Ten Micro Shocks

By C. C. Blake

Ten thrilling stories arrive, deliver their payloads, and then depart. Flash fiction is designed to thrill in as few words as possible. Here, C. C. Blake delivers ten suspense-filled stories that don't overstay their welcome. Insatiable hungers, unspeakable violence on blood-drenched roller skates, an insurance policy from hell, and a space elevator ride into nightmare are only three of the journeys awaiting brave readers.

This collection contains the stories "Spooky Yogurt," "Decisions, Decisions," "What's in the Box," "What You Crave," "One Drop of Blood, One Year of Life," "Kill Die Coup," "Kill Bell," "The Deciding Factor," "Best Spent Inside," and "Finger to Allah." All these tales also appear in the Five Micro Shocks and Five More Micro Shocks collections, bundled together for one low price!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Twice Told Tales II
• Release date: Sep 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301174348

C. C. Blake

C.C. Blake has lived across the United States, starting in the suburbs of Detroit, to Massachusetts’ second largest city (Worcester) to the country’s seventh largest city (San Antonio, Texas, that is). He’s has a variety of jobs, working as a substitute teacher, the graveyard shift dishwasher at a haunted Denny’s, lab research monkey and teaching assistant at a second tier college. Currently, he works as an automation consultant for a chemical company on the Northeast side of SAtown (which isn’t as Hellish as it sounds). Blake’s most popular character, irrepressible adventurer Chuck Cave, has appeared in over two dozen stories, including the 2005 Man’s Story 2 Story of the Year Award winner “Chuck Cave and the Vanishing Vixen.” The character’s supernatural thriller stories (which began with the seminal “Cave and the Vamp”) are all being released as a part of Vampires2.com’s initial foray into e-books. These new versions are presented in expanded and revised versions, all are the author’s preferred texts. Be sure to collect them all! In addition to his pulp stories for the 2-Empire (Man’s Story 2, Vampires 2, Androids 2 and Paranormal Romance 2), Blake’s fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Unparalleled Journeys II (from Journey Books Publishing) and Fearology: Terrifying Tales of Phobias (from Library of Horror Press).

Book preview

Ten Micro Shocks

An Omnibus of High Voltage Flash Fiction

By: C. C. Blake

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Fiction © 2013 by C. C. Blake

Cover Design © 2013 by Twice Told Tales

Cover Artwork © Victor Habbick | Dreamstime.com

Finger to Allah appeared in slightly different form in Unparalleled Journeys II, edited by Edward Knight and David M. Fitzpatrick and published by .Journey Books in 2007.

Smashwords Edition

Published by Twice Told Tales

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

Table of Contents

Spooky Yogurt

What You Crave

Decisions, Decisions

One Drop of Blood, One Year of Life

What's in the Box?

Kill Die Coup

Kill Bell

The Deciding Factor

Best Spent Inside

Finger to Allah

Further Reading

About the Author

Spooky Yogurt

PP was a people-user, a total fuck-and-run type. His friends’d had enough.

Argument capstones: Chestnut called him a dickless wonder. Daryl screamed, Who wants you, anyway? PP left in a rage, hotter than a jalapeno.

After he'd gone, Chestnut asked Daryl, Hold me? Actually, she wanted to fuck.

Daryl didn’t like her that way, but he held her, regardless, in the back of his beat-to-shit van.

Not two hours after PP'd gone, a nasally voice recited PP’s license plate over Daryl’s police scanner.

Moron got pulled over, Chestnut laughed. She stopped at the words Flaming wreck.

Psychic flash. They both knew where he was: off I-20, outside Iverson.

PP always took the hairpin twists too fast. Used to be: Chestnut urged him on–faster, faster–like on roller coasters, where death was impossibility. Daryl saw the truth: One of these days, man ... Crash and burn.

They were in shock but went to see. PP’s Thunderbird had gone down an embankment, tumbled across open ground, and slammed into a pair of oaks. One trunk was sheared clean through; the other, older and fatter, folded the car into an accordion. Fire trucks finished dousing the blaze. The Jaws of Life chewed at the corpse’s metal wrapper.

He was bacon when the pigs pulled him free.

Chestnut cringed, Drive, Daryl, she begged, Go.

They managed 15 minutes, back to the outskirts of Otanuk, before Daryl pulled to the side. Chestnut leaned out the door and spat mouthfuls of puke.

They parked, killed the engine, and slithered into the garbage laden back.

We made him do that, she said between sobs, If we hadn’t said that stuff to him then he wouldn't have—

He was a crazy driver, Daryl said. It would have happened regardless. Made sense, but he could not wrap those words in belief. Responsibility draped his heart like the lead aprons dental techs lay on a body, before taking X-rays. I killed him. The only boy I’ve ever loved.

They cried together, until Daryl’s tears dried. He continued cradling her.

When her words were finally intelligible, she asked, Do you got anything?

I don’t think now is the time for drugs, he whispered. His brain still shrieked I killed him! Those words fell into the void filling the space where his bowels should be. I killed him. The only boy I’ve ever loved. Would those words ever fill the emptiness?

Yes! her voice was a child’s screech. Now!

Daryl searched through old fast food wrappers, brown baggies and crumb laden Ziplocs. Past colorful candy papers and ripped condom packets. In piles of dirty laundry. Around the formless, cum and cola stained, futon mattress.

There.

Underneath an empty BK Supersized Coke cup, a twist tied plastic baggie, half filled with iridescent crystals.

I remember this. PP had dumped it on Daryl three days ago, when the drug dick was scoping his pad.

What’s that? she asked.

What did he call it?

Spooky yogurt, Daryl said. His grin evaporated when he heard PP’s voice, drawing out spoooooky in a muppet monster’s voice, sort of Animal by way of Snookums–the kind of voice that might be scary when you’re eight