Two Urban Fantasy Flash tales by Me

So Happy Fourth of July for those in the US. A great country to celebrate .

Anyway, I am afraid I do n't have the story I promised for this week. Last week I said I would write one for today's post. But with a strong desire to get my novel ready to go along with losing chapter 8 I didn't get it started. It's barely started. So here are two stories I wrote a while back. I am doing a series of 600 word stories based on a picture which changes every week. At 22 stories I will do an anthology of them. Except they won't be 600 words any longer once I revise them. One of these two are over 1,000 now and the other is close behind. One of the other stories is now over 3,000 words. So I may call the book "Long 600 word tales". They are SF, fantasy, Romance, general fiction, Urban fantasy, steampunk and a couple of odd ones.
A few of you may have read one or both in their 600 word stories but they are slightly different now.
Anyway. These two have the same Main Character, an older dude I still haven't named. I will have to do that. I hope to do two more stories about him to include with the 22. Obviously I did revise them-today in fact-but I will do that again because they still need a wee bit of help.

So enjoy:

Number One
"A Bother"


I strode up to the man inside the little booth, ordered some of the roasted nuts he sold. He worked at a kiosk inside a large mall. I can’t help myself I always get some of that brand when I come here. He handed me the bag of mixed nuts with a receipt, I don’t like to go to. I nodded, turned around. People walked by, or through the doors of the stores. Their scents followed them if they got too close. Some weren’t bad: perfume, aftershaves , etc., but some smelled of cigarettes, sweat or drugs. I shook my head.
The lights and skylights produced enough visibility to get a good look at everyone. Since I was born fifty plus years ago I find it hard to get used to some of the outrageous and skimpy clothes some of them have on. A few of the girls are even worse. The new craze with tattoos was wild too.
With a sigh I backed off, I needed to get away from that cell phone kiosk, ten feet away. If something distracted me enough I would let enough cellular vibrational mystical energy out to blow each of those tiny computers. That was the second reason I hate going to the mall. Electricity and what some call V-nergy does not mix. Which is why I always drive an older car. 
The first reason I have mentioned already. Those nuts can be expensive.
I needed to be here today though. There was a problem. I backed up intill my back hit the wall, hard and smooth at the same time, even though my light blue shirt. I now stood in a wall enclave where I could watch for it for that problem. The designer of this mall thought wall enclaves made the place look more attractive. I liked them because I could hide out in one for a few minutes. A tiny “don’t look in here” Trick, just on the opening, kept me from observation while I looked around. Someone determined could still find me but it wouldn’t be easy and most shoppers are distracted by other concerns. With age and experience I’ve learned to be skimpy with my store of V-nergy.
Two people, who walked too close to me, lost their cell connections and maybe their batteries; I sighed again. At least they didn’t flare up into a fire, this time. Another thing I needed to get used to with age. I hadn’t had to worry about personal electronics when my ability to manipulate those tiny vibrations that make up everything first showed itself.
Ten minutes later a sailor walked through the mall, I hadn’t seen him enter. Not all that unusual for a navy reserve base sat near here. It has been in continual use for generations. This fellow though wore the clothes of a sailor from the 1800s. They were muddy and wet in places. I nodded, it was him. My problem for the day. I could feel the bubble of something-not the usual cellular mystical energy-around him. I studied that bubble. I have a special sight, I can turn off and on, which allows me to see energy a normal person can’t see or sense. I titled my had back and forth to look at it from different angles. I could see lightning like arcs and a greenish tinged transparent field around him. Why Green? I don’t know, maybe God likes that color or it’s symbolic. Green for nature and this energy we use is produced by nature. Or maybe my subconscious is playing a game with me and green has some type of physiological symbology only my subconscious knows. Which makes it hard to guess what it means.
The person who called me had experimented with Time Travel Tricks. Which is very stupid. Not only was Time hard to adjust or manipulate, but it had a tendency to do strange things when you tried to manipulate it. Thomas said he only tried to set up a viewing window, so we could watch what happened in places and times we knew very little about. Something went wrong-I rolled my eyes-as it usually did. Another friend once spent five years repairing the damage done by someone attempting to go back in time to undo some event. We just didn’t understand-maybe we are incapable of understanding-how Time works. It had its own logic, power, and order. I thought if I twisted his Trick right it would send him back. It might hurt him with a backlash but not that badly.
I concentrated decided on a spot in that filed and sent the Trick and used my will to modify the matrix of the Trick. I let it go.
Ouch-that hurt me? Damn, it didn’t work right. Time does have its own rules. I tried to send in a web of lines to see if I could read the field deeper. The fingers of the web fell away. I drew it back in.
Why not? interrupted my own study of that when I spotted something in that bubble. My head tilted to one side as I thought. Somehow Thomas had produced a bubble of time energy-or maybe it produced itself when this guy came forward in time. A protection?
Or as I looked closer at one matrix, it did more. So what would happen if the bubble would burst? Another study-maybe it had meant to but Thomas’ interference stopped that. I reached into it with my energy, soften his Trick, pulled his energy to me than let the bubble pop. It did. The man disappeared, back to his own time I hoped. I turned to go thinking-hoping that Thomas and I had learned some wisdom from this. Or just an excuse to get the nuts.

The end

Number Two
"To relax or not"
I sighed. I had come to watch a football game; to relax, the scent from the pine trees growing around this small town and its small high school was suppose to help with that. Even the smoke from the fireplaces in each house, was natural. I was born over fifty years ago and I knew how to relax. For me a forest can help. This small community sat in the foothills of the Rockies. I liked it for as a user of the cellular vibrational mystical energy I didn’t have to hold it in as much here. There were very few modern convinces and those that were here were very well protected from that cellular vibrational mystical energy, You could see the larger mountains these hills led up to. I came here to visit an old friend who liked living here, with few outside people and neighbors with the same type of “condition” he had.
His son was playing in the high school game that had started over two hours ago. The sun was setting so the lights had just come on.The son was huge and wide, but he was one quarter Troll so it was expected. A nice guy though. That was why my friend lived in a small town in the hill country. Some of those here had their own particular physical characteristics. Like that tall fullback: his shape and slightly pointed ears for instantness. Some of the girls had long pointed noses. No one minded.

The game had just finished-we won, partial thanks to my friend’s son-late; the field lights had come on for the sun had all but disappeared over the mountains I mentioned. The cheerleaders and couches were all on the field waiting to come in. The gym, both teams used, was behind and was a large, grey brick building. They didn’t have money for anything fancy which is why they had just the field with lights, bleachers, football markings and goalposts. I didn’t mind that.

Smoke started to blow over the field. My head turned in the direction it had come from. There had been no fires around earlier but the grass and bush surrounding the school could burn very fast for it was dry from summer. The players and cheerleaders started to look confused. A couch or ref-it was getting hard to see-had turned to stop someone I couldn’t see.

From the exclamations of the parents and other fans, I knew I wasn’t the only one to experience the fading light. The lights on the posts didn’t do much to shine through the smoke.

I sneezed, grabbed my handkerchief. Oh oh, something I was allergic to. My nose dripped, my eyes watered. Only a couple of things would affect me that way. That is why I knew my time for relaxation had come to an abrupt end and thus my sigh.

A moment later I stood and hurried down the bleachers. They trembled under me and clanged with each step, as I stood at an angle, which meant I could only go so fast. Once off and on the grass, I ran down to the field, wiped my nose and upper lip again on the way. I hate it when my mustache gets filled with snot especially when I licked it-yecch. Now I needed to concentrate on my job. As a I hurried out on the field I ran to where the smoke came from. Players were complaining about the rotten egg odor. I could barely smell it now because of my closed nose but that was probably a blessing. The players, couches and cheerleaders were all confused about which direction to go. The visibility was very low down here. The smoke blocked the light like a very thick gauzy burlap bag lay everywhere. I drew in the energy I needed and sent a blast toward the goalposts that now looked reddish. My Trick rebounded; I tripped and almost went down in pain caused by the backlash of my Trick being demolished. Of course it wouldn’t be easy. Even as I debated what to do more heat and smoke came through. I could feel the extreme heat from half a field from it. It had become thick enough to taste the ozone and rotten eggs. 
I decided I needed help and to get the kids off the field. I ran back to where they were grouped. I shook the tall kid-hoped his eyesight came from his heritage-to get his attention. Everyone seemed gob smacked. He looked at me.

“Lead everyone to the bleachers” I pointed, “go now!”

He looked at the bleachers and I knew my guess had been right, he could see them. He yelled for everyone to follow him. I yelled encouragement for them to do it. That he could see where to go. I went to my friend’s son, led him to the right spot, told him he should run and hit that darkness with all he had, he would be a hero.
My surprise, he did. He hit the space between the goalposts three times. The first two didn’t do much but the last time he ran from further back. He had time to build speed. He smacked it hard enough to bounce. It flickered, I sent the Trick I had readied. Cracks appeared in the air, another smaller blast and it shattered. I used what V-nergy I had left and closed the pathway. That took effort and hurt for someone else had made the gateway. I knew what to do though so it closed. I panted and knew I would hurt in the morning but it had worked. The smoke would dissipate now. I would need to find who did it. I suspected it was one of those girls with the long noses. Someone practicing beyond what she knew, or trying of revenge, or maybe just to show off. The town elders would be able to find them and find a suitable punishment for the motivation. It could involve writing out in long hand, something like I will be more careful ten thousand times. 
However, first, I needed a rest and the BBQ they said was after the game. I am getting old for this. 

The end