Flash Fiction Challenge: Celebrity

Photo by K.S. Brooks

Aw, holy Zagnog. That’s what I get for drinking too much Promethian Fire-Punch before driving home.

I sit my star disc down on this out-of-the-way little planet to grab a nap and it turns out there are life-forms here.

They want pictures. Ain’t that great? We’ll see about this. Where did I leave my probe?

In 250 words or less, tell us a story incorporating the elements in the picture. The 250 word limit will be strictly enforced.

Please keep language and subject matter to a PG-13 level.

Use the comment section below to submit your entry. Entries will be accepted until 5:00 PM Pacific Time on Tuesday, February 5th, 2013.

On Wednesday morning, we will open voting to the public with an online poll for the best writing entry accompanying the photo. Voting will be open until 5:00 PM Thursday.

On Friday morning, the winner will be recognized as we post the winning entry along with the picture as a feature. Best of luck to you all in your writing!

Entries only in the comment section. Other comments will be deleted. See HERE for additional information and terms.

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8 thoughts on “Flash Fiction Challenge: Celebrity”

  1. Arrrgh! My one head is pounding and the other, “Hey man, wake up, we got company. Stop drooling on my spiffy new shirt, can’t take you anywhere. By the way, thanks for mucking up things with that cute little Plutonian.”
    “What are you talking about? She was all over Moon boy. Reality check other half—look in a mirror. You ain’t no celebrity.”
    “Better than you.”
    “Not.”
    “Alright, but we got some company out there, let’s shake things up a bit. They always love the lights.”

    Twittzle set the levers and pushed. They started slow, building to a frenetic pace. Blues and pinks raced around the ship’s edge, the vibrations caused ooohs and ahhhs. Noid reminded Twittzle not to forget the humming and high frequency. Noid loved to scare voyeurs, this particular lot he’d never seen before. The probe was found and readied. The hatch opened, the snake like prod slithered its way to the ground. “Noid, what the hell are those things? Butt ugly I’d say. Hey, look one of them is getting close. Awww, don’t touch the merchandise. Turn the translator on Noid, we’re going out.”

    Three lanky legs slipped outside. Twittzle and Noid sat on the edge. Their luminescent arms waved while Twittzle broke into song; Noid joined in with his tongue wagging. The strange creatures outside fired little boxes at the visitors.

    Twittzle smiled, “See, I’m a Celebrity.”
    “Not.”

  2. ‘Awwwwwwww Holy Zagnog!!!! Of all the crappy places in this stinkin’ Universe….Awwwww Gippy! Gippy!Gippy!’

    ‘Indie Writer 21045! Shut your blinkers and put that pen down…..nice and easy….are you listening to me?’

    ‘Commmmme Onnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!! Are you kiddin’ me? These idiots are the very reason we had to leave this planet in the first place! These thick skulled bird brains couldn’t recognize a story if it came over and bit them in their Bazookas!!’

    ‘Enough!!!! Your dim-dim is shrinking and the level of your yow-yow is rising. You are risking a Literary Hernia and it’s going to hurt like the worst ever book review in the history of your crumbling non-existent writing career.’

    ‘Arrrrrrrre yoooooouuu serious???? My crumblin’ what……..Awwwww Gippy! Gippy! Gippy! You are so full of hoo-hee….I can smell it all the way over here! You’re the failure, you boring old loser….the King of sleaze bucket romance.’

    ‘Romance is the essence of life, the very charm that captivates nature and elevates the worth of mankind. What would you know about romance or for that matter anything…..the best part of your story is the last line………..The End!’

    ‘Ohhhhhhhhh Yeeaaaaaahhhhhhh! Well if you were so great, then why in Ooppaa’s name did you leave this dump and end up livin’ with a bunch of losers like me? How come you didn’t stay and write on about Roommmmaaaaannncce?’

    ‘Well all good things must come to an end….and…. I needed a break…and….my lawyer told me plagiarism wasn’t prosecutable on Ziggy Wiggy.’

    ‘Awwwwwwwww Maaannnnnnnnnnnnnn! What the…….’

  3. My name is Zik. I’m a test pilot. Or I was, I guess. That last warp jump busted something in the after burners. Now I’m stuck on this rock, slumming around a junkyard looking for something to fix the ship’s engines.

    Do you know how hard that is, when the most advanced thing is a radio set that would probably be on display at home in one of those ancient history exhibits?

    Well, I can’t really blame anyone but myself. Time travel is an exact science. And what did I do? I volunteered to test an experimental time drive, that’s what I did. Talk about stupid.

    Oh, look, here’s the part I needed. No, I will not tell you what it does or why I need it, talk about contaminating the timeline.

    Ah! Uh-oh, that was definitely flash photography. This could get complicated. Pictures of us aren’t supposed to end up here for another few hundred years, when we make first contact with our ancestors after the discovery of time jumping.

    Hello, good sir! Would you like to come for a ride? I promise you’ll see some sights worth snapping pictures of! No, really, it’s no trouble at all, they build two seats for just this purpose, I promise.

    Egypt? Greece? Rome? Thanks for buckling up, but, no, sorry, this is a forward jump only kind of trip. Hope you have some money in high-yield account, you’ll be rich by the time we land!

  4. ‘Vuk… either these life-forms are takin’ phantasmagorias of absolutely piss-all, or they can see me. Huh… knew I should’ve checked the engine light at Mr. Zoob’s. Damn invisibility shield needs a good ‘seeing to’. Hah… GET it?’

    ‘Ye-s, she said, ‘we REALLY need one… EVERYBODY has one.’ Yeah RIGHT… now you see me… now you frikkin’ STILL do! Stupid Goggawoggianbittch; knew I should’ve married a Kardashian.’

    “Oi… wot YOU gawpin’ at ya nosy Bastordians… never seen a three-headed Gargoylian-Angridrunkbum with Vemmonspittin’ warts before? Get OUTTA here.”

    Vuk though… my third oesophagus will encounter the celestial belt if word gets back to the Intergalactic know-it-alls that these wankers saw me… jumped-up genetically designed condescending GITS; ‘we’re the boss of you and you and you. Agggh… got no more intelligence than a rock sample from Mars ya interferin’ three-eyed gonks.

    These two look pretty dumb as well though, just standin’ there, gormless. Jeez, for all they know I could be here to annihilate this frikkin’ planet… mind you… lookin’ at THIS old rattletrap of a Star-disc; obviously couldn’t split a Promethian bar nut. Last time I buy from Creggslist.

    Huh… but what an UGLY lookin’ species… even WITH my Fire-Punch glasses on… plenty of nosh on this planet… OBVIOUSLY! Pasty lookin’ specimens though… hmmm…. speci-mens… ye-ah… THAT’S what I could say… came here for spec-i-mens….

    “Oi… buddy… get your Colosso-gigantipantis behind you there to give us a push, will ya… broke down here… there’s a probin’ in it for ya.”

    Hah… suck-ERs!

  5. “Celebrity”

    Wow, that was some great party last night. But I think I drank too much Promethian Fire-Punch! I might just have to set my star disc down on this little out-of-the-way planet and grab a nap.

    Oh-oh. Looks like it’s not too far out-of-the-way, after all. There are some funny-looking life-forms out there. They’ve only got two arms and two legs. But they’re fat! Yum, I might bring the whole crew back here. Looks like a good place to eat.

    There are two of them right now! What strange faces they have. These creatures only have one large protruding eye. It looks metallic. And it flashes! Those bits don’t look too appetizing. And they say that the eyes are the most succulent part of the animal…

    Oh, hang on. This one’s just detached that thing from his face. Oooh. I see he has two tiny eyes now. They sure look tastier. I wonder what that object was?

    Here come some more animals! There’s a whole herd of them. And they seem to be pretty excited, too. They’re all holding metal objects up to their faces and flashing them at me!

    Quick, I better get out of here. They might be some kind of weapons!

    I’ll bring the guys back later, though. We’ll be prepared this time. We’ll bring our weapons, too. Looks like we might be in for a good feed tonight, boys.

  6. “I hate it here!” were the last words I remember before zoning off, literally, into the black atmosphere. The dirty windshield of my old junkyard disc was cracked, barely holding itself together by the wind resistant outer layers, but the long fingery cracked lines were thin enough not to obstruct my view of where I was headed – far away from this miserable boring little planet. I need something more. I need to live large.

    While traveling for what seemed like light years away, I cried and wailed louder than the junky old disc engine could. It was a bear trying to shift gears while wiping away my sloppy tears. And then…

    Blip.

    Jostled but too lazy to unbuckle myself out of the seat I stretched as far as I could over the console to fetch the source of the blip, the hologram device–what used to be the cell phone centuries ago. Leave me alone. Blip. Blip. Blip. I lunged at my jacket but my overbearing excitement caught the clutch of this old junkyard disc and it jolted me hitting my head fiercely on the console. The next thing I remembered was calmness. I rolled over gently to ease the pain on my bottom and I slowly sat up. I opened my eyes and saw you both. I immediately recognized the pre-holographic devices you were clicking away with. And I knew as I batted all of my eyes for my new found paparazzi that I could live large here.

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