Updates & Posts – Page 26 – Kris Charles

Noise Complaint: A Flash Fiction Story

Noise Complaint

Katherine Rochholz

Flash Fiction

It was a lovely Saturday morning after a rain storm and on the horizon was a rainbow that seemed to cause the cactus needles to glint in the sun. I was on my way to my office, I had rented it after my books went viral and I had started my family. I was there daily, much like an actual job, and home on the weekends; but since my wife and children were in Florida sending me pictures of my wife’s parents and palm trees, I planned to sit at the office all day.

The office building was a nice place. There was a dentist office below the second floor offices, where mine was, on the same floor as me, there was a quiet little artist, a farmer (who always tried to give me samples of beets), and then there was the other artist. He was annoying with loud music and whatever metalworking art he did. But all should be gone today, leaving me with a quiet building. I came in with my latte and palled on getting a lot of work done.

Two hours later I heard the studio door down the hall slam and the loud music start. I groaned and got up, sticking my head out of my office and yelled, “RICHARDS! Turn it down!” All I got back was a laugh. I sighed but went back into my office to get some more work done. I wanted to finish the last two chapters to send to my editor before I got sucked into a conversation with my agent about my next book tour.

I went alright, though I still wished he turned the music down, until the first explosion. I sighed and tried to ignore him, it seemed to work better sometimes than yelling. But by the third explosion, I was furious. I got up and went and banged on the man’s door.

I stood there ranting and raving and then the man had the audacity to laugh. He turned his back on me and I grabbed his mallet and brought it down on his head. There was only a moment of panic before I sued his next explosion to hide what I had done. After all, his art was dangerous, and an accident happened, and the police found him when I went back and called them… For a noise complaint.

Six months later, I smiled as I signed my latest best seller: Artistic Murder. It was about a serial killer who killed artists and used their art to hide the bodies as well as their crimes.

How Do You Want To Be Remembered: A Flash Fiction Story

How Do You Want To Be Remembered

Katherine Rochholz

Flash Fiction

I never thought about my last moments. I never thought of how I wanted to be remembered. One would think with my former career, I would have, after all being an Army Nurse on the front lines is not safe. Safer than being a solider, but still dangerous; and upon my husband’s request I had left the Army and went back to school to become a Doctor. But as I have said, I never thought of how I would want to be remembered, even in those last moments.

I was just stopping at a store to pick up a gift for my husband, after all it had been two weeks since I saw him last, I was coming from the cabin where I was helping my shipwreck of a brother detox for the fifth time in the last three years. But I loved my brother and for him I would do anything. I was standing in front of the mall map when I heard the first shots, and the first tide of people started screaming and running as a mad person started to pummel the crowd with bullets.

I didn’t think, I ran toward the victims, I had been an Army Nurse that had been on the front lines in M.A.S.H. units. I had to help; it was ingrained into my very soul to run towards the victims, not away. Not only that, I was just finishing medical school and set to become a surgical intern in just months, I was in a better place than most to help from being a surgical nurse in the Army to having gone to medical school. And still to this day, my instincts told me to run towards the shots, even after being out of the Army for three years, hoping to offset the death caused by this senseless evil.

I fell to my knees next to the first who had been shot in the stomach. I cursed at the fact I was seeing a kid, he couldn’t have been more than barely a teen. I tore my jacket off and pressed it the wound. I saw another person who had started to help, I also thought it was my lucky day when I saw the sewing kit. “Hey!” I yelled. “Toss me that sewing kit!”

The men seemed shocked but nodded and slide it over to me, before he came over. “Can I help?’

“Take the kid’s puppy toy.” I stated as I took my pocket knife and rubbed it with alcohol, that had been dropped by someone one. Whiskey was good to kill germs. “I was a surgical nurse in the Army and about to graduate from medical school.” I explained to the man as I used the knife to remove the bullet.

Five minutes later, I heard the first of the EMTs arrive, but I was putting the knot in the final suture. When I felt the structure shake, I looked up and I said “Fuck.” As I fell onto the kid and my world went black, my last thought was ‘I hope they save the kid.’

I never thought about how I wanted to be remembered… but I am hopeful I am remembered…

Darkness: A Flash Fiction Story

Darkness

Katherine Rochholz

Flash Fiction Story

I sipped the coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, as I looked out at the falling snow. The scene was peaceful, serene even, so different from the thoughts and emotions rolling through my mind and soul. I ignored the whispers behind me. The lady that ran this show was trying to hush the others, but her whispers were the loudest. She was telling them to give me my privacy, but I am sure if it wasn’t her pastoral duty she would be gossiping with them. I looked down at the fountain pen in my hand, I had been playing with the lid, how easy it would be to take it and carve a world where I could escape this hell on Earth.

I snort at myself. I am a world famous novelist and I couldn’t communicate with the people suffering with me. They, the ones that ‘love’ me, think that in this group I will just sprout all my feelings. I have played my feelings close to my chest since childhood, I don’t see that about to change… but for them I could try.

I heard the lady running this think call order. She came and touched my shoulder, asking me to introduce myself, I just nodded at her and then dropped the lukewarm cup of coffee into the garbage. I turned and faced the others. I took a deep breath. Steadying my thoughts, though it would never work, I tried, for them, I tried.

“I am Rowena, and I am an alcoholic.” I mentally snort at the cliché. “The reason why is a year ago, today, I lost my son, we were in a car accident. He didn’t make it. I did. I didn’t want to, and turned to drink.” I told them the truth, though the pain stabbed me in the chest as I thought of that day three hundred and sixty five days ago. “I am sober one day.” I announced, today was the first day of my attempt to heal. For them.

“Welcome, Rowena.” The group whispered.

I nod and sat down. I would do this for them, my remaining family, but I still wished for that blackness that tequila gave to me. I still wished for oblivion. I still wished for the darkness of death…

But for them I will try.

The Cost of Power: A Flash Fiction Story

The Cost of Power

Katherine Rochholz

Flash Fiction Story

I sat looking at the kitten still with the bow and ring around the collar. I took a deep drag of coffee from the mug she had gotten me when we first started dating. We had met at a tennis club when I started my first campaign. I swore to her the empire I had built would be used to change the world. The essence of that promise still there, but it had been buried as I moved up the political ladder.

Many don’t get the political machinations I had been playing. Politics is a dangerous game. And part of it is playing a convertor, to change people to your way of thinking, and I was good at that. A true silver tongue. Politics is as dangerous as poke to a sleeping bear, but I took the risks. And I moved up. And it seems, if her words are true, more distant to my humanity. But my risks paid off; at least I thought they had.

But now I am in a position of real power, a position that will allow all my machinations to come to their conclusions. And star the path to make the world a better place.

I just didn’t realize the cost of this latest appointment. Until now. The letter saying goodbye sits on our bed, where I now sit drinking coffee and staring at the kitten that had a ribbon and a ring around its neck. A ring that was supposed to symbolize the family I wanted with her. The love of my life.

Perhaps this pain in my chest is the wakeup call I need. For all my machinations, this recent appointment isn’t worth the cost. I look up at the knock on my door.

The secret service agent looks in. “Mister President, you are need.”

I look at him, time to make this machination worth the cost.

Decision: A Flash Fiction Story

Decision

Katherine Rochholz

Flash Fiction Story

I sit and sip upon my only margarita of the night. I smile as the tempo of the music changes into a classic rock song about a boy who killed another and now had a gang after his life. Truthfully, I never thought I would be here, after all my mother tried to stonewall me, to preventing this, to prevent my dreams of coming true.

Everybody has a story, about what their parents expected from them. Mine? My story is just the opposite of normal. Well, not really, just what my mother wanted for me.

I was always a plain girl so when the popular boy showed interest in me, I thought I had died and gone to paradise. Needless to say, he just wanted the claim of taking my virginity. Well, I got pregnant. My mother wanted me to work at the diner, raise the child, become a wife, give up college. She refused to help me as I left for college. I made my choice, no matter the roadblocks, the loans, the challenges, I fought, and I won.

Tonight is the night before my medical school graduation. I smile at the eighties themed birthday party my seven year old son wanted. It was obscene the amount of eighties music my son adored, but he was happy. I was happy.

And in six weeks I would be a surgical intern at one of the best teaching hospitals in the world; but the best thing I have ever done in my life, was keep my son and leave my mother’s house, making it on my own. After all, this life, it is my story to write.

Repost of Insomnia Café: Prologue

Insomnia Café: Prologue
All Rights Reserved

When I was fifteen I lied about my age and joined the military. Two and half years made no difference. I had my high school diploma. But college? Not my scene. I after all was a street rat.
When I was twenty seven a bullet ended my military career. I literally was going to make it my life choice, but I am not one for a desk job. So the bullet that took out three pounds of my thigh? Yeah, sent me back into civilian life after twelve years. I walked into the Marines with nothing to my name. I walked out with a cane with a skull head and ruby eyes, with a healthy sized savings account. After all, how was I going to spend my paycheck when I was doing missions that weren’t even fully put on the books?

After a year of physical therapy I choose to take my life savings and open up an all-night café. Why a café? Because it allowed my insomnia an outlet and it allowed me to use those skills my father taught me before he was died when I was eight, he had been a baker. So a few self-taught lessons to catch up on baked goods, I settled down in the big city and opened up my café.

I named it Insomnia Café.

What I didn’t expect was that it would become the Switzerland in a sea of crazy.

From the very first ‘villain’ and the very first ‘hero’ to walk into my doors I declared neutral and stayed out of it. There was no way I was going to be drawn into any type of drama. I did the hero thing. I wanted nothing to do with it. I did the villain thing. I wanted nothing to do with it. I was now neutral.

The city is full of characters, and most of them are my regulars. From Superheroes to Super Villains to Everyday Heroes to the standard criminals to the regular Joe off the street; they are all my customers.

My café has become a central hub that is neutral and a safe place for all. Where all is safe, where all laws seem to become non-existent, where nobody breaks my rules, after all for being a normal human, I can cause fear in the worst of super villains and heroes alike.

These are my stories of my regulars at Insomnia Café.

The Thin Line: A Flash Fiction Story

The Thin Line
Flash Fiction
All Rights Reserved

Blood. I could feel the dark red warmth drip down my fingers as I tried to stop the bleeding. I could see the red stain the pure white gown of my bride. I had turned my back on tradition to marry for love, and my bride paid the price. The shot rang in my ears again as I woke up with a scream torn from my throat.

I took a deep breath. I looked down at my hands expecting to see blood, her blood, the blood of a truly innocent soul; instead the scar on my own chest glinted into the moonlight. I was dying, my soul had died. Where I was saved from death’s final grip, where I was prevented from leaving this mortal plane, my dear sweet bride died in my arms the day of our wedding, that cold, darken, gorgeous winter night.

I screamed at that moment, the moment where I realized it was not just a nightmare, but my living hell. I sat in my bed and screamed. I was a powerful and influential witch and I could not save my bride. I screamed my throat raw; then I got up and stumbled to the bathroom to look in the mirror.

My once icy blue irises were tinted black due to the magic I had been preforming since I woke from my coma three weeks ago. The magic that was forbidden in nature, the magic I had once swore to myself I would never even contemplate. But no matter the cost I was going to get my vengeance. I had forsaken my patron goddess, Astraea, and veered from the path of Justice into Vengeance.

I had done the darkest and most forbidden of magic to call for the lives and souls of those who were responsible for my soul being killed, for taking the one person who deserved nothing but love, life, and peace in this world away from me.

I closed my eyes as I thought of the pleasure I took as I ripped their still beating hearts out of their chests. I closed them against the visions of me taking their magic within a heart cut ruby, known as the Blood Ruby. A forbidden artifact that I searched the world over before killing the man who had it, he should have really just let me buy it from him. Their magic would be needed for the final ritual I had planned. The ritual that would seal my place in Hel, as I will have created a sin so grave, that my soul would be dishonored. I looked into the mirror. The price I had to pay was extreme; but then to do the forbidden magic I was about to do? It called for an extreme price. A price I would gladly pay, for I have crossed that thin line between justice and vengeance.

I stood in a black dress, a dress that matched my wedding dress, but it was now black with the death of my soul; the sun was setting, just like it had upon my soul. I stood in front of my family grimoire, it had a forbidden section. A section of magic that I only got to glance upon until I was twenty-one, before I had to embrace the rules set forth by our gods and mother magic, before I had to learn what I was forbidden from doing.

I looked at the evil I have already done, from the vengeance I sought, to the horrific things I have done for this ritual. In front of the grimoire laid upon the finish of silk was the preserved body of my beloved bride in her pure white dress, an exact replica of her wedding dress that night.

For this ritual I looked at the actions I had taken, from the killing of a pure silver dove for its heart, the trapping of fairies so they would die & burst into fairy lights, and the sacrifice of three innocent mortals. But it was worth it, for I could not live without her. Without her the darkness of my family magic would have consumed my soul. Like it had done on that moonless, starless, clear winter night, that I swore my soul and life to her, to have my own brothers rip my love, my happiness, and all that was good from my very soul.

So, tonight I give up a dove’s heart, two lives of fairies, three bodies of blood, and my very soul, all for her life.

Eos and Hecate forgive me…‬

New WIP

I have a new outline for a new WIP.

Soul of a Hero

All can be corrupted by the darkness of life.

NaNoWriMo Project Excerpt:

Lysandra stood in front of the masses. “We are taught as Catholics that death is nothing but a transition.” Lysandra wasn’t sure she still believed in God after what she had seen in the war, but it was a comfort to her siblings, family, and friends. She stood before them in the church, her parents caskets laid out side by side, one with a flag, one with enough flowers to make a garden jealous. She swallowed, “we are taught that there is life after death. We are taught about life eternal. We are taught that once these mortal hearts beat their final beat that we are raised into the afterlife. Where our souls are cleansed in purgatory, then we ascend into heaven. It is hard to remember these teachings today. It is easy to say these words; but to live them is harder to do, when our souls are in this much pain.

Our hearts and souls are grieving. It feels as if the ground has fallen out from underneath us. There isn’t a single person here that is not affected by this grief, though in varies degrees.

Our parents, Nero and Tia, they touched so many lives. One who never met them can tell that just by the fact the church cannot hold all of us. So many people from so many walks of life, there was nobody that my parents wouldn’t help.” Lysandra paused, so many thoughts into her own head. Especially if it was good publicity. After all, mother would not accept anything but obedience and following the pat set for them for her children.’She looked at the words she had written. She wrote them in a moment of pain and hate for her parents for leaving her. For making her do this, for making her siblings hurt. Once she wrote them that first night when she couldn’t sleep, she went numb. She coughed to cover the pause.

“I am not going to stand here and say everything will be alright. Because right now, it is not for any of us. What I will state is that they believed in life after death. That we will see them again someday. It is so easy to say this, but I know the pain in my soul, and it is hard to not want the world to stop turning with you. Because it feels like the world stopped that night and we tilted as it went to a dead stop from the sixty-six thousand miles an hour it was traveling around the sun.

NaNoWriMo 2018

So, the full re-write of Praying (pending title change) is going on this month. I apologize for the lack of posts (if any of you actually read this). As for Halloween Part II I have most of them written fully, and those not written they are outlined. I will be typing them up in December, as well as typing up the rest of Insomnia Cafe!

“School is boring. Do you think I can test out?” Lucius asked.

“Do you really want to? I mean doesn’t that girl of yours still go to school?”

“Yes Aurelia is only 16 and a junior. And she plans to go to some chef school right after graduating.”

“In America or overseas?” Lysandra hummed as she pulled out ingredients to cook chicken fajitas.

“Paris. She wants to be classically trained as well as street trained.” He rolled his eyes as he hopped up on the counter. “You could have become a chef if you wanted you know? You are good. And you know what those people on television are talking about in those cooking competitions. You even go out and try to find all those ingredients to try your own version. Do you really want politics or is it just so programed into you?”

“I really do want to go into politics. There are a lot of things need to be changed. Civil Rights have taken a back seat and society screams and cries but nobody is willing to do anything about it. The only way to change any of it is to do so from the inside. Don’t you think the rights and freedoms I fought for when I was in the military deserve to be fought for in our own government?”

“Sure. It is just you like to cook and bake and stuff too.”

Lysandra chuckled. “I also like musical instruments, languages, art, and writing. But those are hobbies. I have made the choice to dedicate my life to the public. Maybe after I retire from the political scene I will publish all those stories I wrote. Or maybe I will have a mid-life crisis and go and start up a rock band.” She laughed as she tossed a cut up piece of pepper at Lucius.

Lucius laughed. “I would pay to see that. You in a rock band!” He laughed again as he tossed the pepper back at her.

“Hey! It could happen! I mean, I play a mean guitar, and my voice isn’t half bad.” She laughed.

“Uptight, conservative, Captain Lysandra T Tiburtinus gives up her life goal in stunning display of a midlife crisis, details at ten!” He said in an announcer voice. “Tiburtinus has punked out her hair, dumped a conservative boyfriend for a female lover, and has started up the next big female rock duo!” Lucius laughed. “I can see the trending hash tags and the news stations going gaga over it now!” He fell back laughing.

Lysandra laughed. “I am not that conservative.” She stopped and thought about things. “Shit, I really did toe the line mom had me walk. I am even registered as a Republican!” She dropped the spatula that she had been using as she made this revelation. “Holy Hell Hounds!” She blinked and looked at her brother. “Do you think I would have been disowned if I hadn’t toed that line?”

Lucius signed. “No, dad loved you. Adored you. You were his princess, so like him. He was the most liberal Republican I knew. Perhaps it is time to revamp the party. Sure you are pro second amendment, but you are for decent gun control. And sure you are pro-life personally, but you also support people’s right to choose. Choose to educate them and use abortion as a last option for the woman’s mental health. You are very much what the face of the revamping of the Republican Party should be. Away from the bigot, white, rich, racist, hatful men and towards a new definition of conservative values, while being a decent human being.” He smirked then, “after all, you are the furthest from that description. You have been fighting for equal rights since grade school. And right under mom’s nose using the explanation it was good for your future political career.”

Lysandra rolled her eyes, “yes, because it wasn’t the truth.” The sarcasm would hit even the most oblivious person over the head.

Lucius laughed and popped a half cooked pepper in his mouth. “True, yes, but you always stood up for the little guy. You literally grew up to be Captain America!” He about fell over laughing.

“Lysandra faked disgust, “Blasphemy!” She put a hand on her chest. “IRON MAN FOR LIFE!” She yelled.

Lucius laughed. “Face it! You grew up to be Captain F’ing America! Quite literally, Captain!”

Lysandra thought about it and shook her head as she put the chicken and steaks in their perspective pans. “I don’t know. Cap was way moral. Tony totally is human. He understands masks and the need for them. He understands working the system, and not fighting it. For Cap everything is black and white. Tony saw grey.”

“Okay, so you are a human version of Cap, but you always looked out for the little guys. Always. If you didn’t you wouldn’t have half the medals you do.”