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.
ELIGIBLE FOR EDITORS CHOICE ONLY
Dead Stuff
It was the perfect murder. No witnesses, no clues, no motive. However, there was a body. A very dead body. I was a perfectionist so cramming it in a dumpster was out of the question. Throwing it in the sea, not an option as we were far in land. Lakes and rivers were always populated by the base hoi polloi, so could not be considered. Incineration was a dangerous business, so another no.
Dead bodies should lie with other dead bodies. This was perfectly logical. The cemetery. I visited one to understand how it functioned. Walking around was remarkably peaceful. The cemetery was well kept, in fact very attractive. The ancient trees gave a touch of nobility. The grieving were always well dressed and mannered. The cemetery was classy . There was a majestic sweep of driveway leading to a small quaint chapel. Everything was monied, elite and perfect. Security cameras were present but no security guards after dark.
At night, I scrambled over the back wall. Dressed in sombre black, I neatly disabled the security cameras and opened the front gates for the body to enter. The grave was very secluded and far from the main graveyard. I dug the grave extra deep to avoid detection.
It was the perfect murder. No witnesses, no clues, no motive. I do not believe there are only five motives for murder- greed, jealousy, infidelity, revenge, treachery.
“Who approved that sign?” Mayor Gillman asked.
The room went silent.
“It’s wrong, and I want to know the fool who wrote the order,” he persisted.
The cabinet had seen his rage before, and there wasn’t a sole looking at him.
“You’re all a bunch of losers and there’s not one of you with any backbone.” His face was turning red. “Don’t hide behind your masks.” He was now walking around the room pointing at every person. “Well, were going to sit in this room until tomorrow if we have to, until I find out which idiot commissioned that sign. $450 is ridiculous, and it is worded incorrectly to boot.”
One of the cabinet members raised her hand, and everyone looked at her.
“YOU, you did this?” He raced over to her location.
As soon as his whiskey laden breath filled her nostrils, she started crying.
“Well, missy…speak up. Did you commission this sign?”
“No mayor, I need to go to the ladies room.”
“Nobody is leaving the room until I find out which a**hole purchased this sign.” He looked at his shoes and he was standing in a puddle. “Oh, for gosh sakes…GO!”
She jumped out of her chair and went running.
Another person raised her hand, holding up a folded piece of paper.
“What, do you have to go too?”
“No sir, I located the order.
Everyone watched the mayor charge over to her seat.
A minute later – “You can all go; the sign reads exactly as ordered.”
Mess-Ages
Lenny Jeeters and me, Frank Hoot, we’re in advertising. Decades of experience working for others.
Late 2019, we formed our own company. Hoot and Jeeters Advertising!
We’d keep it small.
Local.
Manageable.
Then came that darn virus.
Knocked the stuffing out of us for a while.
But we persevered.
Came up with a slogan, the essence of our little enterprise: Do YOU have a Failure to Communicate? We’ll fix that.
I know, Cool Hand Luke.
So, we borrowed that famous line, tweaked it. Made it our own.
People ate it up.
Sure, lots of folks were shopping online to begin with but that didn’t serve the local economy all that well. Gradually pretty near everyone understood that shopping local was necessary. Of course, that point needed constant hammering home. Take Dan Clinger’s Haberdashery. Been in business fifty-five years. Then on the verge of bankruptcy because everyone was staying home. And Zooming half-dressed. So, we came up with: Don’t be caught with your Jammies down; Dash down to Dan’s.
Saved Dan’s bacon.
Then the local Animal Control came to us with an emerging problem. Locals had started hunting their own food. Fishing too. Way more than they used to. Getting desperate, I guess.
Not all of it was edible.
Rats. Big ones.
Everywhere.
Even had a wield outbreak of invasive carp jumping up on local docks, rotting in the sun.
Awful smell.
Folks chucking the remains willy-nilly in trash cans.
Kiboshed that nonsense with public service signage.
Freebie, of course.
Slightly edit…
Mess-Ages
Lenny Jeeters and me, Frank Hoot, we’re in advertising. Decades of experience working for others.
Late 2019, we formed our own company. Hoot and Jeeters Advertising!
We’d keep it small.
Local.
Manageable.
Then came that darn virus.
Knocked the stuffing out of us for a while.
But we persevered.
Came up with a slogan, the essence of our little enterprise: Do YOU have a Failure to Communicate? We’ll fix that.
I know, Cool Hand Lukish.
So, we borrowed that famous line, tweaked it. Made it our own.
People ate it up.
Sure, lots of folks were shopping online to begin with but that didn’t serve the local economy all that well. Gradually pretty near everyone understood that shopping local was necessary. Of course, that point needed constant hammering home. Take Dan Clinger’s Haberdashery. Been in business fifty-five years. Then on the verge of bankruptcy because everyone was staying home. And Zooming half-dressed. So, we came up with: Don’t be caught with your Jammies down; Dash down to Dan’s.
Saved Dan’s bacon.
Then the local Animal Control came to us with an emerging problem. Locals had started hunting their own food. Fishing too. Way more than they used to. Getting desperate, I guess.
Not all of it was edible.
Rats!
Big ones!
Everywhere!
Even had a nasty outbreak of invasive carp jumping up on local docks, rotting in the sun.
Awful smell.
Folks chucking the remains willy-nilly in trash cans.
Kiboshed that nonsense with public service signage.
Freebie, of course.
A landline rings in an SRO unit of a walk-up tenement somewhere in Southcentral New England. It’s late; after the bars have closed but before the milk makes its morning run.
“Hello?”
“Jerry? This is Flegler.” There was an edgy pause before Jerry answered.
“Like I couldn’t guess. What gives, Hardcase?” sarcasm dripping from tired lips.
“I can’t sleep on what we did this afternoon and tonight,” Flegler had been drinking.
“We’ve been over this so many times before, Fledge. When you cash their checks or hide their cash under a rock as you do, you still owe them an honest day’s work. Grow up!”
“No. No, it’s the signs. The signs give me pause. They’re an omen.”
“Of what, ‘ Fledge?”
“Of bad things to come. ‘No fish or dead animals’. That’s what they said Jerry. Something bad’s gonna happen.”
“Not if we let it play out, Fledge. Those signs are there at the marina to make sure the locals don’t accidentally feed the local critters like bears and coyotes with their fish heads and duck entrails after an outing. Don’t worry about it.”
“But Jerry, animals are animals. All kinds. Don’t you think we broke the law?”
“Well, maybe the spirit of it, but trash pickup is tomorrow morning. It’s all good, Fledge. Get some rest. No bears will get at that dumpster by dawn.”
“Ok, but what about the boots?”
“The boots?”
‘Yeah, I left them by the dumpster with his wallet inside.”
The droid sparked as it pulled itself free from the barrel. It had lost most of a leg and half of an arm, but it could still move. Its gyros could compensate.
The first citizen shied away, seeing it was damaged. Its carapace glowed red where its circuits had fused, his hand immediately scorched black by the heat radiating through it.
It mattered nothing to the relic. It had no business with anyone but his last owner, the man who had beat him and thrown him away, not caring to recycle. There was a reason for the company’s returns program; procedures to be followed, nuclear cells to be recovered, AIs that needed to be neutralised. An obsolete model could be stripped back to its duralumin bones, its components reutilised, repurposed, sent out to the colonies, the cowboys in the asteroids using them to upgrade their antiquated systems. Even an AI could find a second life out on Ceres. The mind of a butler droid could be reprogrammed, simplified so it would happily accept one of the more menial tasks the colonists would require it to manage. They would always need another drilling rig or a mining droid. They swarmed like cockroaches out there: consumable items to be used then thrown away, the terminal flash of an arc-gun removing any traces of sentience. A broken minded AI could become dangerous, presenting a risk to its users.
Revenge is a dish that can easily be served cold if you lack emotions.
Crab City
“Mom, I want to go to crab city,” my youngest exclaims as we are wading through the cool shallow waters that are a run off from the inter coastal and the ocean. The sun is bright and warm , perfect weather to say the least in mid April. Trudging along, crab city proves to have an abundance of tiny hermit crabs that walk along this sand bar and bury themselves as we near them. My sons are busy digging, capturing and releasing these squirming critters.
“It’s time to go boys,” I shout as the clouds are moving in. I noticed their buckets have the usual sand and a few crabs to take home. Walking by a dead fish on the shore bank, a woman puts it into a bag to dispose of and sees the sign stating no dead fish or animals in this trash can allowed. She tosses it back and a seagull happily takes it off her hands.
Once home, the few hermit crabs met their demise. After teaching my sons about not putting anything dead in the trash can, we had a proper burial in the front yard !
Sent from my iPad
“Urgh!”
He realized his grunting was getting louder as he wrestled the larger pieces of mass. He hoped the neighbors couldn’t hear. At least the sound of the wood saw biting through bone didn’t carry like a chainsaw’s whine would. The chainsaw would certainly be faster, easier, but hardly discrete.
If only she hadn’t taunted him in that sing-song voice. “Cartoons? Really?” Her voice had lilted upward with each question. “What, Spongebob Squarepants? Tell me, what’s your favorite?”
As if he would after that. As if he would confide anything to her after that.
The knee joint cracked under the toothed blade of the saw, and he tore apart the skin and tendons that connected the upper leg to the lower. Blood spurted onto his shirt.
His favorite shirt. Damn that woman.
He tossed the two halves of the leg into the black trash bag, along with the other leg and the arms. He’d have to put the torso in another bag. He severed the neck and tossed the head in the first bag by the hair.
Take that.
After a thorough shower and a change of clothes, he drove into the mountains, to the lake with no name. The sign on the battered trash can stopped him.
Do not put fish or dead animals in trash can.
He grinned. She was many things, but not a fish or an animal.
He tossed the bags in the can and checked his watch. He’d be home in time for Spongebob.
Dead Stuff
One afternoon, two mice, Mick and Sneaky, were digging through some trash bins, looking for food.
“Hey, Sneaky, why are there dead fish and other assorted critters in this trash bin?”
Sneaky was busy chewing on a tasty morsel of cabbage and looked up. “Don’t know, Mick. Clearly, they weren’t smart like you and me.”
“Right,” his friend replied, and bit into an old piece of rubber.
They nibbled for a few minutes and then climbed over garbage, sniffing here and there for any scent of additional food.
“More dead animals,” Mick announced, and climbed over a squirrel and rat. “How did they die?”
“Who knows,” replied Sneaky. He turned and descended down one side of the trash bin. After several minutes he yelled out, “Help!”
Mick dropped a piece of plastic he was chewing on and climbed down the side of the trash can where Sneaky was last seen. He soon spotted his friend holding a piece of cheese, with his tail caught in a spring-loaded trap.
“Hey, Sneaky, what happened?”
“I saw the cheese, grabbed it, and got caught in this trap.”
Mick tried to lift the thin bar off Sneaky’s tail, but it wouldn’t budge.
“It’s no use,” said Sneaky. “I’m done for. Now I know how the fish and other critters died.”
“How?”
“They went after bait—food—and got caught.”
“Really?”
“Beware of free stuff, Mick. It’s a trap. There’s a reason why the cheese in a mousetrap is free.”
“There, that ought to do it. Back-to-back signs. Nobody can ignore that! No Dumping Dead Animals.”
“I’m not so sure…”
“Come on, Sally. People don’t come to the beach for the delightful aromas of dead animals and rotting fish. They come for the sea air, the breezes off the ocean. The signs will guarantee that’s what they’ll get.”
“Yeah, Dave, but…”
“But nothing. The signs stay.”
“I just thought….”
“What? What did you just think?”
“Wouldn’t it be better if the signs said something pleasant about the beach? Welcome to White Sand Beach, maybe. Pick Up a Tan, Relax Your Soul. Not stuff about dead animals. Those signs are going to make people think about death and dying and suffering, not exactly pleasant thoughts to dwell on.”
“Well…I dunno…”
“We need signs that will make this a place where nobody would ever think of dumping bodies or disposing of stinky fish.”
“But the mayor ordered these signs.”
“Hm. So he did. What if we change just a few words? Make the sign say Welcome Friends & Neighbors!
“Sounds good. Let’s do it.”
“I’ll get the paint and brushes.”
“Only one problem. Which words can we change to make it say that?”
Marilyn was standing at her sink washing her lunch dishes when she saw the bear amble through her back yard. It wasn’t a completely uncommon occurrence, but it wasn’t something she saw every day, so she paused and enjoyed the site. It was the next day when she saw yet another bear, or was it the same bear, walk through her yard she got concerned. Then she realized both bears were coming from her neighbor’s property.
Marilyn huffed as she slipped on her boots, she’d have to go over and clean up their mess, again. They were barely down here overnight; she couldn’t even guess what they could have left behind that a bear would visit 2 days in a row. As she rounded the corner of their house, she saw that he had tipped over the trash can and had torn into one of the black trash bags.
All the years she lived out here she never had problems with her neighbor’s and that property had gone through a few hands. These neighbors were the “we have so much money we can afford a place in the city and a cabin the woods” type, but they were hardly ever at the cabin and when they were they were trouble, always doing stuff like this, leaving garbage out attracting animals.
Marilyn couldn’t make out what was in the bag, probably a dead animal, not that they were hunters. Then she saw it and screamed, it wasn’t a dead animal.
Thanks to the lack of wind, cookfire smoke hung under the overpass bringing tears to Maud’s eyes. She ignored the stinging smoke as she stirred the large kettle of fragrant stew. The others sat in silence, waiting.
Maud was a big woman but fair and mostly approachable. When she got her hackles up, everybody knew it was time to get going. Tonight, all was quiet except the bubbling cauldron. Only old Zeke, a skinny bugger, had mischief in mind. Something about his shifty eyes made the other men wary.
The stew, roadkill possum and a raccoon knocked dead by one of the men, was almost ready. Maud straightened up slowly, stretching her aching back. Just then, Zeke dipped his left hand into the stew for a quick taste. As Maud turned her head to see who was violating her no-taste rule, Zeke took his right hand and groped Maud between the legs.
“Don’t you take liberties with me, Buster Brown,” she said as she slapped his hand.
“Oh, Maud,” said Zeke with a snort. “I was just joking.”
Maud’s face turned beet red as she wheeled around. She grabbed her butcher knife and whacked off Zeke’s right hand.
“Now look what you’ve done!” screamed Zeke.
Maud grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. “You ain’t no fish and you ain’t dead. Yet. So in you go.” With that she dumped him in the trash can. “You get yourself some respect,” she said, “and maybe that hand grows back.”
Jo always dreaded getting assigned to empty the trash cans at Palisades Park. No matter how many signs the rangers put up telling people not to dispose of fish or dead animals, it was still even odds she’d find something decomposing in at least one.
But she couldn’t afford to lose this job, not when she was barely scraping by and had no real prospects of anything better. So she wrapped a bandanna around her nose and mouth to cut the smell and tried not to breathe too deeply as she pushed the big-wheeled cart from one can to the next.
As soon as she approached the trash can by the fishing pier, she knew she was dealing with something nasty. Not just the usual odors of putrefaction, but something sharp and vile that sent her hindbrain quivering with primeval terrors.
By force of will she mastered herself, pulled the liner out. Tie it off, throw it in the cart, and be done with it – except as it cleared the trash can’s rim, the plastic tore and out spilled something rotting and unearthly. The mass of tentacles suggested an octopus, except for the batlike wings that emerged from the torso. Was that a tail, or another tentacle at the opposite end, between the stumpy legs?
She was halfway across the beach before she realized the hideous keening was coming from her own throat.
Ten-year-olds Tommy, Mac, and Stevie, were lucky boys to grow up in an oceanside town. In the off-season they were free to ride their bikes all over town, and catch crabs and fish!
But, of course, when the tourists descended on the town things changed.
This year, new signs were all over town. One, next to a trash can on the beach, read: Do Not Put Fish Or Dead Animals In The Trash Cans.
The day the sign went up, the youth in town started having macabre fun with it. They dragged their halloween props and costumes out of the closets, and posed in front of the sign – taking photos.
So, when the boys walked past a used bookstore, and saw the paper back, Pet Cemetery, they decided they had to buy it.
“Excuse me sir, how much do you want for that book in the window?” Tommy asked.
“A million dollars,” the proprietor said smiling.
The boys looked defeated.
“Sorry, only kidding, five dollars.”
The boys looked down.
” We only have a dollar,” Mac spoke up.
” That’s a pretty scary book, I have other books I think you would like.”
Their eyes widened, even more interested in the book now.
” No, it’s gotta be that one,” Stevie said.
Then, they explained about using it as a prop.
“All right, a dollar, and you can bring it back.”
But they didn’t bring it back. They had too much fun, all summer, scaring the tourists with their gruesome tales.