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.
Why Don’t We Just Chute Them?
I thought they would take longer to draw the line. The we’ve-had-it-up-to-here line. Yeah. That line.
I mean, the Feds had been all over the map but mostly passing the buck. The States went it alone for the most part. Some took their time; others laid the law down. Lightly, mostly. Government was doing what government did best: ground to a humongous halt right before our unamazed eyes.
Which suited many of us. People being people, being mostly the weakest link in our own chain, we went along with our neighbours. Except for the ornery ones who’d never beat their drum in any marching band.
Ever.
We chugged along. Yeah, kept our distance. A portion of us wore masks. Most of us were not the type to spread our snot around willy-nilly.
Yep, we were civilized.
But the months dragged on. Twenty-four-hour news stations had about fifteen minutes of new material that they regurgitated on the quarter hour.
Eventually out little bubbles burst from boredom. Summer arrived. Beach time. Party time. Course, the second wave started. Or maybe it was the first wave? Didn’t really matter. The virus was having a field day.
Finally, Big Brother jumped in. It was always there. Nobody wanted it. Not the red states. Not the blue states.
Didn’t matter.
We needed to be control.
They built thousands of chutes.
Funneled us human cattle through them.
What’s that Joplin song? “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…”
Title: Lucky Day
“Is this the end of the road for us?”
“That’s what the others told us before we got loaded.”
“I don’t want this to be the end. I’ve got things to do.”
“Like what?”
“I thought I would have a chance at life. I never rode into the sunset.”
“You’re just a romantic. Get with the program…there’re going to make glue out of us.”
“Not me. You see that fence down there?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Well I’m going to jump over it and head for those hills. You, with me?”
“I don’t think I could jump over a fallen tree. They will just catch you and who knows what they will do to you then.”
“I would rather have chance at life, rather than what they have in store for us.”
“I’ll see you on the other side then.”
“It’s been great to know you.”
*.*.*
When the men opened the back of the trailer, one of the horses in the back took off down the chute and jumped over the fence at the end.
“Hey Bill, did you see that filly take off and jump that fence?”
“Yeah, what got into her?”
“I guess she has a thing for wild horses.”
*.*.*
The men opened the gate for all the other horses to the Salt River Wild Horse Management area.
*.*.*
The two horses met again. “I told you we would meet on the other side.”
“Yes…just in time to ride into that sunset.”
“Pull up a chair,” he said. “We need to talk.”
The office was quiet. He’d led me to a desk at the back, the only one which was tidy. There was a box in one corner, the pens and pencils it contained unused, clean of ink or unblunted. I found a chair and rolled it across to join the one he’d taken. We angled ourselves, not facing one another or looking away.
It was a moment of intimacy.
I suddenly felt afraid
He coughed once and then began.
“It’s like this,” he said. “You have to understand. We’re an office filled with men. Diehards. Straight-shooters. Idiots on a front-line. We’re used to there being a natural order. We speak our minds and don’t mess with the niceties. You’ll have to take us as you find us and develop your own way to cope. You can’t expect people to change on day one.”
I brushed down my skirt and crossed my legs. I crossed them at the ankle, like my mother had taught me, turning them away like a lady would.
“That’s fine,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “I have brothers and I’m of an age where men notice me. You know I’m not immodest; I know how to dress and how to behave. And you know I won’t cause any trouble or make a fuss.”
My father nodded, took out a cigarette and lit it for himself.
“Welcome to the business,” he said. “And good luck.”
Chute
It was early morning and Marcie Bryant stood looking down the old wooden chute that Trey had so enjoyed. In her mind’s eye she could see him clearly. Eleven years old, seated on the wheeled contraption he’d made, barrelling down the chute, the silence shattered by the rumbling sound of it and his whoops of joy. Once, he had hit the gate below and put a nasty gash in his forehead. But it hadn’t stopped him.
How she wished he was home, this madcap brother of hers. Twenty six-years-old, he was in Special Forces and missing in Afghanistan. Tears welled, spilling down her cheeks. He was her twin, so why couldn’t she just feel where he was? All she could do was come to the chute, her shrine, in early mornings to pray for him. She saw nothing of the rusty gates below, the disused sheep corrals; all she saw was her brother, happy, about to careen down the chute again.
Her parents had aged so much. The family were ultra-polite to each other, as if this could curb the ceaseless agony of thought.
Her mother would be looking for her, with breakfast made. As she moved to walk back, she suddenly felt a solid conviction that Trey was okay. She began to run for home and then heard her younger sister, Marina, yelling for her.
She came running towards her waving an envelope. “Marcie! Marcie! He’s found. He’s okay. He’s on his way home!”
“The house is gone, that huge old farmhouse,” said Dan to Miranda and the two boys as he pulled into the remnants of the driveway. “And the tall spruce. It used to be right here, in the backyard near the well. Gone.”
Miranda, hot and disheveled from the long drive, took Dan’s hand. The two boys, Richie and Lewis, ages six and eight, raced around what had been the pit where Dan had played horseshoes with his grandfather. The bedraggled chicken coop had fallen in on itself.
Dan walked along as the boys circled what was left of the massive faded-red barn and clambered up the rickety cattle chute. The pine flooring had weakened, Dan could tell, but it held him and the boys as they bounced up and down.
“At least they’ll be worn out when we get back in the car,” said Miranda. “I’m sorry about all this.”
“You had to be here,” said Dan, his hands on his hips, his mind twenty years in the past. “Judson and I came out to Gramp’s place every summer when we were kids. It was hotter than all get-out and they only had a swamp cooler that didn’t do much good, but what fun we had. Worked the fields, tossed hay bales, rode horses, helped herd the cattle to the chute. Our boys will lose out now that it’s all gone.”
“Dad, tell us the story about that bull again,” said Richie.
“It’s not all gone yet,” said Miranda.
I came back to find the old home place abandoned. The house had needed repair when we we moved away, and the subsequent decades had not been kind to it.
The doors were locked, and I had no desire to risk a run-in with sheriff’s deputies who wouldn’t understand my desire to revisit my childhood home. So I satisfied myself with peering through the dusty windows at the empty rooms that had been full of furniture and activity. I remembered putting up the wallpaper that now peeled in strips like birch bark, laying the vinyl flooring that now cracked and curled.
At least I could walk through the barnyard and revisit those crisp early mornings and warm afternoons when we’d hurry out here to do our chores. We’d had a large hog operation, as things went back then. But the economics of farming changed, leaving our farm too small to sustain. In time there’d been no choice but to sell out before we went bankrupt.
I’d fought back tears when I’d helped the church ladies at the serving tables for the auction. Watching the bidding on our livestock and farm equipment had hurt too much to bear, and the work had kept my mind occupied.
I wondered why the farmstead hadn’t been demolished and plowed under, like so many I remembered from childhood school bus rides. Too much trouble to bulldoze up the concrete handling pens that led to the loading chute?
Rocky’s bucking bronco flipped him onto the back of the snorting bull. He got a firm grip on its horns and, muscles bulging, twisted it to the ground. The surrounding herd of heifers snuffled in dashed hopes.
His cowpuncher buddies patted his back in congratulations as he headed for a hot shower. Tattoos glistening under the warm waters relaxing his body, he began visualizing next week’s coming out extravaganza.
All his friends, along with their families, would be scattered below, mingling with the neighboring ranchers and their kin. He would be at the top of the chute swaying to the rhythm of the samba that he learned to do on his hush-hush vacation to San Francisco’s gold coast. Then, he’d shimmy and shake to the bottom of the chute imagining wild applause ringing through his ears. They’re gonna love it, he thought.
He stepped out of the shower and toweled himself dry.
Party night finally arrived. The audience, anxiously awaiting their macho bull-busting hero, enjoyed the gyrations of a wildly dressed sweet young thing who suddenly jumped out of the closet at the top of the chute. Shapely legs flashed through the long slits of her gown as she sambaed down the ramp to face the audience.
“It’s the new me,” a familiar voice boomed out from below the Carmen Miranda headdress. Recognition stunned the audience. Singing “California, here I come,” not-so-macho Rocky joyfully sidesaddled his stallion and galloped off into the setting sun and a blooming new life.
Happy to be off the stifling truck, Nancy barreled down the wooden walkway into the new pasture. Dust billowed up from the parched ground. There wasn’t a blade of sweet grass in sight. Nancy let out a bellow and stomped a hoof. It wasn’t the first time Farmer Pappi had moved her herd, but usually it was to someplace nice. How dare he leave her in this desolate landscape. The other cows ignored her complaints and happily chewed on the scruffy tough plants.
That stuff wasn’t good enough for her. Hoping for something better, Nancy trotted toward the hills, sampling along the way. Nothing tasted good. Finally, she saw a bush with purple flowers surrounded by swarms of butterflies. If only she could reach it outside the fence. It was so annoying! Nancy pushed her head against the fence post and stamped her feet in frustration. Crack! The fence toppled. Maybe her mom was right about her being bullheaded. Within seconds, she began gobbling the juicy leaves. Delicious.
Now that her belly was full, Nancy noticed a strange tingle on her back. She twisted around and stared at a pair of appendages that were as thin as paper and sparkled in the sun. A twitch of her muscles caused the things to flap. Interesting. After a few tries, she lifted off the ground and flew over the fence. No more being trapped in a field. She was free, and had a pair of wings as beautiful as she was.
I dreamed I was on a mountain with a long, fenced wooden walkway. Others walked before and behind me, with choices to be made along the way. I could walk, skip or run, and always, there were familiar faces. I was often joyful and eager to move forward.
The gates were one-way; no going back. On every path, certain dear companions were there.
I noticed a man, full of light, walking beside me. He was more important than anyone else. He was not limited to the walkway, and could go in any direction.
Before I reached the bottom of the mountain, a few of my special companions had disappeared, and some of us wept. At those times, the special man was very close. I knelt before Him, and gave Him my heart. He became my Guide.
Eventually the path turned upward, which was harder, but I still had choices. I chose a sweet companion, and put my hand in his. My Guide put a special bond between us, and from there, we labored together.
The uphill climb had unexpected turns which were unpleasant and unavoidable. Our Guide took us through the dark, even when precious and familiar companions vanished from sight.
Just before I woke up, He assured us that we will one day reach the top. Then, we will be able to run free from the wooden path, with all our precious companions, through grass, trees and flowers, in every direction, completely free among His beautiful mountains.