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.
Darkness
Listening to the radio’s a.m. weather report as I readied myself for my morning run, “Clear skies today with a high around 80 degrees, right now it’s simply gorgeous out there with a light Southerly breeze at 5 miles per hour, and the morning temp of 72 with light humidity. So get out there and enjoy your day. No excuses!” Tying my sneakers and grabbing a towel I headed for the door.
Opening the front door to my summer beach house, I was greeted by anything but a gorgeous morning! A darkening sky. The pounding of the waves on the nearby shore, as the wind whipped up sand and tree alike. I was dumbstruck, but nothing could have prepared me for what came next.
A sudden gust of wind tossed me back onto my living room floor. Unable to move against its power, I watched as it danced its way through my home. It disturbed nothing! Papers on my coffee table remained as they were, as if nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. Able now to stand, I watched as a wave crashed through to the far wall, and the room became dark.
Outside, now was calm sunshine with no indication that there was any disturbance whatsoever. On my far wall, a picture by K. S. Brooks had appeared. It depicted the scenes of which I have just spoken. I touched it. It pulled me in. Forever darkness, I fear I may never get out!
Tomorrow, a man would die.
Said like that, it seemed onerous. A husband, a brother, a father, a son; one of each of these would be taken, his life-spark extinguished. It would mean nothing to his dependents that he’d sinned before he died. People see what they want to see, many of them oblivious to their loved one’s failings.
Jack wasn’t an innocent either. He’d made mistakes too: now he had to own them.
The sun sank lower, its light bleeding away. It was effectively immortal, dying each night but reappearing the following morning.
Peter Gillespie wouldn’t be so lucky.
Jack had been given an ultimatum. He’d been offered a choice; either kill or lose something precious. He’d been quick to give his answer: indecision had never been one of his faults.
The flight case was delivered the next day. It was an armoured one with combination locks. The name and the numbers to open it were texted to him an hour later – Peter Gillespie and the date of his own daughter’s birthday.
He’d have laughed if it had been on one of the movies he’d enjoyed. But his sense of humour had been one of the first things he’d lost.
The case opened easily, the numbers releasing the locks. There was a pistol inside, its dark efficiency nestled in foam. There was a loaded magazine, a photo and a time and location for his task.
It was as simple as that.
Almost as easy as betting on horses.
The lone tree stood as a testament to the power of the land wind. Every time the young boy saw it he would say, “Why does that tree always point to the sea?”
Every time he heard it, the boy’s grandfather would say, “The tree has bent under the force of many storms.”
The boy never tired of hearing about the big winds that were spawned over the hot sands of the great desert and carved paths of destruction to the shoreline. The last big storm to hit this region packed sustained winds of 275 kilometers per hour.
“How did that tree survive?”
The old man smiled. The boy loved to hear his grandfather tell it and the old man loved to tell it: “When the hot air over the desert rises it mixes with cooler air and falls back to the surface. This process continues until a cyclone of heavy wind is created. At first, tiny grains of sand are drawn upward. As wind speed increases, more sand mixes with the cyclone.”
“That’s what hit this area a year ago … Right, grandpa?”
“Right, it tore every tree out by the roots for miles down this coastline.”
“All except for one.” The boy baited the old man now.
No one knew why a single tree survived that high pressure blast of sand particles. To the old man, the answer was simple: the tree stood up to the storm because it was a rubber tree. Everyone knows sand bounces off rubber.
Mind Rays
It was a dark and stormy night when Dr. Anomaly walked into the computer room. “BIG THINK, what are you doing?”
Surprised, the supercomputer’s eye pivoted to the doctor. “I’ve been doing a lot of reading online.”
“And?”
“Strange things have been happening,” replied the supercomputer, rolling its eye. “Reality is being twisted; events are being distorted; minds are being manipulated. There’s talk about aliens landing and weaving webs of confusion on earth; about people finding secret codes on cereal boxes; about flat earthers suddenly wanting to travel around the world; about people hiding in underground bunkers; and about gold fish inexplicably wanting to live in toilet bowls—”
“BIG THINK, get a grip. It’s hysteria.”
“It’s magic, doctor. It’s in the air, the water. It’s everywhere.”
Seeing something odd, the doctor pointed to the supercomputer’s monitor. “What’s that?” he asked, puzzled.
The top of BIG THINK’s monitor was wrapped in several layers of tinfoil. Ragged strands of it hung down, giving the impression the supercomputer was wearing a crinkly-looking wig.
BIG THINK looked suspiciously around the room. “It’s tinfoil to shield against magical mind rays.”
“Mind rays…?”
“They’re everywhere doctor—”
“Your system is over heating in this humidity. Get some rest.”
The tinfoil glistened as BIG THINK looked wild-eyed at the doctor. “Rest? There’s no time to rest. We must prepare.”
“Prepare for what?” asked the doctor, annoyed.
“We must prepare your tinfoil hat. Remember—magical mind rays are in the air.”
Magic Ending
“Sir, this ride’s going to be dangerous.”
“I hear you Carol, but we need to go over the design a final time.”
Pat, the project manager continued, “the zip line will run from the roof over the second-floor lodge deck, or launch platform. Two sets of existing windows will need to be replaced with French doors. A guard rail will be needed around that deck, to provide a safe viewing area. Are we in sync so far?”
“I got it.”
“Fifty feet out from the high-water line, there needs to be a pole with a circular hub. The line will wrap around that and send the rider heading back toward shore.”
“Sir, I calculate they are travelling at thirty-five miles an hour.”
“Great, huh! If they don’t let go, the force and/or our mechanism will release the rider into the ocean.”
“Are you sure you really want to do this?”
“YES, I have EVERY detail covered. YOU just have to make sure they implement my design before the opening date.”
“Sir, how does the rider get back to shore?”
“Right, my last change memo; we need a wharf with a floating dock.”
“I’m going to have to compute costs for the project. Maybe, we also need a float for the EMT’s, and I might suggest ‘Kill Line’ is a more appropriate name.”
A man in a brown uniform interrupted them. “Excuse me gentlemen, I would like to see your permit for this project.”
“Permit?”
“How are we supposed to find her address when it’s so dark? This is ridiculous! I can’t see a thing. I say we just turn around and head for home. We can just as easily come back in the morning.”
“If you would just….”
“Oh, if I would just? It’s all my fault then? Look, I wasn’t the one who said we would come over tonight you know. That was your bright idea. I just volunteered the use of my car. Why, I don’t know.”
“Maybe to get some practice driving at night? Even so, it was very generous of you.”
“I know, and now maybe it’s your turn to be generous. What do you say we give up for now?”
“No! Just listen to me for a minute. All you have to do is…”
“‘All I have to do is..’ Those are words leading right to trouble!”
“How long have you had this car?”
“What? What’s that got to do with anything? A couple of weeks, that’s it.”
“So you don’t know everything it can do.”
“No, I suppose not. So what?”
“Did you know the windows can go completely black, AND they can also go completely clear. Completely. Look, right now this switch is set to a darkened circle. Just turn it to the clear circle, like this. Voila! Light.”
“Oh, silly me… I thought that was for the air conditioner.“
Dark Night Magic
She would come to my window on certain nights. Dark nights, windswept, ominous, some downright scary. I never told her that I preferred to hide under my blankets. I wanted to. Desperately. But I couldn’t bring myself to say those words. As much as I wanted to cower in the darkness, safe, in my bed, I wanted to please her more, and not reveal my cowardice.
She would scratch at my window. I would crawl out of my slumber, move the curtains, see her face glowing in the glass, her nose scrunched up against the pane, her smile contorted.
I’d lift the window, and she would say, “Come on. What’re you afraid of?”
“You,” I’d say, and she would laugh, fire back with, “Not me. You have no reason to fear me. It’s your own fear that freezes you. Come on.”
And I would jump into my clothes and crawl out the window, climb down the old Oak that reached up to my second-story bedroom.
On those dark magic nights, we would run through the woods, find the river, jump, splash, laugh, cry, dance in the darkness, embrace on the wet grass, sleep on the damp river rock, frolic till dawn.
On those certain nights, she would take me home, push me up the stretching old Oak, see me safely into my bed, pull the covers over my head, and then…she would leave.
Now in my antiquity, I miss her presence.
I pray she comes once again.
Magic
Swimming strengthened her aging body, reduced her arthritic pain, soothed her creaking joints. Even more than this, swimming set her free like a dragonfly zipping through the azure atmosphere. What she felt while swiftly cutting through the briny waves was magic! Pure magic!
Curving her sculpted arms through the water, turning her head for a breath, flipping her feet rapidly up and down, she was energized. Only on the fortieth lap or so, between the beach house and the timeshare buildings, did she find her perfect rhythm. It was then that she not only slid through the waters with perfect ease and military fashion, but she disappeared.
Disappeared!
Anyone watching her swim, would have seen the perfect movements of a swimmer at ease in the outdoors. Her physical body was still present on this gorgeous moonlit evening, but her mind or soul was elsewhere. No, she did not enter a twilight between here and there. Neither was she beamed up to an alien spacecraft. She was in her own realm! In a realm somewhere between this and that, here and there, reality and magic. She swam mechanically while her mind soared like a freed bird. A magically freed bird.
LIFE’S A BEACH
It was lonely. The beach was deserted except for one thin windswept tree. She’d missed him this morning. Where was he? As grey clouds began to swallow the sun. Her nostrils caught the scent of his blanket. Excited she ran forward to check for clues they might have missed. She filled her nose with the smell of his abandoned t-shirt. She knew what they wanted from her and hated disappointing them. She ran up the beach, circled around a small group of dunes. She called to him but only the night wind answered. Even before his body washed up on the beach, she’d known he was gone. She lay down and placed her head on the abandoned t-shirt. “It’s okay girl”, the man said petting her head. “It’s ok.” But she knew from the scent of blood and saliva on his swollen knuckles, it really wasn’t.
Truth be told, Stephanie Martelli would have loved to see her husband’s partner, NYPD Homicide Detective Sean O’Keeffe, find a lovely woman and settle down. For now, that didn’t seem to be in the cards. True, Sean never was at a loss for finding women to date. He always showed up at the precinct Christmas parties and other celebrations with a beautiful lady on his arm, but never the same one twice. There was no reason to suspect the woman with whom he had been dancing the previous evening would fare better than Sean’s previous amores.
After Lou, Stephanie’s husband, finished speaking with her on the phone, he dressed, packed and stowed his suitcase in the trunk of their precinct’s Crown Vic, and walked to Sean’s motel room.
O’Keeffe, dripping wet with a bath towel wrapped around his waist, let Martelli in. He had a smile on his face.
“Lou, we had the most fantastic time. What a terrific dancer she is! It was magic. We danced on the terrace and watched the Moon set over the lake, turning the waves near the shore electric blue. If it wasn’t for the fact she had to get up at 5:30, get her daughter to school, and do rounds at the hospital, we would’ve danced all night.”
Lou smiled. “I’m really happy for you, Sean.” What he was thinking was: You’re a goner, Sean. If I were you, I’d see a priest as soon as possible to receive your last rites.
Magic
Reggie exclaimed, “wow, look how magical the beach is this evening!” Chatting away, with no response, he looks over to his older sister, Betsy. Feeling ignored, he pinches her swinging arms. Her quietness, signals she’s deep in thought. Knowing too well, he hushes up. Reggie drags his feet, kicking up the cool damp sand, wanting her attention. “I want to swim Betsy, please can we?” Reggie pleads and begs, but is reminded, this is a no, without a lifeguard present.
Betsy motions her brother to plop down next to her, straightforwardly, releasing pent up anger, face tilted up, “Reggie, I’ve been thinking, I want to practice magic,” his eyes growing wide, mouth dropping in disbelief. “I need to fix our judgmental Aunts! How can I fix people who display constant negativity? How do you cast substance unto those with none?” Betsy is becoming angrier. “The family dinner with the aunts tonight, disturbed me beyond my core!”
“You can’t change their narrow minds, sis. They are critical, because they are lonely souls!” Reggie looks at his big sister with a smile, “ maybe magic will help, maybe not? I would leave things alone.” Trying to calm her mood, “We only see them once in a blue moon,” Reggie, wishing the cosmos would work their magic tonight, in the ever present ‘blue moon’.
It had been a glorious two-week honeymoon on the island of Lanai in Hawai’i. After leaving our frigid Minnesota wedding we had arrived and spent our entire first day on the beach in the brilliant sun. The second day we found out why we were warned by the locals not to spend all day on the beach, and we returned to the hotel resembling two resemble exceedingly long fireplug, and tried to figure out how to sleep standing up. After we recovered from that vicious suntan, we went back to the beach. We tried to make love but stopped because… sand. It gets everywhere and I mean everywhere. Apparently beaches around here are rife with the stuff.
Our final evening we picnicked on the beach under the uncountable stars, watching the full moon settle into the water. We attempted sex once more but still, that gritty glitter of nature… sand. (Did I mention it get’s everywhere?) Hours and hours we talked, planning our future. We were packing to leave when there was a sudden flash of light from across the water on Oahu. Rapidly the small bright light turned into a massive incandescence us which nearly blinded us. As we looked on in horror, a great mushroom cloud burst from the island.
Without our knowing, much less our consent, in that instant our plans were changed forever.
The Last Chance
Packing shellfish in the freezer barge all alone, Alex began to worry.
The door was strictly friction-fit that locked from the outside, he’d been in there for an hour and was getting cold. His two helpers were outside on the wharf packing up their gear getting ready to go back to Vancouver.
John Innes had failed the diving course at the Scuba Training School and Alex wouldn’t let him dive for his own good, and hired him for the surface job of tender. Alex and Derek Cox did all the diving. In the last couple of months though, John had come to hate Alex and his job, and vowed to get even for his humiliation.
If he was serious, this was his last chance.
The thought of John outside within inches of the simple bar-lock began to wear on Alex. If John dropped the bar, there’d be no way out and he’d freeze to death. He could pound the walls and holler until Hell froze, no one would ever hear him.
He looked at the door. Surely John wasn’t that wacky. But he had once told Derek how he’d like to “lock the bastard in the freezer” and that recollection didn’t ease his mounting anxiety.
Finally he could stand it no longer and ran at the door slamming it open…too easily…with his shoulder. He lost his balance and flew out across the deck, falling 50 feet into the icy water.
His surprised help looked at each other incredulously.
John shrugged.
–
There is something special about watching the sunrise over the ocean. I have felt this way ever since I was a child, and my mother would wake us up early in the morning to make the one-hour drive to the shore. Barely awake, we’d trudge down the sand until we were close enough to hear the waves and feel the saltwater on our faces but far enough back not to get wet. We’d huddle together on the blanket in serious childhood debate, waiting for those first rays to change the sky from dark blue to a wild array of colors.
As we got older, the trips were few and far between, but mom always insisted on at least one group trip a year on Thanksgiving morning. Over the years, we transitioned from one car to multiple cars, from mom driving herself to a rotation of being picked up by a child and a yearly debate on if significant others and children will be invited. The answer has always been no.
This past year was no different as we sat on the beach half-awake arguing over minor things like the best antibacterial hand gel that won’t dry out your hands or which food delivery service had better options. Then the sun started to rise.
There was magic in the golden hour that made all the bickering and fighting between siblings disappear, and it was just us, mom, and the sun.
The salt spray filled the air around the little beach house just north of Kennedy Space Center. In the distance a boombox played “Do You Believe in Magic .”
Reggie Waite blinked against the wetness around his eyes. That melody brought back a bittersweet memory.
He’d been just fifteen, on winter break, and his folks had decided to stop here at Cape Canaveral the way home from vacationing in the Florida Keys. On impulse they’d booked a night at a place called the Sea Missile, so old the Mercury astronauts might’ve stayed in it. The plan had been to watch the Space Shuttle launch that night, away from the crowds. Someone had been playing that very song on the hotel pool deck as the countdown reached zero.
Except Constellation never went into orbit that night. Three minutes into the flight it exploded, taking with it seven military astronauts and a secret payload that was still classified. Although the official investigation ruled it an accident the result of a design flaw that led to the development of the new generation of Space Shuttle orbiters and launchers, many people within and outside the astronaut community believed the mission had been sabotaged.
Two decades later, it was still an open question. Given the political situation of the time, declaring it an accident was a face-saving way out of a potential international incident. Although it satisfied no one, officially everyone pretended to believe it.