Becoming Isis, putting Osiris back together

Prompt: morris dancing

I always said that I'd write a story based in the strange and often drunken world of morris dancing. Here I believe I can claim to have been the first person in the history of ever to combine morris dancing and the Cthulhu mythos. I would like my prize now, please.

Cthulhu cheers me up no end. I actually feel sufficiently recovered that I might be able to sleep now. :D

May Day

They danced in the main street while stallholders did a brisk trade in toffee apples and sausages in bread. They danced back and forth, sometimes with white handkerchiefs flicking one-two, sometimes with staves of wood that thunked and clicked against each other. They did Ducks in the Privy, Shave the Donkey, Portsmouth, Pershore and Queen's Delight, and Tom did four jigs. Finally, as sunset started in, they started on the first dance in their final set, called Innsmouth Hey. They followed on with Hastur's Fancy, Flowers of Arkham and Madness in the Mill.

The onlookers who escaped before the Old Ones rose from the sea and came upon the shore could not ever afterwards hear the sound of bells without screaming.

Flash fiction challenge, #4 of 150.

( Dancing the Divine Madness )

Userinfo Interests Flash fiction, #3 of 150.

( Candles as Warmth )

This one's an actual drabble. Precisely 100 words. BOOYAH!

A piece of userinfo interests flash fiction, as inspired by mattador.

Gerald looked around the countryside and sighed. This was as far as he wanted to go today. And how far had it got him? He was on a small hill in the middle of bloody Wales, his girlfriend had left him, and he wouldn't even reach the proposed end of their journey (in Glastonbury) for ages. He pulled off his knapsack and sat on an exposed rock. It was hard, and poked him in uncomfortable places.

An old man crested the hill. He must have been right behind Gerald on the track, but he’d never seen the man before. He was half a foot shorter than Gerald, and heavily built, but just going to fat. He had a bushy white beard like a Santa Claus, or like a train engineer in a Victorian picture book.

“Naice day for a walk, ay?” he said, in the ludicrous lilting Welsh brogue that Gerald had come to loathe over the last week and a half.

“Not really,” said Gerald. The sun was high in the blue sky, and the glare was beginning to hurt his eyes. He pulled his sandwiches out (carefully wrapped in clingfilm) and discovered that they had been bent out of shape and squished in the middle. He peered at them. They were ham and cheese. Bloody wonderful.

The old man sat down next to him companionably and began to unpack his lunch. “So whair are you going? Not a town for some way.”

Gerald let loose a little bark of laughter. “Glastonbury. My girlfriend wanted to visit King Arthur’s grave.”

“Your girlfriend?” The man looked at him over his flask of hot tomato soup. “She the blonde girl I passed some time back? Knapsack shaped like a caterpillar?”

“Yes,” Gerald said shortly. He took a vicious bite of his sandwich. They were just as awful as he’d expected – far too much margarine and someone had thought it a bright idea to season the ham with ketchup.

“Interesting story, King Arthur,” said the old man, packing up his soup and tactfully changing the subject. “He never was King of Britain, you know. Not the way they say now. He wasn’t British at all. Tha’s what you don’t find out.” He slung his knapsack on and stood up. At least he, Gerald, wouldn’t have to try to make pointless conversation now.

“What they never tell you,” the old man continued, “is that Arthur was Welsh.”

It may have been a trick of the light, but as Gerald watched the old man continue down the track and out of sight, the sun lit his white hair so that it glowed, like a corona. Or a crown.