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.
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 2018.
Everywhere I looked when I went to my childhood haunts; I couldn’t imagine the drastic changes that had taken place.
Even when I went to my favorite restaurant wonderfully haunting memories got replayed in my mind.
Remembering the days when my parents had still been alive, my eyes began to fill with tears.
Instilling in me the love I used to have that still lingers within me as I recall their memories.
EERIE, this might seem to some, but to me, it’s quite wonderfully normal.
NOTE: Written as an EERIE acrostic
I slowly walked around. To the naked eye everything seemed normal. I had been to a dozen such places. This place looks just like all the others. There seems to be nothing special about it. To the eye it is as it should be. But something isn’t right. The hair stood up on my arms, chills ran down my spine. Something is definitely off about this place. I noticed others instinctively avoid this spot. Every other place was crowded. Then I saw in a corner two people, just sitting there. For some reason my heart started pounding out of my chest at the sight of them. To ease my nerves I tried small talk. “Hi, how are doing?” The two of them acted as if I wasn’t even there. They continue talking among themselves. I slowly circled the two girls, studying them. “I said hi.” I tried again, nothing. What kind of game are these two playing? Now I was getting angry. “Pay attention to me!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. One of the girls shivered and looked up. “You know” the girl said “They say this place is haunted.” “Right!” The other one said sarcastically. “No seriously. Some loner offed themselves. They say the other kids ignored her so she killed herself.” I stood with my mouth open. “You lie!” The girls shivered again. “Eerie” “Lets go, this place spooks me.” They got up and left.
The Message at Eerie Point
“This isn’t art or even graffiti,” said Jordyn, looking at the writing. She was an expert in obscure, dead languages.
“What then?” asked Louie, her friend.
“It’s a message . . . written in code.”
“Can you decipher it?”
“Not sure.” Jordyn handed Louie a notepad and pen. “Write down what I decipher.”
“Gotcha.”
Jordyn carefully ran her fingers along a series of words and deciphered them as:
Don’t stick sharp things in your ears or put questionable stuff in your brains.
Louie hesitated. “Are you sure you’re reading those things correctly?”
“Write.”
“Okay, okay.” Louie scribbled in the notepad.
“I’ve deciphered another one:”
Some things are true and some things are false.
“True and false,” uttered Louie, nodding his head as he wrote.
“There’s more:”
Something important has been hidden from you.
Louie stopped writing. “Hidden?”
We are only pieces in a game.
“Keep going,” said Louie.
A game that is part of a secret system.
Louie kept writing.
A system that controls. . . .
Just then, a noisy city truck pulled up, and several workers piled out onto the sidewalk.
“What are you doing?” asked Jordyn, annoyed at being interrupted.
“You have to leave, Miss,” said the supervisor. “We’re here to paint over this ugly graffiti.”
Without any further delay, the supervisor barked orders, and the workers then proceeded to paint over the message at Eerie Point.
If Walls Could Talk
Here it is, the start of another day. The sun’s beginning to fill my place with daylight.
Just look at the way those smart-ass kids spray painted my cement blocks with all that graffiti. Wish I could let them know how sad it makes me. I’ll just have to…
Uh, oh! Here comes that Great Dane again sniffing around for the right spot. No. No. Go do it outside. Oy! He’s lifting his leg. Ugh! Look at him loping away wagging his tail in relief.
It’s almost noon. Time for those nice kids from school to come along to pick up some of the trash around me. If only I could tell them how good their thoughtfulness makes me feel. Oh, well.
The sun’s starting to settle. I’ll just wait until that silly old moon finds its place in the night sky and beams down on me. Ah, here he comes shining away with that casual glow.
Sounds like someone’s coming in. Hey! It’s that boy and girl from across the way. Aren’t they a sweet looking couple? The little dears. He’s giggling while spreading his blanket out over those little tufts of weeds. Oh, they’re kissing. Isn’t that adorable? They’re sinking into the blanket. Yikes! I’ll just watch the man in the moon to take my mind off things.
Yawn. What a night. Here comes that sun again peeking through the cracks in my ceiling. Can’t wait to see what today will bring.
“This, students, is one of the more well-preserved examples of prehistoric art. The stark simplicity of the building speaks of its religious significance, contrasted with the carefree, almost boisterous, swaths of color on the monotone walls. The elaborate hieroglyphs…. Yes, Mord-o-grap? You have a question?”
“Couldn’t there be other possibilities? Couldn’t this building be typical? Maybe even substandard?”
“Really, Mord-o-grap. You are letting your imagination overrun your logic. Do you suppose you know more than the Royal Archeologists?”
“No, of course not, but I just….”
“Enough, Mord-o-grap. Students, you will cease snickering immediately. Mord-o-grap has the right to his own ideas, no matter how ill-informed. Consensus will prove him wrong as it has so many others.
“Now let me draw your attention to the lettering. The collections of letters seem to spell out words, possibly the names of primitive gods. The archeologists are close to agreement, so we shall soon know.
“As you can see, the study of primitive peoples is fascinating. Fitting together pieces of the puzzle, finding clues and deducing their purpose. Yes, Jundal?”
“Like when Horactinial found hundreds of tiny pieces of aluminum with holes through them and the Royal Consensus agreed that they were a form of jewelry worn to indicate status in society?”
“Exactly! Against only one with the ridiculous supposition that they were cemented somehow into the lids of primitive cans for use as can openers. Mord-o-grap, are you listening? There is a lesson here for you …”
Guadalupe and Alberto had been traveling for weeks with a coyote known as El Santo, three others in his gang and eight other immigrants.
After they made it past the border checkpoints, Guadalupe started feeling labor pains. She knew she would be delivering twins. El Santo and his man Jerry said they’d go to a hospital, so they split off from the group.
But they drove to a huge, creepy building, covered in graffiti. Jerry drove the SUV through a large opening. “This isn’t a hospital,” said Alberto in Spanish.
“It’s the best you’re gonna get,” answered El Santo. The men stood by while Guadalupe screamed, bled and had her babies. They grinned at each other greedily, when the second child emerged.
She lost a lot of blood, passing out. Alberto cut the umbilical cord of each baby, wiping them off with his shirt. Two cries were heard in the lonely desert night.
Alberto held the newborns up to Guadalupe’s two breasts. The babies drank. Alberto divided their only blanket to swaddle his children and cover his unconscious wife. But El Santo shot Alberto and took the babies to sell illegally.
Guadalupe regained consciousness to find her babies gone, and her deceased husband covered in blood. She wept bitterly.
El Santo didn’t know that Guadalupe survived. Border Patrol later checked the area — a haven for gang activity — and turned the case over to Human Trafficking. They were hot on the trail of El Santo.
Flegler was never afraid. He walked to that old k/12 school all by himself. Every day he walked down Maple Street, just like grandma said to. Though she did caution him,
“Ne’er to go down Walkers Court, just past the cemetery.”
“Why not, Ma’am?”
“That’s old man Walkers’ property. He dead now, but you stay away.”
‘Why Ma’am? He leave a ghost or something?”
“No. Walker too poor to leave no ghost. You just do as I say and stay away.”
Flegler was an obedient grandson. Years passed. Two tours in Iraq. A good job driving for UPS. He made his grandma proud. He met Loretta on the job. They were to be married. In his maturity, memories of past admonitions and perceived threats were abraded with time.
On Friday, he was preoccupied all morning with thoughts of wedding planning. He had a package for 45 Walkers Court. The GPS found its way to a narrow, sparsely paved lane winding deep into an old quarry site. One dilapidated dwelling stood at the end of the drive covered in Hip Hop tagging, the work of petty vandals.
He rang the doorbell. It collapsed in rot on the pressure of his hand. He left the package. The engine started, but a stroke hit him hard. From the floor of the van, with his left side withered in numbness, he reached for the cell phone. All he could hear when he dialed 911 was,
“Do as I Say and stay away.”
The echoed clicks from his boot heels pinged off the graffitied, derelict walls.
As he stood in the center of the long-abandoned room, he wondered if any of
the vandals who’d defaced the walls with their vacuous graffiti had even
the slightest measure of understanding of what had transpired there thirty years ago.
An apprehensive smirk pursed his lips, as his thoughts drifted back to what seemed
like centuries ago. He glared at the cables still dangling from the ceiling and suddenly,
a feeling of dread overpowered him, and his eyes darted towards the open doorways.
His legs nearly buckled under him as he made his way towards the entrance, and he questioned his sanity. Did he really expect that he could just saunter into this godforsaken rathole without any consequences?
He scurried through the open doorway into the afternoon sunlight and stood motionless as he
regained his composure. He peered back into the shadowy room as if looking for someone
or something to follow him. As he made his way over to his car, a voice in his head told him;
“You shouldn’t have come back here!” Fumbling with his car keys, he started the engine and sped down the now overgrown driveway.
As he approached the entrance onto the highway, a vehicle of the State slowed passed him and that
feeling of dread overcame him again. He glanced in his rear-view mirror; they were turning around…
Crayton, the oldest and most respected of the local graffiti artists, stood in the damp warehouse, abandoned when the city died, and scrutinized the slashed piece he had put up last week.
“What’s the world coming to?” he asked his crew behind him. Some of those artists, the youngest especially, were afraid of what could come. Others, older mostly, were tired of Crayton, ready for change.
“Who would violate the rules?” he asked, talking to the air.
“I would and I did,” said Sarah, a step behind Crayton’s minions.
“But why?” asked Crayton, not turning to face the newcomer. “There’s room for you. No need to paint over.”
“Rules are made to be broken,” said Sarah, her chin thrust out in defiance. She was wearing baggy black pants, a too-large flannel shirt over a paint-spattered t-shirt.
“Break outsider rules,” said Crayton. “Not ours. We respect each other.”
“So maybe I don’t have any respect for the artist who did this,” she said, indicating the thick bendy shapes painted lime green and turquoise that partially covered the wall, Crayton’s trademark.
“So you did the red and black,” said Crayton.
“Yeah,” said Sarah, her ponytail swishing in anger.
“It’s eerie,” said Crayton. “The curves. Throw-up bubble letters. I like it.”
“You do?” said Sarah.
“Show me how you did it,” said Crayton.
“You’re kidding, right?” asked Sarah.
“I want to learn,” said Crayton, tossing her a can of red spray paint.
“You’re the boss,” she said.
Juan Pablo tiptoed through the alley, alert for Los Gatos’ forces. Just being here was dangerous, but duty called and he could not refuse.
The graffiti on the walls bore mute testimony to the gangs that had once claimed turf here. After Los Gatos invaded Earth, the Crips and the Bloods had set aside their differences to make a desperate strike against humanity’s conquerors.
A futile ones, for Los Gatos had weapons far beyond human technology. The gangbangers hardly fired a shot before it was over.
Los Gatos had a simple way of dealing with insurrection. Everyone in the area was loaded onto spaceships and dispersed to distant systems in need of settlers.
No doubt Los Gatos considered it a sheathed-claws response where other conquerors would use mass reprisals. For Juan Pablo, out of town at the time, it had been a horrific rupture. Just looking at the nighttime sky meant knowing his family was up there somewhere.
Which meant he had to get back home before Los Gatos started settling their sepoy species in the City of Angels. Not only to retrieve family heirlooms or items of value he could sell, but the precious relic his family treasured.
Just one more block and he’d be home free. Walk with purpose, don’t run or look sneaky.
The house looked just like when he left. He unlocked the door and tiptoed in.
Yes, there it was, untouched, the signature still clear. Juan Pablo wrapped his hands around the baseball.
My Aunt Hettie was impetuous and always into some activity. One of the weirdest stories she told on herself happened to her when she was 16. She was very much afraid of the dark. Her mother told the best ghost stories, but the side effects carried over to Hettie.
Each night she blew out the lantern inside her bedroom door so she could go to sleep. She had the problem then of getting to her bed and getting under the covers, so she could be safe. For years she blew out the light and would take one long leap into her bed. Until that night she blew out the light and took the giant leap as she always did. But the bed wasn’t there.
What she landed on was hard. It would leave bruises. She let out a scream that awakened all of the household who weren’t already asleep in other rooms. My mother was awakened in her bed near Aunt Hettie’s empty bed. Someone lit the lantern to see what was wrong. There was Hettie now on the floor. And my mother was trying to explain to her what had happened. Earlier that day my mother, four years older than Hettie, had changed the room around and put the dresser where Hettie’s bed had been.