Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

My usual source of writing prompts is up to something, and this week he only asked us to provide an exactly three word title. I did that, and then picked one to use for my own. This one is courtesy of Samuel Huddleston. It's 904 words, and seems to have been infiltrated by a favorite character from some of Jemima Pett's flash fiction . The Last Buffalo The hunters were having a wonderful time. The herds had been vast and the shooting good. They feasted on buffalo tongue and skinned out the best of the animals, leaving it to Caleb to tan them. Caleb got stuck with most of the scut work around camp, but this time it was of necessity. The man—really, more of a half-grown boy—was the only one who could tan a hide properly. Caleb watched the other hunters while he went about his work. They were getting drunk, as usual. Carruthers was the leader, and he liked his drink. He wasn’t even really a hunter. He called himself an archaeologist, but what Caleb thought was that he was just an...

With no prompt from Chuck Wendig this week, I rooted through various old prompts, stared blankly for a long time at a page with a glorious title (which I still hope to use, if the story ever comes to me), and concluded that I would return with pleasure to Gorg Trollheim. Gorg has starred in a number of stories, something of a serial, which you can find here . That's a list of all my short stories; scroll to the bottom for the Gorg Saga. I made it exactly 1000 words this time (though that's mostly luck). Return to the Valley of Baleful Stones Gorg Trollheim was angry. A careful observer could have seen this wrath, which was great enough to be just visible even on his stone features. A wise observer, seeing this, would have stayed well out of his way. Gorg was large, even for a troll, and a seasoned fighter. As far as Gorg could tell, there were no observers, wise or foolish, as he strode across the Iron Desert toward the Valley of Baleful Stones. Nor did anyone impede his path. ...