Tag Archives: Flash fiction

Friday Flash: Fourth Birthday Parade

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This fridayflash is for the fourth anniversary bloghop at the friday flash website. The idea is to write a story 400 words long about the 4th anniversary/birthday of something. After several false starts, I finally managed. I was inspired by this picture:

A few excerpts from the Annals of Dead or Lost Colonies:

Dear Julie,

The colony has just gotten the order for the hyperspace module. It’s taken a year, but we finally have it. This will be the first of many letters until you can come here.

I have a house. It’s small, but it has a garden. It’s ours, free and clear.

The hypo gardens are not doing well. Except for the lantern cherries. I don’t understand it. There is a group studying the problem.

Yours always,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

I miss you. Will you come soon? I’ve added two bedrooms to the house for the children. There is plenty of space. Hyperspace travel is very safe, don’t worry.

The colony celebrated our third birthday with a grand parade. I was in the lead float, as the directory of horticulture. It was quite wonderful.

The lantern cherry have become our biggest – our only! – export. They are in demand and tasty. I suppose it’s good they grow bigger here than anywhere else. They look more like giant melons than cherries. But I don’t quite understand why nothing else growing.

Yours always,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

I’ve been promoted, dear. I am now president of the horticulture department. The last president died quite unexpectedly in the Greenhouse A. Poor Jerry. At least he died at work. Greenhouse A is where we first started the lantern cherries. We have ten, now.

The colony’s fourth birthday is in a month and we are providing cherries for the decoration. The last of the flowers died months ago and we haven’t been successful in growing any others. Not even marigolds. It’s baffling.

I do wish you would come. I know the ships scare you, but hyperspace travel is so fast these days. You wouldn’t have to spend months on a ship in normal space. I dearly want to see the children, dear.

Love yours,

Ben

 

Dear Julie,

Don’t come! Stay away! God, I am glad you never came.

The cherries destroyed the parade. It was mad. They exploded and attacked and will take over the planet shortly.

This will be the last message I send.

I am going to blow up the greenhouses and take as many of the cherries as I can.

This is why nothing else grew. They’ve been devouring them, the murderous, subtle lantern cherries.

I bet they killed poor Jerry.

Yours forever,

Ben

Friday Flash: Queen’s Quill

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Trying to figure out a Friday Flash story whose title started with Q was a challenge, but I think I managed.

The queen’s quill lay on the desk, temptingly close. Its carved silver handle gleamed in the sunlight.

Qut wanted to touch the beautiful orange feather. So strange. What bird could have such iridescent orange and red feathers?

She stroked the smooth silver. It was warm to the touch. She glanced over her shoulder, listening. She heard only the slither of silk. The queen was still getting dressed.

She picked up the quill pen and caressed it softly, like a mother touched her baby’s head. Qut dipped the quill in the red ink and wrote a word on a blank sheet.

“Excellent choice, dear.”

Qut whirled. “My Lady, I was -”

“I know what you were doing.” The Queen smiled. “I am quite pleased. Quite pleased.”

“Oh – I, uh, thank you.”

“Go on.”

Qut turned back to her sheet and wrote another word. There was a sharp pain her left palm and when she looked, she saw her palm was spotted with blood.

“Quite beautiful, dear.” The Queen smiled, took the quill from her hand jabbed it into her heart. “You’ll make such perfect ink.”

This Friday flash was inspired by a photo I saw on 500 px. Here: http://500px.com/photo/28050051 The picture is called Color Explosion by Margaret Morgan. The link looks like it is not working and I think that’s because 500 px doesn’t have a link to the actual picture.

This flash is 700 words and a lot longer than my usual Friday Flashes.This is also my E post for the A to Z challenge. E is for Explosions of Color.

A child raised his gun and took aim at me from the balcony across the street. I turned, hurrying to the door. Too late! A wet splat hit my back and I looked back.

The child grinned at me, toothless and full of glee at having caught the foreigner so.

I scowled and marched inside. I would have to change. Again. This was the third time today.

Liquid blue blate dripped down the back of my shirt. The precious mineral the natives of this crazy planet considered good luck. Everyone splattered everyone with it today, the first official day of spring. It was supposed to bring a good harvest. I didn’t understand the how or why, but I didn’t need to.

All I knew was that I need a ton of pure, unadulterated blate if I was going to pay off the banks. The natives mixed it with water, with clay, with smoke and sold it on the streets for games. And for some reason they refused to sell it off-world. Why they should refuse those profits, I didn’t understand.

My brother eyed from the couch, laughing. “Leave it on,” he advised me.

I stared at him.

“They’ll take it as a challenge if you don’t,” he said.

Maybe. I still didn’t like the feel of my shirt, plastered to my skin and wet.

“Also, we don’t have time for you to change again. We leave in five minutes.”

My brother was a tech specialist on this benighted world. He had come here a decade ago and somehow survived. Most foreigners didn’t. Today, I was grateful.

“The dealer is an hour outside the city.”

He meant smuggler, but whatever word he liked. I wasn’t picky.

 

The trip out of the city was long and boring. Nothing but the same stone-and-wood buildings everywhere. Nothing but the same cobblestone roads, now liberally splashed with blate. They were colorful. Pretty, if you could overlook the weeds sprouting from between the stones.

The smuggler lived on a farm. White flowers grew in the fields. My brother led me to a barn. It was white and red. The roof sloped in that odd design most roofs here shared.

It was dark inside. The only light came from windows up high, near the roofline. The smuggler lounged on top of a wooden crate. I eyed it. Maybe it had the blate I needed. More crates lined the left wall, some open, some empty, some spilling over with the same white flowers growing in the fields.

He hopped down as I approached. “Greg. Good to see you. This your sister?”

“Yes. I told you what she needed.”

“Yes. Pure blate.” He studied me speculatively.

“I can pay,” I told him.

“Sure you can. But. Before I give what you need, you need to do something.”

He spoke my tongue very well. Better than I expected from a blate smuggler.  “What?”

He retrieved a dull metal plate from behind him. It held five pewter bowls, each filled with a different color substance. Red powder, blue liquid, yellow paste, green balls, beige grains.

“It’s a ritual,” my brother murmured behind me. “Harmless. Spread them on your face. Eyelids, nose, mouth, cheek, forehead. Right to left. Go on.”

I dipped my fingers in the cold, slimy mixture and did as my brother said.

But then the smuggler began to change. His skin looked like lizard scales. Pointy white teeth. Floppy ears.

I whirled to face my brother and gasped when he looked the same. “What did you give me?”

The smuggler moved to stand next to my brother. I saw now that a thick gnarled white rope wound around my brother’s throat and disappeared into the smuggler’s chest. “Blate, darling, exactly what you wanted.”

The room turned bright, light shining down from above where there was no light source. “You betrayed me,” I whispered.

“I had no choice, sister. I can’t . . . won’t let you take any blate off-world.”

There was so much light now I could hardly see anything, couldn’t even make out his face. “Bastard.”

“The most loyal man I’ve ever had,” the smuggler corrected. “Perhaps one day you’ll be like him. Close your eyes now, darling. Rest.”

So . . . inspired by a comment on Twitter.

MUSE WANTED

Sonia Lal is recruiting.

Sonia is seeking a top-notch muse, familiar with all classical works and everything in the science fiction/fantasy genre. Must be focused on author needs, up to and including providing such pleasure as can inspire and relax.

She has a number of ideas in development. Hours may be long. Rewards will include a fraction of all payment from products sold.

Please apply at storytreasury.WordPress.com

Friday Flash: Reborn

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This flash was inspired from an image on 500px. I cannot find it now, but it was gorgeous. It has 312 words.

A handful of children gathered around the storyteller. The children were sleepy from a rich dinner and the warmth of the fire, but still they clamored for one more story.

“Hush,” she said. “Very well. One last story.” And she began to speak.

Blood seeped across the sky like slow-moving clouds.

She watched and feared.

Around her the villagers paused to watch for only a few wing-beats before hurrying to their homes. They knew what it meant, too. They wanted to be gone before the thrice-cursed priests arrived.

She ignored the pitying glances. Ignored, too, the icy cold and red pellets that fell from the sky and froze in her hair.

She knew her beloved would come back to her; he had promised and he never broke a promise. No matter that the foreign priests turned him and the host he commanded into so much red mist.

The priests, grim in their bright red trousers and robes, did not see her. Fools. Perhaps they thought her a statue.

One pushed past her to the village square she guarded. But the moment his sleeve brushed her arm, he turned to ice. The other priests, seeing this, charged her with knives and scimitars. All of them disintegrated into the cold night.

“And that is why none dare attack us even today,” concluded the storyteller. She smiled and shook her head at the shouts for more. “Off to bed with you now. Go.”

When they were all safely asleep and the room rang with silence, she rose and went to look out the window. There, the same bit of land she had defended so many centuries before. Others had built a white marble statue of her there, but glorified the details of her face.

Still her beloved had not come. But she would abide until he was reborn as the man he was meant to be.

Friday Flash: The Introduction

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A new, odd sort of drabble. It is exactly 99 words. I don’t know what to make of it.

Strange mysterious items dropped through windows – magically, as if glass didn’t exist. They plunked onto the sleeping laps of car residents. Their oblong shapes made odd objects d’art on snow-covered lawns.

People everywhere woke to the sound of bells and the fleeting sense of something passing. They pored over their new property. Poked and prodded them with sticks, dogs and scanners.

Television personalities expressed puzzlement; experts spoke stern warnings.

Ultimately, when opened, they revealed pens that wrote equally well on paper and screen. Writers were overjoyed.

The event went down in history as the day the aliens introduced themselves.

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Friday Flash: A Wish for Power

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I don’t believe this flash has a story or even constitutes a complete scene. Maybe a complete scene. But it’s the only thing in my head right now. That’s probably a sign of exhaustion. I am posting due to encouragement from Twitter. :) Go Twitter!!!

Someone’s groin pressed too close, but there was no room to twitch away. The crowd was too close, noisy, and upset voices called out: “Move in, move in, move in.”

If only there was space to move in.

The bus driver shouted: “Let them off. Get off and get back in.”

No one moved, but instead held fast as the departing shoved themselves a clear path.

The bus crawled along, bypassing hordes of waiting people. Someone, exhausted, crouched on the floor. Her hands moved from purse to her folded legs, caressing many other calves, knees and ankles in the process.

People sped past on bikes and skateboards and their own legs. Below, the river was as calm as sunlight.

And then – freedom. People disappeared like flung droplets to the trains, the taxis and the still-dark streets.

A hard plastic chair never felt so good.

 

Friday Flash: Ivory Ring

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 This story was inspired by a wiki commons picture.

This school field trip would be the very definition of tedium but for one thing. He scanned the ground, fingers clenched around his sister’s precious elephant bone ring. Poor thing. So sick, she couldn’t come down to view this planet’s marvelous flora.

The teacher droned on ahead of them. “Look. The fel flower devours flesh and bones.”

Enclosed by meter of wide mesh wiring, there was a bright red plant. It looked like his sister’s red-lipsticked mouth. He smiled at the memory of it.

“The gale here – ”

He ignored the teacher. Instead he slipped the ring through the exhibit’s mesh cage. It fell directly inside flower’s mouth. He watched it digest the ring.

The last trace of his sister. Gone.

He followed his class to the next exhibit with a spring in his step. Marvelous flora indeed.

Friday Flash: Food

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I got a Friday flash! This one was inspired by Madison’s image prompt:

She stared at the copse of dead trees and the single raven perched on blackened branches.

The spell was supposed to bring her food. Despairing, she gazed down at the yellowed paper. The master had written Food Spell in his typical, cramped writing across the top of the page.

She sighed, gathered her empty satchel and scrambled over the hot sands to rest against the tree bark.

The raven made an odd sound above her. She looked up. It opened its beak, dropping a mouse into her lap.

She yelped. The mouse ran, probably soon to die in the desert.

Friday Flash: Bit

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Today’s Friday Flash! This one was inspired by this image from wiki commons. It’s 92 words. ;)

“A spider, Mommy! Look, a spider. On flowers, in the water.”

“Don’t touch it.”

“But -”

“No! And watch from a distance, baby. You don’t want to end up in the hospital again. Do you?”

“The crab jumped. I couldn’t get away!”

“Just like the dog before that. And the neighbor’s cat. And that bird you decided to catch. This trip,  you stay away from all critters. You hear?”

“Aww Mommy! I don’t want to. They call me, they really do.”

“Well, you just ignore them. Or else.”

“But -”

“No.”

“Mom!”

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