Fantasy Drabble #313 "Shade"

He glanced around nervously before picking up the receiver and dropping his quarters into the payphone.

Three rings, a click, and then, "Yeah?"

"It's me. I'm downtown. They're everywhere."

"Don't move. I'm coming." There was a pause. "Are you safe?"

"The payphone's under a streetlight. But it's pretty dark." He thought he saw motion out of the corner of his eye: a shape cut from a deeper black, streaking through the night. He would have thought it a trick of fear and adrenaline, but for the shrieking.

"Have you actually seen them?"

"No, but I can hear them. They're everywhere."

8 comments:

  1. Dear David,
    Welcome to Friday Fictioneers. Note it's all right and a good idea to copy and paste the photo prompt into your blog.
    You have me wondering who "they" are.
    Also you'll garner more reads if you link your URL into the Linkz tool by clicking the little blue froggy guy under the photo. Let me know if I can help in any way.
    Shalom,
    Rochelle

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    1. Thanks for commenting! Sorry, I didn't see the link for the Linz tool. I'll remember that for next time.

      As for the image, I have a fiction-only rule for the blog posts themselves. The rule is to keep posts from being as messy as I tend to find many other writing blogs, where the body of posts is a mixture of the piece, an explanation of the piece, images, links, etc. So I'll have to think about whether I want to make an exception for images from image prompts.

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  2. Welcome to the Fictioneers, David. I can tell by your story that you'll fit right in. :-) Nice job on getting across a sense of foreboding and although it may be a small thing, I liked the way you differentiated between the speakers by using italic for the words of the one.

    I look forward to reading more of your stories in upcoming weeks.

    janet

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    1. Thanks! I usually italicize dialogue that's coming from a phone or public address device, to reflect the fact that it sounds different. :-)

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  3. Welcome to the club! Nice bit of suspense, there.

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  4. I like this.
    Good work!

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