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.
Death Does Not Warm Me
Gilbert had a premonition that this Saturday would be his last. He did not want it to be, but he could not shake the feeling of doom approaching.
He shared this foreboding sense with Sheila who was quick to say, “Give me a break, Gilbert. You just do not want to go to the party. Well, you can stay home if you want but I need people.”
She had hit the nail on his head, or the head. Somebodies head, that is for sure. And now Sheila was headed to Sam and Phyllis’ party. And that was the problem. She was double vaxxed, but Gilbert knew that Sam and Phil were not.
Vexed but the fear of needles, but not vaxxed.
How he wished it were not so.
He had drawn the line t exposure.
“You can’t come back here,” he had declared.
“It’s my house too, “ she had countered. “I’ll come in if I want.”
The gauntlet had been thrust down. Actually, it was a singlet. Unwashed from my days as a runner.
Mostly out of the house to get away from her wrath.
Not that I did not deserve wrath.
I had racked up many reasons for wrath to come my way.
This was not one of them.
Covid had divided us.
This evening, love will not warm me.
And more to the point, death does not warm me…ever.
The cemetery is full of cold bodies.
It is not yet my turn.
It was unlike anything he’d seen: at least 100 cars and motorcycles—mostly big Harley-Davidson touring models—lined up behind the national cemetery’s administration building.
Must be some general’s funeral this morning, he mused as he drove slowly to his wife’s grave site. This was a road he sadly traced every Thursday or Friday morning since late the previous spring, when the love of his life passed to her eternal reward. Because of his Army service, she was entitled to be buried in one of the more than 150 national cemeteries scattered across the United States, there to wait and eventually be rejoined with him for eternity.
On the seat beside him was a dozen peach-colored roses, her favorite. They weren’t always available, but today, the local supermarket had received their shipment of fresh flowers from South America early. He was fortunate to find exactly what she would have wanted.
Across from her grave was Pavilion Number 2, where the cemetery’s seven-person, rifle-bearing Honor Guard and bugler stood waiting for the funeral procession. How are they ever going to accommodate all those cars and motorcycles? he thought as he parked near his wife’s grave, stepped out, and walked to her stone.
A custodian, standing on the curb, watched the long, ear-shattering, funeral procession approach.
“That’s musta been some important man,” he called to the custodian.
“Nope,” replied the man. “We’re burying nine men and one woman this morning, none of whom had any known next of kin.”
COLOSSUS
Cemeteries dotted the countryside, but they weren’t resting places for the dead; they were the repositories of the past.
And that past called to the present, with whispers of hope and tragedy, warning about Colossus.
Yet, even as that warning lingered, Colossus, a giant of myth and dreams, and a primordial force of unrelenting power, rose in the land. It had no eyes, yet it saw; it emitted no sound, yet all heard its voice.
It was the dream of men. And it was their nightmare.
It demanded sweat and sacrifice: from the poor, the weak, the workers, the living, the free… All of them were caught in the shadow of Colossus; they were the product of its thoughts; they were its children; they were the jealousy of its Eye. And it told them what to do.
Colossus was the machine, and machines ran the country, and machines were also human beings, who did not act human. For the machines – humans – through collective effort, inhibited freedom and stifled the creative impulse.
And those machines and humans, driven by the madness of Colossus, led to the fatal injury of the country, and in so doing, gave rise to another cemetery; to another repository of the past.
And that recent past, that resting place of whispers, that place of hope and tragedy, now calls to a new generation, still in its infancy, and attempts, once again, to warn it about the dangers of Colossus.
The birds come. Every year. On that day only they seem to know. But it’s always in November. Always when I’m out there raking leaves, ‘slong I don’t get too close.
Always go to that one grave. I been here 47 years. Every year them birds come, always in November, always that one grave.
After the third year I went over, after they left, to see which grave.
Just a little stone, that one. Just a first name; Sarah, just a year; 1919. Not really in with any family’s stones. Kinda by itself.
Told my gramma about it. About the birds every year. Told her before she died 12 year ago now.
“1919,” she said, nodding.
“Spanish flu,” she said.
“My mama died in 1919,” she said.
“November,” she said.
Gramma looked out the window across the frozen lawn of the care home where she went when she couldn’t take care of herself no more. Her head moved up and down just a little, stiff like. Like she was looking back all those years, almost a hundred. Her mouth squeezed around a few times like maybe about to say something.
“What was her name?” I said.
Gramma kept looking out the window. Didn’t say nothin’. Just kept nodding and looking, her lips moving like she might say something.
Later when I was leaving, after saying goodbye and see you tomorrow. She told me.
“Rebecca,” she said. “Rebecca Ann.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Not Sarah,” she said. “Someone else’s mom; that is.”
Cemetery
No ordinary cemetery; it was populated by enraged cackling birds. Utterly dangerous birds that jealously guarded the cemetery in the wake of the Apocalypse.
Accidentally, the birds, like a horrific Hitchcock movie, had been chemically engineered by a variety of catastrophes. The disastrous stew of chemical pollution, climatic change, misuse of Earth’s resources and rising viruses had birthed the birds. COVID-19 had horribly spewed variants on top of variants until it was an out of control global COVID Tsunami. With a depleted world population, there was desperation. Utter desperation resulted in body snatchers. The body snatchers fought to plunder the cemetery. Corpses were used diabolically to harvest organs for the corrupt selfishly seeking only to save themselves.
Like cyborgs, the birds thought as one and acted as one. Powerfully built with a mindset of kamikazes, they attacked the body snatchers mercilessly.
“If only World Climate Summits had not contained so many governments with their own agendas of greed! Why had they not passionately pursued climate commitments and low carbon emissions? Why had they not cleaned the oceans of the vortex of plastic, the air of deadly pollutants and the earth of suffocating rubbish?” thought the youngster.
Incredibly the young boy with a keen scientific mind despite his reliance on an oxygen generating mask thought this while he cradled a monstrous bird in his arms. What could he do under such dire circumstances? Discovering that the bird could reproduce asexually, the youngster had a brainwave. He cunningly reprogrammed it to birth a new dynamic bird which thrived on carbon dioxide.
While its cousins continued to police graves and therefore reduce the population of self-centred greedy polluters, the new Clone Birds heralded a new age. They were miraculous in breathing out clean life giving oxygen. After time they became more naturally birdlike and their droppings contained natural seeds to repopulate plants.
Years later, the boy, now a bearded man no longer dependent on breathing apparatus, was able to inhale sweet pure air in a lush garden. Under the oceans a whale sang a song to its mate. A song of hope.
The day began, bleak, depressing; even more so when I reached the cemetery. Nobody there except me and the groundskeeper. I stopped by the grave of my mother; my anniversary visit. I laid a cheap bouquet of carnations I bought at a bodega. I hate cemeteries but took a stroll around paying my respects to the inmates. Some kind of penance for the cheap bouquet, I suppose.
Like everything in this world, the boneyard was segregated by class, money, and power. I passed through rings of headstones. On the outskirts they were small, crumbling, barely legible. Moving towards the center, more granite than shale; bigger, more attention paid to details; prettier angels.
The ground rose, summiting at a hillock where stood a palace of death. Swooning stone cherubs wept over gilded wrought iron gates shielding a Tiffany window. The name, “Vanderhoven” hewn in the lintel. Even in death, guys like Vanderhoven had to lord it over the little guy. I parked my carcass on a marble bench conveniently provided for loved ones paying Vanderhoven their last respects. It had hardly any wear; smooth as the day it was sawed from the quarry. Vanderhoven slept undisturbed.
A crow landed on a cherub and squawked at me. Whoever Vanderhoven’d been, nobody cared now. It started to snow.
I bid the crow adieu, turned my collar up, descending back through the dead to my car. When my time’s up, maybe there’ll be cheap carnations, maybe a crow.
I don’t expects any weeping cherubs.
STOLEN
Dry, brittle leaves swirled around their feet as Molly and Emma followed a dirt path through the old colonial cemetery. It was late in the afternoon and Molly was determined to add one more letterbox find to her journal. She stopped and checked the written clues on her phone.
“Okay, we need to turn here. Shouldn’t be too much farther.”
Emma turned her collar up against the chilling breeze. “Did I ever tell you my Uncle John had an old tombstone in his backyard? It used to give us the creeps when we were little. It was in the corner under an oak tree.”
“Seriously? Was someone actually buried there?”
“No, of course not. John was just an odd guy who collected all sorts of weird stuff. My mother was bothered by it and when she pressed him, he told her he got it from an antiques dealer.”
“So, it was real?” Molly asked, checking her phone again.
“Definitely. And old. From the 1700s.”
“Do you remember the inscription?”
“Not the name, just the epitaph. It went something like ‘Stop here my friend and cast an eye…’” Emma shivered as a murder of crows suddenly took flight.
“As you are now, so once was I?”
Emma, stunned, asked “How do you know that?”
“Seen it before. Hey, Em, there should be a headstone right here with the name Samuel Thompson on it.”
Between markers for Harper and O’Malley, the jagged edge of a missing tombstone pointed its finger skyward.
Barely registering through her grief the absurdity of it all, she gathered the evidence of his recent visit to dump in the local cemetery as a metaphor for the death of their relationship. The boots he wore helping around the farm, the gloves he borrowed for building fences with her brother, the hoodie he left so she would have something of his to wear. However, she took only the gloves.
The gloves were the most personal and most painful. They had held his hands. Hands that had stroked her face as he kissed her, tugged playfully at her hair, and held her tight as they slept. Weeping softly, she raised the gloves to her face and inhaled deeply. The scent of him was gone. The black hand grasping her heart tightened a turn.
As she searched for a spot to lay the symbol of her pain, she read each headstone, trying to visualize the people buried there. A couple married over 50 years, “United in death as they were in life.” A teenaged boy, “Taken from us too soon.” A baby alive only a day, “Gone, but never forgotten.”
Finding a grave that bore his same name was her undoing, and she collapsed, crushing the gloves to her heart as she cried out in anguish. “No, no nooo…” she moaned repeatedly, as the light faded and the cold night settled down over her. She curled up in a ball and waited for the black hand to finish its crushing work.
The birds waited, ravens and rooks sharing the air with their smaller brethren. There were magpies and crows too, jackdaws swaggering as they called out to the others. There was a portent approaching and none of them wanted to miss their opportunity to witness it.
The end of the world was almost nigh. Five more minutes and it would be over, the business of its ending an enterprise governed by forces unseen, the powers on each side backing their own champions. The celestial arc would be broken, and the eternal fires would blaze.
And the world of women and men would perish, disregarded, a forfeit of minimal worth.
“What is it you want? Why do you do this?” The man in the Fedora shook his fist. He was carrying a spray of blue chrysanthemums and was visiting his uncle, Charles. He’d borrowed the flowers from a grave just inside the main gate and had tucked them under his arm, not caring that their stems were still wet, and they’d begun to create a stain that would never come out.
There were three minutes left before Armageddon and not even the Mayans had guessed the correct date.
Odin appeared. He’d already been watching, the ravens his spies that never slept. Shiva and Vishnu materialised too, their eyes hungry as they scanned the world below. Apep emerged from the underworld and hissed, his gargantuan coils crushing the man and all the headstones.
“Oh bugger,” he said. “Has anyone got a Band-Aid?”
Tardy Thanks
I wondered if the sky full of black birds were deceased souls which never made it into heaven.
As a very young child, I used to make snow angels while my parents stood by a grave.
Later, when I was old enough to attend funerals, I remember my grandmother’s ceremony right in this spot, then my aunt’s, soon followed by my uncle’s.
I recall not wanting to attend any more services, but my mother wasn’t buying I was really sick. I’ve tried not to cry, but when I witnessed other people’s tears, I couldn’t hold mine any longer. I liked the sound of bagpipes, but they made it even worse.
My sister’s funeral was really tough. Even the umbrellas weren’t keeping the attendees faces dry. Mom held my hand extra tight as I dropped a perfect rose on her lowered casket. I felt a strong urge to hug her one last time.
My father’s funeral was attended by a military honor guard with a folded-flag ceremony. To this day, I remember the sharp-looking soldiers standing tall and folding his flag perfectly. Everyone there cried when the officer presented it to my mother. My thoughts that day were on the great things he taught me.
When no one is around, I take his flag down and say thanks. I should have done that more when he was alive.
“Daddy, why are you crying?”
I took a deep breath. “I was hoping for snow, so we could do snow angels.”
Josephine Calzona sat bundled up at the cemetery, by the grave of her husband, Joey. Opposite her was the stroller with her equally bundled up, six-month-old baby, Jenny. It was the first frost, and there wasn’t much wind.
During the summer, she spread a picnic blanket, but then the ground got too cold. Josie knew that as winter approached, her daily visits would grow shorter. Yet she was determined to learn who killed her late husband.
She didn’t know how much longer she’d have to keep up this charade, pretending to be Mrs. Calzona. Their real names had been Frank and Lisa Santini. Joey was hoping to solve this mob case before having their big church wedding, which never happened. It was a quiet ceremony, but they didn’t plan on having little Jenny, who Joey never got to meet.
A car pulled up.
The man looked surprised to see her, camped out in her beach chair.
“Josie?”
“Tony?”
“You still miss him, yeah …”
“I know he didn’t kill himself. They just couldn’t prove it, after the explosion destroyed the evidence.”
“Between you and me, I’d look at Big Rolo as the trigger man. He thought Joey was a cop.”
“Joey? Nah,” said Josie. “You gotta be kiddin’ me!”
Tony patted little Jenny on her pink, hooded head. “Cute kid. I just wanted to pay my respects.”
As Tony took off, Josie caressed Joey’s badge, deep inside her pocket. Then she turned off the tape recorder in her bag.
When I was growing up, we lived right next to a cemetery. My mother used to talk about the nice quiet neighbors to the west, but I was sure she was just putting her brave face on.
One thing’s for certain. I knew for a fact that living next to the graveyard is spooky as all heck. Especially when you’re living in an old house, you notice every creak, especially when it’s late at night and you’re supposed to be asleep. What if that weird moaning noise isn’t just the wind blowing along the eaves like Dad says?
Then came the night when I saw lights shining on my bedroom curtains. Maybe it was just a passing car — except they kept dancing around instead of going by like cars do.
Curious, I crept out of bed and tiptoed over to the window. Yes, the lights were definitely in the cemetery. Something was out there. When I went to tell my folks, they just said I was imagining things and go back to bed.
The next morning there were cops all over the place. Turns out those lights were some high school kids who vandalized a whole bunch of headstones, knocking them over or spray-painting them.
I think Dad felt bad about blowing me off. If he’d just listened, he could’ve called the cops then. But instead of apologizing he gave me this big lecture about letting my imagination run away with me, like it was all my fault.
REINCARNATION
I wandered through this Ohio cemetery, searching for the grave which family gossips whispered had a photo tile of the daughter whose sudden death left my Grandma Maria emotionally shattered and my Papa Luca unable to talk about it.
“What did she look like?” I’d asked. Fingers to lips shushed me silent. No one would say. A voice deep inside told me I must find out.
Giuseppina was three when she curled up at the feet of the cast iron coal stove in the family’s white wooden frame house and succumbed to diphtheria, the respiratory disease spread by droplets in human breath.
Luca often hugged, kissed, dunked and shared his biscotti with his beloved sister. An Italian immigrant, Maria could not read the school’s English notice about the risk her son might be a carrier and infect children under five, the most vulnerable to the disease.
The blackbirds formed into a flock and soared, then circled above a tall angel statue. Was this it? I raced to the site and knelt to read the inscription: “In loving memory of our beloved Giuseppina…Died May 23, 1926.”
The plump round face with thick brown curls in the oval photo tile sent chills down my spine. Enormous chocolate eyes stared into mine. I gasped. I recognized myself at three in a photo I found hidden in Papa’s desk. Born on May 23, the anniversary of Giuseppina’s death, I was a reincarnation of the child lost so many years ago.