Darkness: A Flash Fiction Story

Darkness

Katherine Rochholz

Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved

Flash Fiction Story

            I sipped the coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, as I looked out at the falling snow. The scene was peaceful, serene even, so different from the thoughts and emotions rolling through my mind and soul. I ignored the whispers behind me. The lady that ran this show was trying to hush the others, but her whispers were the loudest. She was telling them to give me my privacy, but I am sure if it wasn’t her pastoral duty she would be gossiping with them. I looked down at the fountain pen in my hand, I had been playing with the lid, how easy it would be to take it and carve a world where I could escape this hell on Earth.

            I snort at myself. I am a world famous novelist and I couldn’t communicate with the people suffering with me. They, the ones that ‘love’ me, think that in this group I will just sprout all my feelings. I have played my feelings close to my chest since childhood, I don’t see that about to change… but for them I could try.

            I heard the lady running this think call order. She came and touched my shoulder, asking me to introduce myself, I just nodded at her and then dropped the lukewarm cup of coffee into the garbage. I turned and faced the others. I took a deep breath. Steadying my thoughts, though it would never work, I tried, for them, I tried.

            “I am Rowena, and I am an alcoholic.” I mentally snort at the cliché. “The reason why is a year ago, today, I lost my son, we were in a car accident. He didn’t make it. I did. I didn’t want to, and turned to drink.” I told them the truth, though the pain stabbed me in the chest as I thought of that day three hundred and sixty five days ago. “I am sober one day.” I announced, today was the first day of my attempt to heal. For them.

            “Welcome, Rowena.” The group whispered.

            I nod and sat down. I would do this for them, my remaining family, but I still wished for that blackness that tequila gave to me. I still wished for oblivion. I still wished for the darkness of death…

            But for them I will try.

The Cost of Power: A Flash Fiction Story

The Cost of Power

Katherine Rochholz

Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved

Flash Fiction Story

            I sat looking at the kitten still with the bow and ring around the collar. I took a deep drag of coffee from the mug she had gotten me when we first started dating. We had met at a tennis club when I started my first campaign. I swore to her the empire I had built would be used to change the world. The essence of that promise still there, but it had been buried as I moved up the political ladder.

            Many don’t get the political machinations I had been playing. Politics is a dangerous game. And part of it is playing a convertor, to change people to your way of thinking, and I was good at that. A true silver tongue.  Politics is as dangerous as poke to a sleeping bear, but I took the risks. And I moved up. And it seems, if her words are true, more distant to my humanity. But my risks paid off; at least I thought they had.

            But now I am in a position of real power, a position that will allow all my machinations to come to their conclusions. And star the path to make the world a better place.

            I just didn’t realize the cost of this latest appointment. Until now. The letter saying goodbye sits on our bed, where I now sit drinking coffee and staring at the kitten that had a ribbon and a ring around its neck. A ring that was supposed to symbolize the family I wanted with her. The love of my life.

            Perhaps this pain in my chest is the wakeup call I need. For all my machinations, this recent appointment isn’t worth the cost. I look up at the knock on my door.

            The secret service agent looks in. “Mister President, you are need.”

            I look at him, time to make this machination worth the cost.

Decision: A Flash Fiction Story

Decision

Katherine Rochholz

Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved

Flash Fiction Story

            I sit and sip upon my only margarita of the night. I smile as the tempo of the music changes into a classic rock song about a boy who killed another and now had a gang after his life. Truthfully, I never thought I would be here, after all my mother tried to stonewall me, to preventing this, to prevent my dreams of coming true.

            Everybody has a story, about what their parents expected from them. Mine? My story is just the opposite of normal. Well, not really, just what my mother wanted for me.

            I was always a plain girl so when the popular boy showed interest in me, I thought I had died and gone to paradise. Needless to say, he just wanted the claim of taking my virginity. Well, I got pregnant. My mother wanted me to work at the diner, raise the child, become a wife, give up college. She refused to help me as I left for college. I made my choice, no matter the roadblocks, the loans, the challenges, I fought, and I won.

            Tonight is the night before my medical school graduation. I smile at the eighties themed birthday party my seven year old son wanted. It was obscene the amount of eighties music my son adored, but he was happy. I was happy.

            And in six weeks I would be a surgical intern at one of the best teaching hospitals in the world; but the best thing I have ever done in my life, was keep my son and leave my mother’s house, making it on my own. After all, this life, it is my story to write.

Repost of Insomnia Café: Prologue

Insomnia Café: Prologue
All Rights Reserved

When I was fifteen I lied about my age and joined the military. Two and half years made no difference. I had my high school diploma. But college? Not my scene. I after all was a street rat.
When I was twenty seven a bullet ended my military career. I literally was going to make it my life choice, but I am not one for a desk job. So the bullet that took out three pounds of my thigh? Yeah, sent me back into civilian life after twelve years. I walked into the Marines with nothing to my name. I walked out with a cane with a skull head and ruby eyes, with a healthy sized savings account. After all, how was I going to spend my paycheck when I was doing missions that weren’t even fully put on the books?

After a year of physical therapy I choose to take my life savings and open up an all-night café. Why a café? Because it allowed my insomnia an outlet and it allowed me to use those skills my father taught me before he was died when I was eight, he had been a baker. So a few self-taught lessons to catch up on baked goods, I settled down in the big city and opened up my café.

I named it Insomnia Café.

What I didn’t expect was that it would become the Switzerland in a sea of crazy.

From the very first ‘villain’ and the very first ‘hero’ to walk into my doors I declared neutral and stayed out of it. There was no way I was going to be drawn into any type of drama. I did the hero thing. I wanted nothing to do with it. I did the villain thing. I wanted nothing to do with it. I was now neutral.

The city is full of characters, and most of them are my regulars. From Superheroes to Super Villains to Everyday Heroes to the standard criminals to the regular Joe off the street; they are all my customers.

My café has become a central hub that is neutral and a safe place for all. Where all is safe, where all laws seem to become non-existent, where nobody breaks my rules, after all for being a normal human, I can cause fear in the worst of super villains and heroes alike.

These are my stories of my regulars at Insomnia Café.

The Thin Line: A Flash Fiction Story

The Thin Line
Flash Fiction
All Rights Reserved

Blood. I could feel the dark red warmth drip down my fingers as I tried to stop the bleeding. I could see the red stain the pure white gown of my bride. I had turned my back on tradition to marry for love, and my bride paid the price. The shot rang in my ears again as I woke up with a scream torn from my throat.


I took a deep breath. I looked down at my hands expecting to see blood, her blood, the blood of a truly innocent soul; instead the scar on my own chest glinted into the moonlight. I was dying, my soul had died. Where I was saved from death’s final grip, where I was prevented from leaving this mortal plane, my dear sweet bride died in my arms the day of our wedding, that cold, darken, gorgeous winter night.

I screamed at that moment, the moment where I realized it was not just a nightmare, but my living hell. I sat in my bed and screamed. I was a powerful and influential witch and I could not save my bride. I screamed my throat raw; then I got up and stumbled to the bathroom to look in the mirror.

My once icy blue irises were tinted black due to the magic I had been preforming since I woke from my coma three weeks ago. The magic that was forbidden in nature, the magic I had once swore to myself I would never even contemplate. But no matter the cost I was going to get my vengeance. I had forsaken my patron goddess, Astraea, and veered from the path of Justice into Vengeance.

I had done the darkest and most forbidden of magic to call for the lives and souls of those who were responsible for my soul being killed, for taking the one person who deserved nothing but love, life, and peace in this world away from me.

I closed my eyes as I thought of the pleasure I took as I ripped their still beating hearts out of their chests. I closed them against the visions of me taking their magic within a heart cut ruby, known as the Blood Ruby. A forbidden artifact that I searched the world over before killing the man who had it, he should have really just let me buy it from him. Their magic would be needed for the final ritual I had planned. The ritual that would seal my place in Hel, as I will have created a sin so grave, that my soul would be dishonored. I looked into the mirror. The price I had to pay was extreme; but then to do the forbidden magic I was about to do? It called for an extreme price. A price I would gladly pay, for I have crossed that thin line between justice and vengeance.

I stood in a black dress, a dress that matched my wedding dress, but it was now black with the death of my soul; the sun was setting, just like it had upon my soul. I stood in front of my family grimoire, it had a forbidden section. A section of magic that I only got to glance upon until I was twenty-one, before I had to embrace the rules set forth by our gods and mother magic, before I had to learn what I was forbidden from doing.

I looked at the evil I have already done, from the vengeance I sought, to the horrific things I have done for this ritual. In front of the grimoire laid upon the finish of silk was the preserved body of my beloved bride in her pure white dress, an exact replica of her wedding dress that night.

For this ritual I looked at the actions I had taken, from the killing of a pure silver dove for its heart, the trapping of fairies so they would die & burst into fairy lights, and the sacrifice of three innocent mortals. But it was worth it, for I could not live without her. Without her the darkness of my family magic would have consumed my soul. Like it had done on that moonless, starless, clear winter night, that I swore my soul and life to her, to have my own brothers rip my love, my happiness, and all that was good from my very soul.

So, tonight I give up a dove’s heart, two lives of fairies, three bodies of blood, and my very soul, all for her life.

Eos and Hecate forgive me...‬

New WIP

I have a new outline for a new WIP.

Soul of a Hero

All can be corrupted by the darkness of life.