One-Hour Flash – Madcap
Here’s another flash piece I wrote as part of a one-hour flash challenge/exercise. This time, I actually have the prompt the story was written for (I was the one who posted it in this case).
(Exciting, huh?)
This story, “Madcap,” is part of a loosely connected series of stories about an organization called the Bureau of Fae Affairs or BFA for short. The idea came to me in one of these one-hour challenges, and I occasionally return to it in that scenario. Anyway, it’s an urban fantasy concept in which a very public government agency has to deal with an influx of fairytale creatures into our reality. The BFA both polices and eliminates dangerous fae while helping those that wish to live here peacefully integrate into our reality. There’s no denying the “Men in Black” feel of it, the differences being a focus on mythological creatures rather than aliens (obviously) and more emphasis on the work the agency does to integrate the newcomers into human life. (This story is not a great example of the latter.)
I’ve got like five or six of these stories floating around as flash pieces (one published), which all originated during one-hour flash challenges. I’ve also completed one longer tale, but I haven’t done much with any of it. “Madcap” is pretty typical of where I end up with this idea when I try and fit it into flash.
Madcap
“You the guy from the Jotun division?” The big guy leaning against the trunk of an aging Ford Crown Victoria asked as Simmons walked out of the woods. He looked to be in his mid-forties, and his thick brown hair was graying at the temples. He was built like an NFL linebacker, though, an easy two-fifty, and most of it muscle. He wore a black tactical rig over a Kevlar vest, faded jeans, and black work boots. A pair of cheap sunglasses perched on his crooked nose. His tactical harness bore the letters BFA in white reflective paint.
Simmons nodded. “Yep. That’s me,” he said and shrugged to settle his own tactical gear on his shoulders. His vest, too, had BFA written across it. “How’d you get way up here in that?” Simmons pointed to the faded blue Crown Vic. They were at least ten miles into the woods, and he’d had to park his Wrangler on the toll road a mile back. How this guy had managed to get his Ford POS this deep into the woods was a mystery.
“I’m Fitzgerald,” the big guy said, ignoring Simmons’ question. He pushed away from the trunk of his car and extended his hand. Simmons shook it and tried not to wince as his hand was swallowed and squeezed by Fitzgerald’s oversized mitt. “I’m surprised the bureau could spare one of you guys,” he said with a chuckle. “I hear Sigrid is teething.”
Simmons shook his head and sighed. “That she is.” His current position in the BFA—the good ol’ Bureau of Fae Affairs—was part of a team whose entire duty was to care for a twelve-ton Jotun baby. Jotun, or frost giants, were just one of the many fairytale creatures that had come spilling into the world when trans-dimensional portals had quite unexpectedly opened up around the globe a decade ago. The BFA had formed shortly thereafter, a government agency tasked with ensuring that peaceful giants, ogres, goblins, elves, and other fantastical creatures were dealt with and integrated into the human world if they so chose. Unfortunately, not all were peaceful. In fact, a lot weren’t.
Simmons smiled. “I’m not gonna lie. I was glad for the temporary assignment. Our little darlin’ has wrecked three cranes and two fire trucks since those teeth started coming in. It’s a goddamned emergency every day.”
Fitzgerald grinned. “I wish I could say this’ll be easier,” he said and pointed to the object of their mission—a hole bordered by rotting boards in the side of a small hill.
“Is that a mine?” Simmons asked.
“It was. Probably gold prospectors. It’s full of gnomes now.”
Simmons ran through all the fairy creatures he’d encountered in his five years with the BFA and came up blank. When he thought of gnomes, he saw cheap statuettes in quaint city gardens. He was in good hands, though. He’d been told Fitzgerald was a hitter, a BFA agent that dealt specifically with the nastier fairy folk in the most extreme and abrupt fashion. “You’re the hitter. I assume you can tell me all I need to know.”
Fitzgerald nodded, returned to his car, and popped the trunk. From within he withdrew two mammoth shotguns—they looked like the very deadly mating of firearm and Mac truck. “Ithaca Mag-10s,” Fitzgerald announced and tossed one of the huge shotguns to Simmons. He caught it with both hands—it was as heavy as he had suspected.
“We need these for fucking gnomes?” Simmons asked. “You could drop a rhino with these things.”
“I’d rather be hunting rhinos with BB-guns than the little bastards in that hole with these,” Fitzgerald said and grimaced. “What we have here is a particularly awful variety of gnome called a red cap. They’re called that because they like to dip their hair in the blood and entrails of their victims. They also have skin as hard as granite, claws that would give Freddy Krueger a hard-on, and, oh yeah, they can see in the dark.”
“Jesus,” Simmons said. He could actually feel the blood draining out of his face.
“Don’t worry,” Fitzgerald said and slapped Simmons on the shoulder. “They’re dumber than a box of rocks. We’re gonna bring ‘em to us.”
“How?”
Fitzgerald pulled what looked very much like a grenade from his tactical harness and smiled. “Smoker,” he said. “My own special concoction. It’s loaded with cold iron shavings. Makes their skin burn. They’ll come piling out of that hole, and then we just light ‘em up.”
“You’ve done this before, then?” Simmons said and pointed his shotgun toward the hole.
“Nope,” Fitzgerald said, pulled the pin on his grenade, wound up like a baseball pitcher, and fired the grenade at the hole. It disappeared into the dark, and the BFA hitter took a step back and put his own shotgun to his shoulder. Fiveseconds later, a muffled but still extraordinarily loud thud rolled up out of the hole followed by a cloud of greasy black smoke.
The first red cap burst from the smoke cloud at full tilt. It was small, about four feet tall, gangly limbed and gray skinned. Its face was a mashed lump from which two glittering black eyes stared hatefully outward. Its hair, brick red and dripping, streamed behind it, and it reached for both of them with long-fingered hands, each bearing six-inch talons.
Simmons squeezed the trigger, and his shotgun punched his shoulder like a kicking mule. The charging red cap’s head disappeared in a geyser of brown ichor and what looked a lot like rock dust. Its twitching body fell at his feet.
“Nice shot, Simmons!” Fitzgerald exclaimed beside him and kicked the red cap corpse away.
“Fuck me,” Simmons breathed, adrenaline still buzzing through his veins. “That’s may be the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen.”
Fitzgerald nodded. “Unfortunately, you’re gonna get to see them in their natural habitat.”
“What?!” Simmons said, eyes wide.
“Yup. The smoke is clearing, and it only drew one of the little fuckers out. There’s always at least six in a red cap nest. We gotta got down and root ‘em out.”
Simmons shook his head. “No. No. No,” he said. “That’s madness.”
Fitzgerald shrugged. “Maybe. But it’s the job.” He slapped Simmons on the shoulder again. “Cheer up. It beats changing the diapers on a twelve-ton baby, don’t it?”
This was fun to write and it gives some info on the setting, but it doesn’t really go anywhere, and it isn’t a successful flash piece. Like many failed flash attempts, this likely works better as the beginning to a longer piece. Maybe I’ll go back and do something more substantial with the BFA or maybe I’ll just continue to produce these little 1,000-word scribbles for one-hour writing challenges when I should be writing something I can actually publish. 🙂
2 Comments on “One-Hour Flash – Madcap”
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It’s a fun start, for sure. Second-fave line (after the mating of the gun and mac truck), “You’ve done this before, then?” Simmons said and pointed his shotgun toward the hole.
“Nope,” HAAA! You’ve set me up to expect this will go wrong 6 ways to Sunday. I’m ready got go down the red-cap hole and see this habitat. I expect it to be as gory as the story behind the caps. Ugh. Nicely done.
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