VPG's Collection of Stories.

That's All She Wrote.

[Hello there, and welcome to Version 2 of what was previously known as my oneshot book. In this new version I'm keeping the oneshots that I personally enjoyed, as well as those that got highly positive feedback from my readers. Some of these have a lower writing quality, so to help you decide whether to keep reading, I've made this the new first chapter of my book so that you can have a look at the kind of quality you can expect to see later on, as my writing develops. This was written in 2016.

Have a nice day, and thank you so much for reading! ]

- J 

Darkness. Blinding light. Darkness again. The smell of smoke and burning flesh in the air. Snippets of hysterical shrieking from behind semi-closed doors.

Stupid. Oscar thought. All of them stupid.

He kept to the shadows in the alleyway, not making a sound - not even his feet crunching on the broken bitumen. You would have thought there was enough noise - noise of fire crackling, noise of children crying, noise of people running - that you could be loud without worrying. That wasn't true. As soon as you made a noise, they knew you were there. As soon as they knew you were there, you were at risk.

He'd seen what had happened to those who made noise.

He glanced up at the sky. It was covered in dusty red cloud, swirling irritably as if it could never sleep. How could it, when the people below it were so panicked?

Of course, Oscar reflected, if there was no cloud, he wouldn't be outside right now. If there was no cloud, the sky was black. If the sky was black, you couldn't see them until it was too late. Now, at least, if you saw a black shape against the red, you had some warning.

Oscar slunk past what used to be the post office building. On it was a huge poster, torn and splattered with something ominously red. The words 'They'll fight, so we don't have to!' were plastered over the top in overly jovial lettering; the poster itself featured a hideous looking beast clutching a soldier in its claws.

There had been no attempt to hide the savagery of the creatures when they'd been released upon the world. After all, it didn't take long for people to realise the true nature of the things.

That's what happens when you design a war machine without a kill switch.

Oscar turned, looking away from the propaganda. It was all a cruel joke now, anyway. The flyers left hanging around from before the war made you sick to the stomach to look at them. It made you remember a time when you slept soundly - but never safely - at night, knowing at least the things handled the murder for you. A time when you pleasantly ignored the growing amount of missing people, because animals - even if they were only considered animals when it was convenient to do so - had to be fed, after all.

A scuttling on the roof tiles above him. Oscar froze, stilling his movements and his breathing. Fighting the natural urge to scream, to run, he entered a form of meditation as a long, thin creature descended from above.

The thing was just as he remembered it from all those years ago. It resembled a huge bat, using its wings as front legs, with a number of tails that varied from creature to creature. This one had seven. They were slim and scaly, lined with razor sharp barbs that could cut through metal.

He'd seen it happen.

He tried to block out the morbid images that threatened to seep into his mind, of those very same hooked barbs peeling open the aluminium of the plane like scissors gliding up wrapping paper. Of the black, oily, leathery skin of the things as they flattened their bodies impossibly thin, and slid through the slits they had made in the fuselage.