Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Here's piece written back in 2016, and touched up a little for today's post. It seemed like a good response to this week's Day of Overeating Thanksgiving holiday.   What’s for Dinner?  Mom’s acting weird. Well, that’s kind of normal, if you follow me, because she’s always weird, but usually she’s weird like wearing strange clothes and working all night on one of those bizarre sculptures she makes. I won’t ever tell her this, but I don’t like them. They have too many jagged edges. They’ll tear holes in you if you get too close. I sometimes wonder if she’s out to destroy someone, or if she just sees the world that way, all jagged. Either way: weird.   But what’s really weird is that she’s started cooking. No more Swanson’s pot pies, and no more trips through the fast food drive-through window. So now, I have to eat what she calls “real food,” which is sometimes pretty unreal, if you know what I mean.   Her idea of real food can get pretty d...

This is a flashback flash fiction piece from 2016, a bit of (maybe) harmless Halloween fun...   Witching Weather   “Fog’s rising.” Jack made the observation in a detached sort of way, not sure if it mattered.   “More fun that way,” Jill answered. If he was unsure about the weather, she was not. She straightened the tall, pointed hat that kept threatening to tumble from her head. “It sets the right sort of mood.”   The boy and girl grinned at each other. Both wore sweeping black robes, rather in the fashion of the students of Hogwarts. A close observer might have even thought they had come from the costume shop, but with the fog settling in and the daylight gone, no one could be sure. Jack wore a silver circlet around his forehead, while Jill sported the afore-mentioned pointed hat.   “At least half the kids will be spooked before we even begin,” Jill said, eyes aglow with excitement.   Jack nodded, seeing her point. “A...

While I'm away, I'm running some flash fiction from years gone by. This story from 2013 came from one of the prompts Chuck Wendig used to run weekly on his blog, Terribleminds.com (I believe it was a random selection of a psychic power). It seems a good choice of story as we approach Halloween, being one of my few ventures into horror (ish) that doesn't turn comic. It's a little long at 1090 words, though I tightened it up a bit. The Choker   I was with Brian when it began. I knew something had happened, but when he said nothing, I let it slide. That was my first and biggest mistake, but we who have these powers are slow to speak of them, and with reason.   Brian had taken me with him to shop for a birthday present for his wife. She liked old jewelry—not necessarily antiques, but old. Brian had seen a shop he thought looked promising. You know the kind: half junk store, half antique shop, where a few good bits may be mixed in with a ton of tra...

I'm pretty sure this was originally written in 2015. In any case, it's a semi-fictional account of an actual storm we experienced in Kings Canyon NP that summer. It's a quick read at 360 words. Fear and Trembling in a Tent  It's midnight in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and suddenly we are not sleeping. The weather was pleasant when we went to bed, and two days of hard hiking made it easy to drop off. I wouldn’t have been surprised had I slept soundly all night.   Thor and Odin and the crew have a different idea. The first boom of thunder—if it was the first; it was the first I woke to hear—is loud and close. The flashes of lightning sear the retina even with the eyes closed. We count off the seconds between flash and boom. Do the math. Two miles. One. Half a mile. A quarter. Then: holy shit it’s in the tent!   It isn’t. The mind knows that, because the mind is still there to think about it. But when the gap between lightning and thunder drop...

 Since I'm out hiking, it seemed only right that my flashback stories should be from the mountains, as it were. This 770-word gem is from 2016. A Minor Navigational Error   "I'm cold, dear."   "You're always cold. That's the trouble with you females. You can’t handle the weather at all."   "It's July. It shouldn't be this cold here. Are you sure we're in the right place?"   He made an exasperated noise. "Of course I'm sure."   She sighed in her turn. "You're always so certain you are right."   "I am Zeus, after all. A god. Remember?"   Hera hated it when he brought that up. Anyway, she was a god, too. "Well, yes, dear, but..." She didn't finish the sentence. They both knew she was thinking about Leda. That had taken some tricky explanations on his part, and she had really only pretended to believe him. But he'd had to claim it...

By next week I'll have some more photos for you, and hope to have some new flash fiction soon, but for now, enjoy this story from 2016. I believe it was a random scenario from a Chuck Wendig flash fiction challenge--I think a pair of characters originally meant to be "he's a... she's a ..., together they save the world" kind of thing. About 1080 words. Attraction of Opposites Saves the World “Maga, can’t you clean up after yourself for once?” Susan shouted her frustration from the living room. “How the dickens can I be expected to do my work when you leave shopping bags everywhere?”   Maga poked her head out of the bedroom. “I like new clothes. And you have to admit I wear them well. You’ll manage.”   “But the furniture doesn’t look so good under all the bags, Maga. And I can’t work if there’s no space. Anyway, with all your shopping, did you ever think to pick up more bananas?”   Maga stiffened, her hair escaping the effort she...

 I'm on the road/trail again, so you get a bit of flashback fiction this week! This one is 750 words, from back in 2015. Ubehebe They say to err is human, to forgive divine. The second half of that saying is a complete lie. Consider the incident at Ubehebe Crater. That sounds like the title of a Hardy Boys mystery, but it was deadly serious to me. Unfortunately for me, it was equally serious to the gods involved.   I don’t even know exactly which gods were there. Probably Pele; it is, after all, a volcanic crater. But she wasn’t alone, not by a long chalk, and none of the gods did much forgiving that day.   After saying so much, I suppose I’d better tell you the whole story. See, I went there because I’d heard there were some interesting things living in the silty mud puddle at the bottom of the crater. And I went at night, because I didn’t have the proper permits for my research, and National Parks are a bit fussy that way. I suppose that w...

While I'm off collecting exciting new photos to share, I'm also sharing some of my flash fiction from years gone by.   This piece is from 2014, and is short at 650 words. I think I wrote it mostly as a sort of homage to US 50 in Nevada, "the Loneliest Road in the America" (not true) and a route of which I'm oddly fond. Anchored at one end by the Sierra Nevada (if you don't take the obvious route and get on I80 at Fernley) and by Great Basin National Park at the other. What the Highway Wants LeAnn clutched the wheel of her ’78 Buick, and kept her eyes on the road. It had been a long drive from Ely, and traffic was growing thicker. US 50 wasn’t the Loneliest Road in America at this end, and there were on-coming cars every minute or two. She pulled off the road at Grimes Point, where the petroglyphs were, just outside Fallon. She knew it was the last convenient bathroom before Donner Pass.   LeAnn didn’t like to stop at Donner Pass. T...

While I'm off collecting exciting new photos to share, I'm also sharing some of my flash fiction from years gone by.   Another story from 2016. The main character may have some tiny resemblance to me in certain respects. It's conceivable that there is also some resemblance here to actual events, though I have never cussed out a bear.  984 words. For Want of a Map “You said you knew the route. You said you didn’t need a map.” Rosa’s tone was deceptively calm, and Hal swallowed. After 27 years of marriage he knew when he was in trouble.   “I, ah, must have missed the junction. It can’t be far back, though.” He tried to picture it, but he’d been thinking about a problem at work, and had really no idea where the junction had been.   Rosa looked at her husband a moment, hands on hips, and let him squirm. Then she dropped her pack, opened the top pocket, and extracted a map. Unfolding it, she turned her back to the wind—and to her spouse. The e...