June 20, 2018 by athling2001

Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers 6-20-2018

This week’s photo prompt is provided by Enisa.

Guide for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers
1. A prompt photo will be provided each Monday pm to be used as a base to your story. Please include photo prompt with your story.
2. Linking for this challenge begins on Monday pm and runs to the following Monday pm.
3. Please credit photo to photographer.
4. The story word limit is 100 – 150 words (+ – 25 words). Please try to stay within this limit.
5. Please indicate the number of words in your story at the end of your story. (It doesn’t count in the amount of words).

She sat at the rickety table, staring at the one thing she had left (besides the crappy furniture and the cracked mirror in the bathroom). A fake crystal vase. He’d given it to her once upon a time, with a single peach rose inside, a token of his love.

A love that hadn’t lasted long until the lies started and never stopped. Bad enough a divorce and then the medical problems and now bankruptcy. Where, and how, had she gone wrong?

Was it wrong to want to live a normal life? To experience love and happiness? To honor truth? Sometimes, she felt that it was, at least for her.

Maybe, she didn’t deserve a normal life, even if she wasn’t sure why. Something had to be wrong with her, didn’t it?

Didn’t it?

Rising, she walked to the back door and stared outside.

Sunset, a beautiful sky.

The last day of despair?

Or, simply the last day?

(157)

June 15, 2018 by athling2001

Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers 6-15-2018

photo prompt from wildverbs

“Where would you go, ?” Jace wondered, “if you swan down inside the fountain?” He was always asking questions like that, nonsense really. Impossible fantasies.

I turned towards him. “Everybody knows you’d go down into the things that make the fountain work.” Pipes and plumbing, of course, but I didn’t know the words or the details then. I still don’t know the details, but I’ve gotten the basics down.

“Are there whales down there?”

“Of course not, Stupid!”

“Baby whales?”

I pushed him off the bench and ran away. Mom found him later, still on the bench, still watching. Still dreaming dreams nobody understood.

I remember those days on the bench, watching the fountain. Sometimes ducks would come, treading water with orange paddle feet.

Sometimes….

I tuck the picture away into my pocket, hidden but not forgotten, knowing something soon would spark the memories, bring him back to me, if only for an instant.

May 19, 2018 by athling2001

Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers 5-19-2018

This week’s photo prompt is provided by Yinglan.

He stood gazing up at the plane hung realistically overhead, imaging it in the sky beyond instead of the over-sized museum around them. Imagined stars sparkling and exploding millions of light-years away. Or was it that the stars had already expired millions of years ago and the light was only now reaching them?

Did it matter? Not really? Either way, those stars were long gone, as well as anything beyond.

“Daddy! Come on,” his twins yelled from behind, patter of feet as they ran across the floor. “They got a space capsule over here!”

He turned, following giggles and shrieks.

“Look Daddy! Look!”

“Space!”

“Yes,” he said softly, glancing back once. A million light years and nothing left behind.

No going home now.

(131)

May 10, 2018 by athling2001

Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers 5-10-2018

This week’s photo prompt is provided by Enisa.

“That’s a neat watch,” Canie commented, leaning forward for a better look.

“It’s a Begari.”

“A TimeShifter?” Eyes wide.

Mike nodded.

“How does it work?”

“You point the crown at the empty alley, punch in a time frame – say, Victorian England – and tap the glass.”

Canie’s eyes widened as a figure appeared in the alley.

“Wow! So can you bring anybody over?”

“Targeting a particular individual is iffier, but it can be done.”

“Try Jack the Ripper.”

“Hardly.”

“Okay…. Sherlock Holmes.”

“He’s fictional.”

“So what?”

With a one-shouldered shrug, Mike pointed the crown at the alley as the first visitor wandered away, punching in a more complicated formula.

“Ready?”

Canie nodded.

Mike tapped the glass.

For a moment, nothing happened, then a form appeared, violin in one hand, bow in the other. The man turned to look directly at them as the first figure wandered back to his side.

“The illogical is often correct,” the taller man said to the shorter.

Mike and Canie stared, open-mouthed, before shouting, “Elementary, my dear Watson!”

(174)

May 2, 2018 by athling2001

Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers 5-2-2018

Guide for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers
1. A prompt photo will be provided each Monday pm to be used as a base to your story. Please include photo prompt with your story.
2. Linking for this challenge begins on Monday pm and runs to the following Monday pm.
3. Please credit photo to photographer.
4. The story word limit is 100 – 150 words (+ – 25 words). Please try to stay within this limit.
5. Please indicate the number of words in your story at the end of your story. (It doesn’t count in the amount of words).

The starfish hung, listening to the giants below. At the start of his quest, everything has been so strange he’d wanted to curl into a tiny starball and sink back into his ocean.

But he hadn’t. He was a starfish with a purpose. The call had come and he had to follow. The Stargods couldn’t be denied.

He’d spent a lifetime-week hanging from the stadium ceiling, watching and learning. The giants were no different from starfish, except they didn’t have enough limbs and, when they lost one, they couldn’t will it back.

Did that mean the giants were insignificant? Or did it just mean they were different? It wasn’t so wrong to be different. He was different and he wasn’t wrong.

There was something the Stargods wanted him to see and he would quest until he found it or died. Which would be a long quest.

When all the giants were gone, he drifted slowly down through the ocean of air, settling on the rock beneath. A moment more to remember and then he set off, millions of tiny tube feet carrying him into an unknown future.

(189)

April 18, 2018 by athling2001

Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers 4-18-2018

This week’s photo prompt is provided by Goroyboy

Guide for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers
1. A prompt photo will be provided each Monday pm to be used as a base to your story. Please include photo prompt with your story.
2. Linking for this challenge begins on Monday pm and runs to the following Monday pm.
3. Please credit photo to photographer.
4. The story word limit is 100 – 150 words (+ – 25 words). Please try to stay within this limit.
5. Please indicate the number of words in your story at the end of your story. (It doesn’t count in the amount of words).

On The Doorstep

“A cotton wreath?”

“It looks like cotton.” Kerry looked at Jay. “Insulted?”

“My Greats may have picked cotton, but I didn’t. I’m sure your Welsh ancestors were oppressed at one time or another.”

“Yeah, sure. Most races have been.”

Jay nodded. “Past is past.”

For a moment, they stood in silence.

“It bothers you doesn’t it?” Kerry asked.

“Slavery was wrong in all kinds of ways, but….” He turned to look at Kerry. “Am I wrong to think past is past?”

“Your ancestors were treated like shit. It was wrong. It was…well slavery, but you’re right. It is past. Just like the horrors of my ancestors are past. And Chris’ and Dante’s and everybody else. Past has to be past or we will never move on, the world will never get better.”

“Is it getting better?”

Kerry just shrugged. “For the most part. There are some things that won’t change until we change. One person owning another is one of those things.”

The two men stood in silence.

The door opened.

(175)

April 12, 2018 by athling2001

Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers 4-12-2018

Guide for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers
1. A prompt photo will be provided each Monday pm to be used as a base to your story. Please include photo prompt with your story.
2. Linking for this challenge begins on Monday pm and runs to the following Monday pm.
3. Please credit photo to photographer.
4. The story word limit is 100 – 150 words (+ – 25 words). Please try to stay within this limit.
5. Please indicate the number of words in your story at the end of your story. (It doesn’t count in the amount of words).

This week’s photo prompt is provided by Yinglan

“It’s not much, but it’s home.”

“I think you are taking the Tiny House Movement a bit too far.”

“Not at all.” She stepped to the doorway, motioning him inside. “Let me show you.”

He gasped. The foyer had to be twice as big as the shack, a curving staircase to the left, sweeping up to a second floor. She proceeded to give him the grand tour, down hallways and past room after room after lavish room, up and down stairs, under and over and even sideways and behind, until he’d lost all sense of direction.

Then she stopped, grinning. Were her teeth sharper? Her face twisting?

“I’d run if I were you.” she growled, falling to the floor. “If you escape the house, you live.”

Behind him, he heard her howl.

A Writer's Life

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