Flash Fiction

This bit of flash fiction features characters from "The Perfect Housemate" and "A Perfect Target" by Winnie Jerome

The challenge was to take the words cookie, wrapping paper, and tinsel and incorporate them into a story of approximately 100-150 words. I put in a minor edit, but this is otherwise how it originally appeared.

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You'd think that Christmas would make Adrian cranky, but one of the advantages of only being part-incubus was that this holiday didn't bother him in the least bit.

What did bother him was the damn tree that Trent had bought. The thing refused to stay upright, no matter how much he wrestled with it. He tried everything he could think of - pleading, bad language, threats of sending it to burn in Plant Hell for eternity - but it kept defiantly listing to the side.

"Fuck this!" he growled out. He whacked the trunk with his hand, which caused the wood to shatter as if it had been made of glass.

Now he was in trouble. Trent was due back soon from Christmas shopping with Carl, and he'd definitely be pissed when he saw what happened to the tree. Adrian squatted on the floor -- he needed to think fast.

***

"Do you think Adrian has the tree up?" Carl asked Trent before he devoured the last of the ginormous chocolate chip cookie in his hand. "I still think you should have asked me to do it."

"Are you high, dude? You'd break the thing." Trent opened the door to his apartment and almost dropped his bags.

Adrian had unpacked the short pole that a student had bought him as a joke gift. He had coiled wrapping paper decorated with tiny trees around the metal length. Pine branches had been glued to the pole, and a plethora of tinsel and ornaments were draped over the greenery.

And hovering near the top was Adrian, dressed in nothing but gold glitter, a fake halo, and a smile.

He purred out, "Who wants to be the first one to mount the Christmas angel?"

From "Sour Puss" by Winnie Jerome

Excerpt from Sour Puss by Winnie Jerome

Ryan staggered up the stairs to his apartment and guessed that it was close to seven-thirty in the morning. It was still twilight, so he tried to be as quiet as possible to avoid waking up his neighbors. He'd gotten pretty shitfaced at the party, and wound up crashing overnight at Nick's place to sleep it off.

Even though he'd drunk enough water to avoid a hangover, he still didn't feel like staying around for breakfast, so he slipped out while everyone was still asleep. What he wanted to do was to have a long jerk-off session while he was taking a hot shower, and spend the rest of the day vegging with his Xbox 360.

He was thinking about how to beat this one part in the latest Call of Duty while he unlocked the door to his apartment, but then he was jolted out of his daydreaming by the blast of ball-shriveling cold air that hit him. Crap, someone had broken into his place. It looked like it had happened half an hour ago at most, as there wasn't too much snow on the carpet. One of the windows was shattered and...

There was a big cat lying in the corner of his living room.

Not just big. Massive. The sucker looked like it was around nine feet long, and Ryan could barely make out the striped fur pattern in the dim light. It stared at him with unblinking yellow eyes and its tail began to swish back and forth.

Fear slammed through Ryan's entire body, freezing him in place. Part of his brain screamed, shriveled up, and began to gibber. The other part wondered if one of the guys at the party had slipped some LSD into the punch. That was the only explanation for why an escaped tiger was inside his living room, looking to make a snack out of his kidneys.

He knew that he should do something, anything, but all he could do was stand there like a cornered deer and literally quake in his shoes. Tense seconds ticked by, and Ryan wondered why in hell the tiger didn't get it over with and pounce on him. It just seemed to be waiting for something -- maybe it was trying to figure out where to take the first bite.

Then the gray twilight lightened a bit and he spotted a trickle of red on the white part of the tiger's fur. Curiosity won out over caution, and he took his eyes off those huge-ass teeth to glance down for the briefest of moments. That's when he noticed that blood was welling out of a jagged cut near the inside of the tiger's right shoulder, and there were spatters of red on the carpet nearby.

A part of his mind stopped freaking long enough to note that if the tiger was injured, he could get away. Right, he could do it. Except that a wounded big cat was likely to be more ornery and it would do something that would cause maximum pain, such as ripping out his stomach and using it for a game of four-pawed hacky sack.

He was still trying to make himself do something when the first rays of sunlight began to peek through the window. The tiger snarled in pain and, to Ryan's amazement, its flesh started moving. Not just moving -- bubbling and rippling. Then the tiger's muzzle retracted back and the fur started disappearing, revealing tanned skin. A cascade of long, curly black hair sprouted from its head and neck. The long tail shrank and withdrew into the buttocks. The torso retracted and the legs lengthened, and the front paws became arms.

When the transformation was complete, a naked and very human Dominic was curled up in a ball on the carpet where the tiger had been.