The stories of today

This morning, my flash story, “Man on the Moon,” was published at 365 tomorrows. There’s a little question about the formatting — the underscores are meant to be italics and for all the dialogue — but overall I like the piece. It’s just under 300 words.

Then this afternoon, at my weekly writing group, I came up with this in our forty-minute free-writing time. We had this prompt, where one of us supplied a subject, the other a verb, and the third person an object. So we wound up with “tiger,” “swung,” and “shuriken.” And I wound up with this:

Tiger swung a shuriken at the large man standing in the doorway. He told himself he had intentionally missed.

But there was nothing to be done about it now, not with the flying star embedded in the door frame and the man’s fist about to be embedded in Tiger’s face. He was a mountain of a man, a hulking cliche of a henchman, every steroidal inch of him a goon through and through. The Jackal Brotherhood must grow these guys in vats, Tiger thought. Twenty tons for the price of one.

Tiger checked his pockets for an extra star, a weapon, anything. His only hope was to be quick on his feet, quicker than the goon, reflexes like a cat, pounce through the door and —

The man’s fist collided with Tiger’s chin.

My god did that hurt!

But the goon was going to have to be quicker if he planned to keep Tiger from —

And again. This time with the right side of Tiger’s face. He felt his teeth rattle, jar a little loose. He spat blood onto the dojo’s matted floor.

“Well that’s just rude,” he told the henchman. “Can’t a professional ninja try and kill a lackey without an unnecessary pummeling?”

He winced as the hulk of a man’s other fist swung into his gut.

“Was it the trying to kill you thing?” Tiger coughed. “That was just a joke, I promise.”

“Buddy,” the goon said, not yet even breaking a sweat, “you talk way too much.” He threw a kick at Tiger’s head. “And me killing you, that ain’t gonna be no joke.”

So Tiger had underestimated the goon. He could talk, for one thing. He might be little more than a thick wall of brute force and fists — which, even now, were acting like meat tenderizers against Tiger’s torso and lower body — but the Jackal Brotherhood hadn’t lobotomized him like they’d done so far with all the rest. Tiger must be getting closer. Jessica couldn’t be too far away now. If he could just get through that door…

“Your shoe’s untied,” Tiger said.

“Nice try,” the henchman said, knocking Tiger’s body to the floor. “But if you think I’m going to fall for that, you’re even dumber than you — ”

Tiger grabbed the laces, tugged, and, with his other arm, aimed an uppercut at the man’s unmentionables. If there was one thing ninja training taught you, it was to improvise.

The goon collapsed with a surprised oof, his fists now forgotten at his sides. The bigger they come, Tiger thought idly, getting to his feet. He tugged the shuriken free from the frame and raced out the door, leaving the muscle moaning behind him.

Now comes the hard part, he thought.

Other than that, it was just your typical Sunday around here.