Flash Fiction Challenge Week 3: All that Glitters

A little horror

I don’t think it’s particularly worthy of a trigger warning, to be honest, but, just in case, this week’s flash features insects, skeletons and flesh eating, not necessarily in that order. Also, it’s got a foolish academic. It’s a wee bit Indiana Jones, a dash of Pirate Borg and a smidgen Cthulhu.

This here flash fiction challenge is to write a 500 word piece, including the five random verbs and five random nouns that I generate each week. Here are the words that I randomly generated last week:

Nouns

expenditure
entertain
tablet
morsel
leader

Verbs

announce
stand
reverse
sue
decline

All that Glitters

by Ronan McNamee

A weevil squirmed fervently behind his right eye. He entertained the idea of a blink. Couldn’t justify the expenditure of such effort. Instead, his eye flicked to the tablet, nuzzling his thigh. Its script illumined impossibly in his guttering torchlight, shifting and slithering like his eye’s new neighbour.

“Stand aside, ignoramuses! Do you suppose I endured my long sojourn just for some roustabout to bear premier witness to the treasures and magics of these fabled burial chambers?!” With ears they comprehended nothing. The Professor’s wild curtain-parting gesture however, banished the obscuring cloud of labourers to reveal a twilit window into antiquity. Almost. Their leader, stout and mono-manual, remained. She pointed with her hook. “Gold, first,” the demand landed at his feet with her spittle.

Inside, he felt his decline. He could see it on the outside. The insects dwarfed the average weevil, or even cockroach. They peeled off morsels of flesh, in strips. His singular orb witnessed it, the other dribbled into his beard. He heard himself draw a ragged breath. This could never be reversed. The tablet…

“My lady, you’ll be remunerated upon the fulfilment of my expedition.” Even standing a full head taller than her, she surveyed him as a disobedient hound. “Pay now, Professor. (such insolence!) Not coming back.” She gestured at the stylised, be-vined, skull guarding the cavern entrance, flanked by glittering, gluttonous beetles. She hooked around at her people, eyeing each one. She announced a single word in her own language. Three syllables rippled out through the contingent, in a shivering susurrus. The mob nodded as one. The Professor quavered a moment, then scoffed and pushed past.

So glad, he was, that he felt nothing more. No pain, at least. Something wriggled fitfully in his brainpan. That tickled? A last gob of meat, dislodged by his dinner-guests, plopped from his tibia to the tablet. A sickly, emerald glow pulsed from the artefact. He felt ready to stand again. He rose with a clamorous clacking, new power making up for the loss of muscles and sinews. He turned towards the broken, sun-bright steps. Outside, they awaited his return. Bloated, distended, still starving, his companions flew up into the last tangerine light of the day. It glinted off their golden shells. “You wanted gold,” he chattered.

The Professor ignored the mindless caterwauling above. She bawled at his back as he descended, “You owe us! Professor!” He rolled his eyes in his sockets. And grinned. The chamber was disappointingly low but the contents! A vast figure crawled skeletally across the far wall in bas relief, a hand raised before a plague of golden insects, suing for peace perhaps? A rugged altar, stained in centuries of sacrifice held a tablet. It shone with a wan inner light. Untouched, as it was, by the ubiquitous dust, he read the first word, startled. It was the word the hook-hand had used… He heard the creatures flitter out of the walls as he collapsed, tablet beside him. The Professor whimpered.

Next week’s words

Next week’s nouns

crusade
cluster
drawer
railcar
turkey

Next week’s verbs

permit
stop
spring
control
fuck

Honestly didn’t know that the random word generator was capable of expletives but… let’s go, RWG!