Fletcher Fox

“transformative teenage rebellion” by Fletcher Fox

My mom dropped me off at the restaurant, convinced I was just meeting with a study group. They were somewhat correct, just not the type of studying nor group my mom would approve of. My backpack did not contain books, but rather clothes, clothes my mom would scream at me if she knew I would be wearing in public, but this was not just anywhere in public.  No, I knew this restaurant, this event, was safe, so I undressed in the single stall bathroom, taking care to zipper my skirt and button my blouse, applying makeup the way I had taught ...

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“fog” by Fletcher Fox

When this was the weather, being asked to write a story wherein the weather mirrored a character’s emotions was simply too easy. Fog was practically used more often as a metaphor for emotions than as a weather phenomenon at this point. Human beings even have machines that make fog specifically for the atmospheric effect said weather creates at concerts and theaters. But this was no human created fog. It was light and saturated the air, made seeing distances impossible, made the confused angstrom of emotion all that much worse.  So yeah,...

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“Vera, truth spells, and overt anger” by Fletcher Fox

Trigger warning: kidnapping, non-consensual truth spell use, past physical abuse, current sexual assault, and dissociationSometimes, being under a truth spell just means not being able to lie about being fine anymore. Not that I was lying to Vera about being fine because I wasn't - that would require answering her inquiries into my well-being at all. But generally, even before I came to and recognized the sickeningly familiar feeling of being compelled to tell the truth, I had been the type of person to claim I was doing fine when maybe I wa...

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“never thought we’d have a last kiss” by Fletcher Fox

Submitted to Contest #286

trigger warning: extremely dubious consent, emotional manipulationBlake owed Clara an explanation, he knew that much. He decided to be honest, completely honest, for once. "I thought that if I tried hard enough, if I played along, then I would eventually learn to love you the way you want me to.""But you don't." She said, not phrasing it as a question, all too aware of the reality she now had to face. Clara blinked rapidly, willing away tears. She couldn't afford to break down, not when Blake stood in front of her, baring his soul, betraying...

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“Problems of a pen” by Fletcher Fox

I used to be useful. Now the ink has dried. The poor artist scratches my tip against the sketch pad to no avail. I’m empty. The ink inside me has dried and no longer flows freely. The artist shakes my clear glass body, evidently frustrated by my inability to function, to create the markings required of a pen. Ink is meant to flow through a pen the way blood flows through a living creature’s veins. But mine has clotted, has stopped working as it ought to. It wasn't always like this. Nowadays, I spend the majority of my time clicked closed, ti...

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“should’ve known better” by Fletcher Fox

content warning: sexual assault and suicide attempt “I should’ve known better.” “Excuse me?” “You only ever call me when you fucking need something, and the only time I hang up, you know, now that I’m employed and have a job and can’t obey your every whim any more, you go ahead and do something so reckless and stupid, it makes me regret ever setting a boundary. I should’ve known better than to answer the damned phone.” “Julie, please, it’s not like that, I swear, I -“ “You’re calling me from the fucking psych ward after drinking an entire bo...

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“parasitoid paranoia” by Fletcher Fox

Every story starts with a birth. Or maybe every birth begins a story, the writing of a life, and sometimes the writing of a death at the same time. Parasitoids do just that - they rewrite the story of a beetle's life to instead birth a fly from said beetle's pupae. They rewrite the story of a spider's molt to instead birth a parasitic wasp in Costa Rica. Parasitoids eat their host from the inside out, and until recently, the only reason they haven't inspired more horror stories was that human beings were never victims of their destruction.&n...

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“the middle mermaid” by Fletcher Fox

Submitted to Contest #277

Look, when your father's King Triton, you have little say in your life. You performed for the fishes, pretended you don't eat half of them whenever you're not on display, dealt with the brunt of Dad's rage towards Ariel until the disfavored daughter finally deigned to appear, then swim off with your sisters to gossip about Pisces' new fin-building routine and whether eating snails truly did make your skin clearer. You've always been a side character, fourth-born of seven, and at first, Ariel's drama remains just that, drama. You were angry w...

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“write like you're running out of time” by Fletcher Fox

He needed to invent a plot, a story, a character, somehow words continued to spill onto the page but none of them succeeded in creating what the author actually needed to write - a short story of one thousand to three thousand words addressing one of five prompts. One prompt stuck out as one he could use to create a sort of metafiction: Write a story about someone who’s running out of time. After all, the actual prompts he had wanted to address, someone being haunted or the perspective of a corpse, took time he didn't feel he had to wr...

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“love is dangerous” by Fletcher Fox

“I don’t fall in love. I don’t want to be loved or love someone else.” “Why?”  “Love is dangerous. When someone loves you, they can hurt you in far worse ways than if nobody loves you. If nobody loves you, you have a safety net of solitude.” “Poetic wording, bud. We both know you love me, I’ve seen how you look at me!” Cal had thought saying that might result in Margalit initiating a kiss, or at the very least snap her out of her denial. He hadn’t expected her breath to hitch as she began pleading. “No, no, please, no, I don’t.” “Margal...

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“Diary of a vampire” by Fletcher Fox

Dear Diary, Dr Williams suggested that I keep a journal of sorts… not sure how much it will actually help this feeling of physical emptiness. I guess here it goes though. I throw up every night after eating my favorite garlic cheesy bread… it’s not on purpose so it’s not bulimia. The doctor seems to think I should cut out dairy but I could never do that to my cheesy bread. Maybe I’ll try to make my own. Dear Diary, I tried making my own garlic cheesy bread. I threw that up too. However, whenever I make a grilled cheese, I don’t have a proble...

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“ghost haunts self” by Fletcher Fox

When I was younger I used to daydream about my funeral. I thought most angsty teenagers did that at some point, and I have no way of knowing if I'm right. After all, I didn't believe I'd actually be around to witness it, so anything I imagined would just be that: imaginary. Death was supposed to be the finish line, when my body finally got to release the energy stored within it as gas, when the symbiotic bacteria would finally be able to feast unfettered by the musculoskeletal constraints of the living organism. That happened, but my spirit ...

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“Unforeseen connection” by Fletcher Fox

TW DISCUSSED TRANSPHOBIC HATE CRIME "Have we met before?" "I don't... think so?" Uncertainty permeated the way the sentence was said, a lack of knowledge that seemed to differ from the way the original question was asked. "I'm recovering from a traumatic brain injury, so my memory isn't - if we met in the past three months, I wouldn't remember." "Oh. Shit. Sorry, you just looked like someone I knew in high school, and I've just moved home after graduating university, and was really hoping someone my age had come back, but... I'm sorry you're...

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“The extinction of a kitchen colony” by Fletcher Fox

Submitted to Contest #270

A trail of pheromones was left by the scouts to lead fellow colony members down the trail to the nourishment the one scout had discovered. The ant colony lived in the kitchen, specifically in the damp wooden cabinet below the sink. The false sun was still not yet overhead when the scout left the trail. Other workers soon followed it, the corpses of cockroaches (unknowingly poisoned by the giant beings that lit the false sun) being surrounded and consumed by worker ants, who had gathered after having followed the scout-created trail.  Th...

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“Magic magnifying glass” by Fletcher Fox

An ordinary object that becomes magical first has to be an ordinary object, one that is regularly used, that can be considered an ordinary part of someone’s day. The magnifying glass was, for Alexander, an ordinary object. After all, he was an unemployed aspiring entomologist - what else did he have to do besides take his magnifying glass and his sketchbook or his phone outside with him to observe insects? (Realistically, he had plenty he should have been doing, like applying for jobs to make him not unemployed, but Alexander didn’t make res...

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