No Happy Ending by Featured Author: Erika Lance

At our meetings, we often do 5-minute exercises using 3-5 words to create a short-short story. Sometimes, those stories are continuous from exercise to exercise. Here’s one of those from Erika Lance!

• Graham cracker

•Bookmark       

• Limp

Clara was sitting on the large overstuffed chair in her grandfather’s library looking out at the thunderstorm raging outside. She heard a plop as the now limp graham cracker she had been dipping in her tea broke off and was now what her brother would call a “floater”.

She looked down again at the book she was reading. It had actually been a perfectly sunny day until about ten minutes ago when the hero in the book was thrust into a perilous storm. The moment it happened the lightning cracked right outside the window.

She looked down and decided to turn some pages to where there was an old tasseled bookmark. She flipped open to the page “The creature slithered between the shelves as a cold mist rose from the floor.” Looking at the words again she closed her eyes and sighed. The air around her began to cool and when she opened her eyes again there was a dark grey mist around her. “They didn’t mention the color of the mist in the book” she mumbled to herself just as she heard the sound of movement from the shelves behind her chair….

• Post-it             

• Sulphur           

• Stolen

After hearing the noise, she decided to flip further into the story, which at this point she was sure was amazing, but also might end up not being something she could walk away from. She smirked at her joke.

There was a post it that she flipped to the new page that started with “The breeze carried with it the smell of jasmine and he could hear the sound of a bubbling brook nearby” …. This is much better she thought. “Then he felt the stinging burning pain as the red-hot blade was laid against his skin again…”

“What in hell” she exclaimed. Looking around for something the book had yet to describe holding a red-hot blade. She did not see or hear anyone, so she flipped again to the end of the book. She was hoping to find the happy ending but there were pages torn out.  She looked to the last line on the remaining

“The creature held the fate of the hero in his palm that he had stolen….” She sighed and looked up to see a demonic figure standing in front of her smelling of sulfur.

“Looking for these?’ he said holding up pages.