We hope you’ve had a good week of writing! It’s time to see what our writers came up with for this week’s prompt.
The prompt this week was: In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, write about finding the end of the rainbow.
Three of our writers came up with three very different stories based on this prompt.
Here’s the flash fiction piece written by Karen Blakely:
Kaylie had always believed in magic. In the existence of fairies. She kept herself mentally prepared, sure that someday, sometime, she would be swept up in an amazing adventure. Flying with dragons, perhaps. Or saving a cursed Prince.
That’s why, when she saw the rainbow where it arched down overhead, she followed it. Even though her mother always told her that rainbows don’t have an end. But that was just because her mother didn’t believe in magic. Kaylie did.
So she darted across the street, even though her mother would have a fit if she knew, and headed into the tangled field. The one that was for sale and had no trespassing signs posted every few feet. It took more effort than she expected to shove her way through the thickets and brambles. Her legs and hands were soon scratched and bleeding, but she was determined to continue. Despite the fact that her socks were torn and each scratch had begun to itch and burn. She knew what lay at the end of the rainbow and nothing was going to stop her!
And there, at the very back of the field, falling softly down into a patch of wild ivy, she saw where the rainbow ended.
Her mother had been wrong.
Kaylie crept toward it slowly, her heart beating fast and hard. Her ears thrummed like a bird was trapped and thrashing about in her ears. Would there be a guard? Would she have to outsmart it or fight it? What if a Leprechaun was waiting nearby, ready to challenge her?
Was she actually about to find a pot of gold?
What could she do with a pot of gold? Give enough to her mother to wipe the lines of worry from her face. Enough to make sure they didn’t have to eat breakfast for dinner every night at the end of each month. It might be enough to buy a house or a car, so her mother didn’t cry when the heat didn’t come on or the car wouldn’t start. Maybe there’d be enough to bring a smile back to her mother’s face.
Kaylie moved a little faster, thinking that she’d be willing to fight a Leprechaun to make that happen. Although…would it be real gold?
Leprechaun gold wasn’t the same as real gold, was it? Hadn’t she read that? After only one day it would turn into leaves or dirt or some such thing. If that was true, what would happen to her mother if she used it? Would she be accused of cheating? Could she go to jail?
And how would Kaylie explain having a bunch of gold to her mother. How could she explain when her mother didn’t even believe in magic or leprechauns? Her mother would think the gold belonged to someone else. She would insist on turning it into the police.
Kaylie was nearly there now. Only a couple more feet and she would reach the rainbow’s end. She could see where the colors drifted down among the ivy, though she was still too far away to see if there was anything under those leaves.
She reached out a trembling hand, then hesitated. What if there wasn’t anything there?
She’d always believed in magic. In the existence of fairies. And she wasn’t ready to stop. Not yet. She wasn’t ready to be like her mother. She pulled her hand back slowly, staring at the ivy. Was there a golden gleam there? There must be. But no matter.
She really didn’t need to have an angry Leprechaun stalking her and her mother. That was why she didn’t reach in and take it. That’s why she turned resolutely away and crossed the field, then the street, and headed back home.
She’d seen the end of the rainbow. And that proved that magic existed. No matter what her mother said.
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Second, here is the beginning of a story written by Cheryl Mahoney.
It began as a lark, of course. Amelia said we should go chase rainbows. Amelia is my best friend, and she’s like that. Let’s go see where that side road ends up. Let’s go into that weird little antique store and see what we find. Let’s go try on prom dresses at the mall, even though we’re ten years too old for prom, and we never went anyway. Let’s choose a random number between 1 and 1000, then go see what’s filed under that Dewey Decimal number at the library.
She’s adventurous, but also a nerd. You know.
Rainbows was a stretch even for Amelia, though.
She was lying upside down on my couch (head on the floor, feet hooked over the back) on a rainy Saturday afternoon when she made the proposal. “Come on, it’s definitely rainbow weather. The sunshine between patches of rain—prime rainbow conditions.”
I was making a show of trying to read a book about healthy relationships, to figure out why mine weren’t, but my heart wasn’t in it. “We’re not going to catch a rainbow. They’re uncatchable by definition.”
Amelia twisted around to sit upright again, face pink, curly red hair falling back to her shoulders. “It’s never about the catching. It’s about the chase.”
It may be attitudes like that contributing to the state of our relationships, and I didn’t need a book to tell me that. It just seemed like the cute guy across the way in the coffee shop was never as interesting as he seemed once I started talking to him, you know? When he was a mysterious Other, I could imagine all the fascinating conversations we might have about art and philosophy and our dreams. And then we’d finally strike up a conversation, and we’d end up talking about, I don’t know, our jobs, our apartments, maybe the last movie we saw. You know. Life stuff. Boring, grown-up stuff.
“Okay,” I said, shutting my book. “Let’s chase rainbows.”
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Lastly, A. Fletcher Harper contributed a short story–we recommend this one for mature audiences due to erotic content.
Bait and Switch
Clifton eased out onto the beach, acrid sea smell assaulting his nostrils and the arc of the rainbow above his head. Brighter and clearer than any he’d seen before, each fracture of light was a serpent band of color tangled in the nest of the whole. The sand was the perfect warm and soothing as his toes slid in, the sun an orange ball as it lit up a rain that didn’t quite reach the ground.
Nothing so beautiful had made its way into Clifton’s life before.
The rainbow curved out and down, its vibrant presence an opal glow off a million, million flecks of mica. It came to rest just a short way into the surf.
The end of the rainbow.
Clearly this was the magical rainbow. The one whose end you could really catch. Clifton could see the waves parting around it like the post of a pier, leaving a wet V of sand and bits of shell when the surf splashed in.
There was something dark and round like a drum or barrel – a pot – at its base.
It just had to be.
Avarice filled Clifton’s chest just as the life and rot smell of the sea filled his nose. The two merged and the smell became erotic, taking the tinge of female heat. The wetness of the sea and the wetness of sex slipped loose his need and he went dashing across the beach, hooting and hollering like a giddy chimp ready to dive into a crate of bananas.
Clifton got to the top of the V and skidded to a halt, his feet leaving deep furrows in the wet grit and glints of mother of pearl that immediately began to fill with water.
He’d suddenly remembered the leprechaun.
If a magic rainbow with magic loot was a reality, then it stood to reason that the magic midget associated with those other things was real too. Standing stock still, feet sinking deeper into the sand with bit of surf that ran over them, Clifton scanned the area and listened. He didn’t see any flashes of green from behind the larger chunks of detritus on the beach or near the abandoned and quaintly dilapidated lifeguard station up the beach. No mysterious clover patches springing up from the sand. Peals of maniacal mirth didn’t echo through the crashing of the waves, and he heard no Irish brogue whispering atop the sea breeze. The only thing unusual was the strength of the fishy smell on the air and the way it felt more like an invitation to coitus than a seafood dinner, but that had nothing to do with leprechauns.
A full minute passed without anything in the scene going toward a Lucky Charms ad. Feeling that he was in the clear, Clifton turned his attention back toward the object at the base of the rainbow, in the dry V as surf crashed in and flowed around the prism post and then half submerged in roiling foam as the water slid back toward the sea.
Up close, it was bigger than he’s thought but didn’t look like a pot at all. No dull gleam of cast iron or steel. No open top with coins spilling out or a lid to keep them in. No, it wasn’t a pot, but it had to be something magical didn’t it? Sitting here under a mystical rainbow? He took a few steps closer.
The post sex-party smell of the sea grew stronger, not just invading his nostrils but coating his tongue, confusing it with the simultaneous flavors of ahi and his ex, Susan. Meaty and fresh it nestled in the back of his throat. Saliva filled his mouth, drooled over his bottom lip as it parted from the top to allow the passing of the shallow pants that had stolen his breath. Vividly he envisioned Susan, who he’d never stopped wanting, spread wide before him, inviting him to orally pleasure her by laying a sheet of nori across her sex.
He glanced down to see that he’d tentpoled his shorts with the peak pointed right at the scaly object in the surf.
Scales.
Just as he realized that’s what he was seeing, the object began to move. It slid across itself like an anaconda untangling. At the base a three-foot fishtail flopped out, ribbed and glittering in the rainbow light.
From the top, a figure emerged. First just milky down-angled back, freckle-dotted across the scapulae and spine, skin blending into scales at the waist. Then the back of a pale neck tufted with reddish wisps that became silky-wet red tresses, slowly untangling from scaled tail.
Clifton stood transfixed, pinned by miraculous sights and wrapped in the salty scent of deep and wet. Hypnotic, the waves crashed around him, their metronome marking time as the woman top unfolded, red-hair to staring green, silver-flecked eyes. They stabbed into his heart, grabbed his soul and he found himself stumbling forward, gaze sliding over plump lips, gilled grilled throat, exquisite collarbones. Creamy, magnificent breasts, pink nipples free of clamshell pasties. A perfectly flat tummy, but no navel, drifting into emerald and onyx fish scale.
Clifton wanted to recite love sonnets to her, read erotica and nibble her ear, make Disney porn with her all at the same time. He just had to get himself under control and say the perfect thing to turn her from luscious tang on his senses to flesh under his hands.
“You’re not a leprechaun,” is what he came up with.
“Well, duh.” With all that red hair, those freckles and green eyes, she didn’t even have the decency to don an Irish accent. Instead her voice was raspy and weak, and sounded vaguely of New Jersey. It was kind of off-putting, though not enough to overcome the power of the carnal scent she exuded. Or his view of that large and lovely bosom.
“But you’re under a rainbow.”
“I borrowed it from Happy O’Halloran,” She croaked. “He’s a leprechaun.”
“Why in the world would a leprechaun lend a rainbow to a mermaid?”
A sassy little smirk appeared on her face. Then, voice sandpaper rough, she said, “Because I have laryngitis. Laryngitis kills my siren song. And, I’m ovulating.”
Part of Clifton – the part that had been increasingly concerned by the Viagra effect of sea rot on his willie and the constant images of seafood and sex in his brain – kicked off alarm bells at this, but it wasn’t the part that was forefront in his mind. Instead, a crushing sense of disappointment settled in his gut, only slightly shifting the fire in his groin.
“So no pot of gold then?” he complained.
“Oh there’s a pot of gold alright.” A hooded heat had come to her eyes, and a husky tenor turned her voice from raspy to gravelly.
She leaned back on her elbows and flopped her tail out in front, fin aimed right at Clifton. Her rusty tresses dangled back into the wet sand and then an incoming wave. A dimple appeared amdist her scales at the spot where her girly bits would be if she were human. It deepened, formed twin curves that looked like inner thighs clad in shimmery green and black sequins.
Clifton’s heartbeat pulsed in his manhood. His consciousness became airy. wafting on the aura of sex and anticipation that the holy triangle would form at the top end of those curves. She reached a hand out and beckoned with a ‘come here’ of her index finger, adorning nail the prismed shimmer of abalone shell.
His inner survivor dug Clifton’s heels into the sand, and he fought the sensation of a string pulling at his erection, trying to drag him to her by his lust. His resistance brought a look, both irritated and amused to her face, an agitated flare to her gills.
The dimple had gone inches deep and was at least a foot long. Any minute the mons would appear. Clifton’s drooling redoubled at the same time he leaned back, trying not to be pulled forward.
Then the whole dimpled slit opened up, like a jacket being unzipped. Peeling back, the lips revealed golden flesh with the textured look of salmon filet fresh in the cold case. Heady female scent, until now the lesser on the air, cut tart through the sea smell, became dominant, climbed into his brain and buckled his knees.
Clifton surged forward catching a brief glimpse of the pile of pearlish roe gathered at the bottom of her slit. He fell on top of her, arms and legs splayed to either side, and his mouth sought her nipples, finding their warm heat just as her stinging nails shredded his shorts and underwear, freeing his sex. Her hands wrapped around behind him, her claws driving into his cheeks, pain making him bite down on hot nub between his teeth so that they both gasped as he plunged into her. He was seized by hot bands of pleasure so intense he shot straight to orgasm. Then he came again and again, in pulsing helplessness.
A giant wave crashed over them. The mermaid wrapped him tight in her arms, tail flexing, squeezing Clifton tight within her as she kicked them out into the sea. As she turned and swam toward the deep, the force of water took Clifton’s mouth off her breast. Pleasure pulsed through his groin as her muscles squeezed him. Milked him.
Through the gap between her side and arm he looked up through feet of water at the sky and watched the rainbow fade away.
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We hope you’ve enjoyed reading! Come back tomorrow for next week’s prompt, and next Saturday for the results.
Stonehenge Circle Writers 