Use the photograph above as the inspiration for your flash fiction story. Write whatever comes to mind (no sexual, political, or religious stories, jokes, or commentary, please) and after you PROOFREAD it, submit it as your entry in the comments section below. There will be no written prompt.
Welcome to the Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. In 250 words or less, write a story incorporating the elements in the picture at left. 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 Tuesday at 5:00 PM Pacific Time. No political or religious entries, please. Need help getting started? Read this article on how to write flash fiction.
On Wednesday, we will open voting to the public with an online poll so they may choose the winner. Voting will be open until 5:00 PM Thursday. On Saturday morning, the winner will be recognized as we post the winning entry along with the picture as a feature.
Once a month, the admins will announce the Editors’ Choice winners. Those stories will be featured in an anthology like this one. 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. Please note the rule changes for 2016.
Night Vision
By Annette Rey
This evening would be different from others. Foreboding hung in the airless campground. The medicine man solemnly announced on his great-great-grandfather’s pipe; the tribe must gather before the sundown meal. All work must stop. The notes from the pipe wafted menace and danger.
“This fall of night will be unlike others we have known. The great gods have spoken from the mountain. Keep your campfires high. Prepare to face north. Eat only dried buffalo. We move as soon as the last brave has packed his animals.”
The chief spoke, “Why, oh Great Man? Why are we leaving and why head toward the cold? We have always moved south to greener pastures.”
“You have heard the rumblings from Minewoka. It is time.”
“I can’t agree. The god in Minewoka has been satisfied…”
“No. Minewoka’s god is not angry, but he is speaking to me another warning. A more dangerous threat we do not know is coming.”
“The whole tribe should run from an unknown power?”
With grave certainty he answered, “One day we will know it – and it will be our downfall.”
“You surely have heard from the spirits. I trust your wisdom. Tribe! Do as he speaks!”
The ancient tribe traveled through hardships of weather and terrain and want in blind trust to the Medicine Man’s instruction. The deeper they went into uncharted lands of ice mountains, the longer they communed as a tribe, before the invasion of the white man’s ways.
NIGHTFALL
It wasn’t always like this. There were good times. Long ago, now.
I had a good job, a wife, kids and a nice house. All gone now.
Why and how it happened doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Stuff happens.
I lie here gazing at the sky and remember the best of times: when I was just a kid and Mom would come to my room to tuck me in for the night.
“Goodnight my boy,” she would say, “sleep tight.” Though I was always eager for the new dawn and the adventures it would bring, usually I did sleep well. And carefree.
One by one I lost everything over the years…my youth, my dreams, my loves and a sense of purpose. It became enough to simply exist.
The doctors say that there’s nothing more they can do.
As night falls it reminds me of the comfort my mother gave me…like that blanket, soft and warm, pulled up to my chin.
I’ll sleep well tonight with no concern for the dawn.
It was the scent of her that first caught his attention, a subtle blend of roses and jasmine with just the hint of musky civet tones and sandalwood, a fragrance so breathtaking it instantly turned his head in her direction and forever cemented her visage in his mind. Her face, angular, with skin so white it could have been made of porcelain, was framed by long blond hair that almost made him forget he was due in the chairman’s office for a budget meeting in two minutes.
Did she just touch my shoulder as she passed, he thought, something more imagined than real, to be sure. Such things were not the stuff of Myron Tanner’s life, he of the green eyeshade and black elastic armbands who had never kissed a woman, much less dated one. Touch his shoulder? Hardly. No more likely than she would have been asking about him one day during lunch when he heard her talking to the company’s vice president, her lilting voice floating through the office like a lark ascending, her “song” swirling around Myron’s head and body, totally embracing him, and making the two of them one. Why shouldn’t they be together, he thought, it was their destiny; she never was meant to be with anyone else.
To him, the solution was easy. And so, as he looked into the lake that afternoon as the sun descended behind the mountains, he was comforted by the fact she never again would be with another man.
A HAPPY DECISION
Marla sat looking at the mountain reflected in the lake. She had flown from London, England the previous day, arriving in Vancouver, Canada late at night. She was tired, but her daughter, Essie who had moved to Vancouver, Canada three years ago with her husband, had just given birth to a baby boy.
“What a lovely country,” she thought as she sat enjoying the stillness of the afternoon. She was tired after her flight, but simply relaxing at the edge of the lake was a pleasure. Her husband, Bertie had died two years ago and she had always felt alone living in London. Her two daughters had married, with Coleen and her husband living in South Africa, a country she had left when she married Bertie 54 years ago, and Essie moving to Canada with her family.
She thought about how wonderful her life had been, and how her and her mother’s story had been recorded in a book that had been written. She smiled, “I was very lucky, and had a wonderful life, but now with Bertie gone and the children all over the world, I am lonely.”
She looked at the lake, with the mountain reflecting in it. “A beautiful country, “ she thought, “ and as a new grandmother, I think that I will take up Essie’s offer and move to Canada to live with them. “
She stood up, and walked back to the house, smiling and happy at her decision.
It was mid-September, 1964, when he was awakened by the roar of the helicopter. He crept out of his tent and looked up at the inconsiderate noisemaker hovering over the distant mountain top. What in the world could be going on, he wondered. Marktschellenberg is only a few miles from Salzburg. Why are they out here?
He watched as it rose and dipped and turned repeatedly. It reflected in the lake at the edge of the forest.
Quickly, he hitched into his lederhosen and collected his gear. He backpacked through the Pine and Larch trees and heavily wooded undergrowth.
A covey of Pheasants fluttered skyward.
He started up the mountain mentally recording the beauty of the red and white heather growing profusely, and the spicy scent of the pink alpine carnations. A litter of nibbling bunnies filled his heart with warmth.
He neared the top of the mountain. The helicopter was still dipping and rising and turning and roaring. Crawling over a bed of flowering Edelweiss, he peeked over the crest and saw her.
She was in the middle of a meadow, simply dressed. Black and white peasant-like clothing. Beautiful blue eyes. Braided blonde hair. Her frock floated out as she gayly spun and twirled, her face glowing with happiness. Couldn’t possibly be more than an adorable nineteen-year-old, or even younger, he thought.
Then, with arms outstretched, she smiled at the camera in the whirlybird and, with perfect enunciation, began singing, “The hills are alive with…..”.
The treasure hunters reached the ancient altar on the shore of Wolf Lake, the expedition’s leader arrogantly proclaimed, “It’ll be nightfall soon, according to legend, if the wolves find us desecrating their sacred site, they’ll rip us apart! so unless anyone is superstitious, we’ll camp hear tonight, and I’m sleeping on that altar to prove I’m no coward.”
Almost everyone laughed at the proposed desecration. Marvin looked at all the uncomfortable, lumpy, shore rocks, “Well, I think, I’ll sleep in that clearing back up the trail it looked less rocky and more comfortable, anyone care to join me? I got some hazelnut coffee.”
They all mocked him, “Poor baby Marvin afraid of a few wolves. GET OUT OF HERE! COWARD!”
Alone, Marvin hiked back up the trail and set up camp in the middle of the clearing surrounded by stone monoliths covered in petroglyphs of beasts half human and half wolf. Marvin slept well under the full moon, even though, he had some weird and funky dreams about a werewolf on the rampage.
In the morning, he headed back down to the lake shore to wash up, when he came upon a trail of blood leading to the treasure hunters camp. Once there, he stopped dead in his tracks. He discovered they were all slaughtered and their lifeless bodies piled high on the altar.
Looking down at himself, he realized, he was covered in fresh, sticky, red blood … Theirs. Dropping to knees, he screamed, “No! No! Not Again!”
The Amtrak train slowly began its ascent into the Rocky Mountains.
The waning light from the setting sun played with the mountain, making a kaleidoscope. Every blink of the eye changed the colors of the sky, the mountains, the trees, the lake reflecting back.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the scenery. As slowly as the train moved all day, the landscape was not changing, but it was. Was this the “purple mountain’s majesty” of song? It wasn’t a true purple, but it wasn’t gray or green or brown although it was certainly majestic.
We were heading into the second night of our four-day, three-night cross-county rail trip. The nights on a train are long. The darkness of the countryside is black as pitch and very little is visible other than an occasional street light in the distance or a gated crossing, flashing red lights.
But heading west, as darkness overtakes the dusk, a new dimension I could barely grasp occurred. I thought of the pioneers, the Gold Rushers, the cowboys living on the land and sleeping under the stars. These mountains were the same scene viewed hundreds of thousands of times. But for my first and only time, I was awestruck.
What promises would a new day bring? What memories were made this day! Would I always keep this moment in mind and reflect with the same wonder as now even when the days are not so peaceful? I can only hope.