.

Hearing a hollow whistle from further down the hall, Bryant quickly pulled his head out of the room and stared in the direction of the noise.  He could swear he saw a soft light like a fading candle emanating from one of the rooms upstairs.

Hesitantly, he made his way up, cringing at each painful creak of the dry, mahogany steps.  The sound brought to mind memories of snapping bones and the bubble of a thick stew boiling.  He had never questioned his uncle's peculiarities, but here in the house that had been a strange sanctuary to him in his youth, Bryant began to wonder why he had never noticed the chill running through every corner of this place.

The upstairs hall was even darker than the foyer.  With only his hands for guidance, Bryant made his way cautiously down the hall toward the room where he had caught sight of the earlier glow.  "Alexia, is that you?" he whispered, unsure whether or not he still cared for an answer.

As he neared the far end of the hall, the glow returned, lighting the dark edges of the hall through the seams of the bedroom door.  Bryant froze, not wanting to startle the source of the strange emanation.  The light pulsed quietly in time with his own guarded breathing as he watched from the silence of the hallway.

There was little point turning back now.  The answers he sought were on the other side of that door.  Swallowing his own objections, Bryant reached out for the doorknob, his eyes not leaving the pulse of light from under the door, watching for any shift in its mood.

He felt the cold metal of the knob butt against his fingers.  Turning it slowly, he felt the latch slip out of its hold with a barely-audible click.  He started to pull the door open with the sort of care the pages of his uncle's ancient texts had always demanded.

What awaited him inside filled Bryant with a mingle sense of hopefulness and abject fear.  Standing, or rather, floating in the unkempt room was the ghost of his cousin, the lines of her narrow face as clear as his own in the reflection of the mirror that stood behind her.

The pendant around her neck, the keepsake he had given her as a child, pulsed with a pale gray light as if marking the beating of her stilled heart.  Two white baubles that might once have passed for eyes stared back at Bryant, as one long, thin finger pointed to the nightstand beside the bed.

Stepping into the room with caution, Bryant watched his cousin's spectre closely.  In the days since her death, Alexia's spirit had appeared to him regularly, always leading him forward without ever saying a word.

He had hoped in her guidance he might find some explanation for her sudden death.  The coroners ruled it a suicide.  If that were true, Bryant thought, why had they never found the knife?  The police had combed her apartment and the street outside, but no sign of the weapon had ever been found.

The going theory was that it had been discarded and picked up by a transient in the street.  Bryant found it about as likely as if it had sprouted legs and walked away.

No, he thought, if this had been a suicide, why was she haunting him now?  Why had she been so insistent that he follow her down dark roads to the old projects and the house his uncle, her father, had raised them in?

He moved to the nightstand without question, no longer fearful of the ghost but rife with anticipation for what he might find.  Fresh marks in the dust marked a recent visitor.  His uncle, Bryant thought, returning to old haunts.  The thought alone made him chuckle.  The man had never had any love for this place.  With his daughter dead, he must have finally found something sentimental in it.

Bryant tried the handle on the drawer.  It slide half an inch out of its holdings, but then the wood caught and refused to budge further.  Wrapping both hands around the small, ironwrought handle, he wrenched the drawer free with a sudden surge, sending him sprawling to the hardwood behind him.


Wincing as he got to his feet, Bryant paused to spot his cousin still looming nearby.  It might have been just imagination, but he could have sworn he saw her smiling at him.  Brushing off the urge to smile back, he stared at the drawer in his hand, only to find it empty.  He scanned the edges, feeling about for a secret compartment, but the dimensions matched.  The drawer was empty.


He tossed it aside and returned to the nightstand, peering inside to see if the clue she was guiding him to might be somewhere inside.  There was nothing but the workings of an old wooden nightstand, its track knocked askew by his recent efforts with the drawer.


In a huff, he rolled back onto his haunches, staring up at the apparition and throwing up his hands in defeat.  "There's nothing here," he told her, feeling suddenly tired in the wake of his excess adrenaline.


That was when he spotted it:  taped to the underside of the drawer was his cousin's knife, with the same ornate bone handle he remembered.  There was even still a glimmer of blood dotting the blade.  It had been bound to the underside of the drawer to keep it hidden.  But what was it doing in his uncle's bedroom?


Before he had long to consider it, he heard the sound of the front door opening.  His uncle had come home early tonight.  Bryant looked to his cousin for answers, but the ghost only loomed silently over him.  There was nowhere to hide in the small room, and the old floorboards would doubtlessly mark his passage if he tried to flee down the hall.


As he searched desperately for an alternative, he didn't notice how close his cousin's spectre had drawn.  The icy touch at his shoulder was his first warning, but when he turned to ask her what was the matter, he felt his lungs seize.  Her ghostly hand reached inside him, wrapping around his insides until he could barely breathe.

He felt his heart start to race as she moved inside of him, overtaking his form with her own.  His panicked pulse throbbed in his ears as he felt his arms start to move on their own, guided on her unseen direction.  His cold fingers wrapped around the knife, tearing it free of its bindings as his uncle made his way up the stairs, unaware of what darkness awaited him.


Bryant tried to cry out, but his body was no longer his to command.  Slowly, he shuffled toward the door, the dagger clutched at his side.  He slowly became aware of a soft, gray glow coming from his form, filling the small room as his uncle made his way to the end of the hallway, only then looking up from the business of inspecting his hands.  They bore the fresh nicks and burns of one of his rituals.


His uncle looked up when he spied the light, startled to see his nephew standing before him.  "Bryant?" he said.  "What's are you doing here?"


"Nothing, father," Bryant heard himself answer.  "Just tidying up this mess."


"What mess?" his uncle asked, only then spotting the weapon in his nephew's hand.  "...Bryant?"  He took a step back, his eyes going to the boy's face.  "No," he whispered.  "Alexia!"


Bryant felt his feet move beneath him, charging at his uncle with the knife raised.  There was a brilliant flash of light from somewhere high on his chest, and then everything went black.  The last thing he heard was the soft, sweet voice of his delicate cousin, whispering "thank you" into the back of his mind.

___

Commentary:  1481 words.  While the writing rate on my extemporania is promising, I feel like I barely got through a scene.  Much flash fiction is 300-500 words.  By that point, Bryant hadn't even gotten up the stairs.  I need to work on better encapsulating the story and using the right balance of omission and metaphor to round the corners on the whole thing and get more story with fewer words.