Flash Fiction Prompt For Friday, April 22, 2016
When posting, remember to include your name and your Twitter handle.
Come back on Sunday night to find out who the winner is!
Friday, April 22, 2016
Flash Fiction Contest #13
Welcome to another edition of our #OAFlash Fiction contest! Rules can be found here. Gimme all your words! OK, not really, only 200 of them this time...
Flash Fiction Prompt For Friday, April 22, 2016
When posting, remember to include your name and your Twitter handle.
Come back on Sunday night to find out who the winner is!
Flash Fiction Prompt For Friday, April 22, 2016
When posting, remember to include your name and your Twitter handle.
Come back on Sunday night to find out who the winner is!
The news of Jay’s murder came while I was eating Rice Krispies and pretending not to hear my parents’ argument.
ReplyDelete“It’s a twelve hour drive,” my mom said. “I don’t want to do it by myself.”
“Lia will be with you,” Dad countered.
“On the way there. It’s still twelve hours back by myself.”
“I can’t take off work with such late notice.” Dad slapped peanut butter on a slice of bread harder than necessary.
“We’ve been planning this for months!” She was close to shouting. I bent over my bowl and flipped through Facebook on my phone. I wasn’t the only one headed for college the next day; lots of my friends were posting teary goodbyes.
“I thought we agreed that you would manage it by yourself.” Dad chucked the peanut butter knife in the sink.
“You could give me the car, and I’ll drive myself,” I offered quietly, so when they didn’t answer I could pretend they hadn’t heard.
“Our daughter’s going to college! And you’re going to miss it!”
Dad grabbed a soda out of the fridge and stormed out of the kitchen. I turned my attention back to Facebook so I didn’t see my mom crying.
"A zombie? In space? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" McGregor was not one to believe in anything that hadn't had at least three articles in "Nature" and a space shuttle mission about. Until this conversation, he thought Peterson was similarly sensible.
ReplyDelete"Zombies don’t need air.”
"How exactly would one become a zombie, in space?" Asked McGregor, not quite believing his own question.
"Being bitten or scratched before take-off."
"That would be picked up in the pre-flight quarantine".
"Maybe it has a long, symptomless incubation period."
"Blood tests, Peterson! Mission prep urine analysis.”
"Only if they knew what to look for."
"So, you're telling me there’s a zombie colony living quietly on earth, and the first person they bite is an astronaut?"
“A pathogen floating in space?"
"That happens to float into a torn space suit? Preposterous!"
Before they could continue the argument, there was a banging on the window. The space station window. Jones couldn’t be alive. Two hours ago during a spacewalk, the robotic arm fell, slicing Jones and his suit, shoulder to hip before hitting the airlock, blocking it and preventing a rescue. Now he was moving, purposefully, trying to get back inside himself.
- Quentin Christensen (@qchristensen)
“I won't give you my western farmlands, Crow,” Queen Jamisen said. The first female ruler of Hail, and the Prince of Dusk was always trying to take it away.
ReplyDelete“Then I'll win them, Jamie,” he said.
How Wynn Lucidcrow managed to make her feel like a child every time they met on the battlefield was beyond her. It was not so when they met in the bedroom.
Jamisen nudged Snow forward until she was beside him, out of earshot of their guards. She remembered the feel of his lips on hers, his hands tracing the hills of her body. Now, with armies at their backs, he let her grab his sleeve and pull him to her across their mounts.
“Arguing with me will get you nowhere,” she whispered into his ear. She felt his breath on her hair and a twinge of regret before she slipped the small, hidden knife out of her sleeve and in between his ribs. His breath hitched; he grew rigid. Blood stained his tunic. The fool had not even donned his armor for their meeting. “I always win.”
He toppled from his horse, the silence around them as loud as any battle.
-Cassidy Taylor (@Cassidy_Writes)