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.
Frosty? Heck, she was downright Iceberg Cold
I met up with Cam late one Friday night at the Cool Cucumber Tavern. It was mid-December. There was a biting wind and a two-day and counting snowstorm outside so the company of fresh, slightly pickled chums was most welcome.
Cam and I had worked together at the Capitol Theatre in our teens. Over the years we’d kept in touch. It wasn’t a deep connection, but our paths had crossed at university and then later, back home where we both had decided to grind out our lives as best we could in ye old hometown.
I’d settled into one marriage that was still squirming along. Cam, however, had accumulated three ex-wives and a number of transitory relationships. This had soured him on the vicissitudes of love, romance, all the bit parts that make up a satisfactory personal life.
I spotted Cam in the corner chatting with Biggins, a mutual acquaintance. I plopped myself down, shook hands, and listened in on Cam’s slightly inebriated soliloquy.
“I was sure she was finally the one…red hair, you know I love red hair, never married, so…hopeful…”
“Or maybe, Cam” interjected Biggins, “not oriented to domestic life with a three-time loser?”
Cam shook his head…“It was heartbreaking fellas. She was beautiful. Beautiful like a 5’ 4” strawberry popsicle. Sweet, tasty, and totally unresponsive…”
“To you?” I asked.
“Maybe. Or men. I’ll keep looking.”
Poor Cam, I thought. He was a Human Titanic in the North Atlantic of Love.
The Black Admiral stared back at her. His eyes were deep shadows in the gloom beneath the ice, but she knew he was watching. There was a raw intelligence in his gaze, a calculating mind.
The ice began to crack, jagged fissures radiating outwards.
“I think it’s too late,” Oscar said. “I think he’s seen us.”
Emilia slid back, seeking the reassurance of her cabin. The ice was roughened beneath her knees, pitted and scored where it had thawed and then refrozen. It was more like a ploughed field, dark and unfathomable, its secrets closely hidden. It made her retreat even more difficult, raising obstacles behind her.
Oscar threw a rope toward her. It fell short, smacking flat against the surface. The grappling hook at its furthest end dragged backwards, its barbs first snagging then breaking free, the ship at its other end drifting further away from the floe’s edge.
“I don’t know what to do,” Emilia confessed. “Do I turn away so I can move more quickly, or do I keep watching him? My head tells me he’ll still be slow, that he’ll need time before he’s a threat. I need you to keep talking to me, keeping me informed.”
The second rope soared past her, arcing high then falling fast. It struck the Admiral full in his face, shattering his head and his torso, the hoar frost on his eyebrows exploding into a cloud of dust.
But the rime on the ancient mariner would haunt her dreams forever.
Magic Man
Stan worked his way through the thick underbrush and snow until he came upon a clearing in the woods. To his surprise, sitting in the middle of the clearing, was a snowman.
“Yo, yo, yo,” called the snowman to his newly-arrived visitor.
Puzzled, Stan walked up to his host. “What’s going on?” he asked.
The snowman was wearing a hat tipped to one side and looked at Stan with button eyes. “The name’s Magic Man. I’m just chilling. Ya know what I’m saying?”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Stan. What are you doing here all by yourself?”
“It’s not up to me where I get created. I just make do with what I have. Can ya dig it?”
“Right.”
“Besides, I get to sing without being interrupted.” He cleared his throat and sang:
I’m Magic,
the Magic Man,
full of wonder,
in a magic land.
“How’d you learn to sing?”
“A natural talent my man. It’s in my crystalline fibers. I just get down with it. Ya know what I’m saying? Besides, I have no choice.”
“What do you mean?”
Magic looked reflective. “A leaf once drifted past me and wished it could start again. You see, come Spring, when the snow melts, I will no longer be here. Like magic, I ‘ll disappear. So, I sing to remind myself of the joy of being alive.”
“I understand,” Stan replied, nodding.
“Stay frosty, brother,” Magic smiled. He held his branch arms in the air and sang another tune.
My five-year-old granddaughter and I were wandering through the woods one cloudy day when she stopped, mesmerized by some curious
plants… slender elegant stalks festooned with tiny hair like fibers that glistened like crystals in the leaf dappled sunlight.
“What are these, Papa”, Molly asked.
“Those… those are pixie brushes,” I said, “The fairie folk use them for many wonderful and tasks.”
“Like what?”, Marley asked.
“Well, first of all they brush their hair with them because pixies always like to look their best. The second important thing is they use them to sweep the scents of the forest off the butterfly wings. You see, as the butterflies flutter through the forest and across the fields, the fragrances of the forest and the field wildflowers stick to their wings and by nightfall they can barely fly. So the pixies brush the wondrous smells from the butterfly’s wings into tiny pots. Then they take the pots to their homes in hollow trees.
“Why would they do that”?
“In winter time, when there are no flowers or leaves and everything is cold and frozen, the pixies begin to wish for spring. They open up the little pots and their homes fill with the fragrances of the forest and wildflowers and they feel better.
In bed that night, Molly looked up at me sleepily and said,
“Grandpa, I don’t think that pixies are real.”
I smiled. “Y’know, that’s just the way they want it.”
The blizzard arrives sooner than we expected. Although we’re wearing thermal gear, the icy wind penetrates to our muscles. It blows so hard that rime freezes horizontally on the grass and rocks.
Slowly we trudge in the direction of our distant research station. We can see no farther than a few feet through the swirling snow.
Ahead of me, Gregor stumbles into a crevasse. My mittened hands are too numb to drop a rope to him. From the bottom of the ten foot hole, he waves me toward the station. We both know his only hope lies in my returning with rescue equipment.
As I lurch forward, I curse this miserable planet. Our research has revealed little but a frigid wasteland – no intelligent life whatsoever.
Suddenly, a tremendous gust throws me into a field of boulders. As my head smashes against the rocks, my vision blurs. I imagine a huge, white creature reaching for me. What a horrible way to die, I think, as an alien’s dinner. Then the world goes black.
When I awake, I am lying on my cot inside the warm station. My winter gear has been removed and hung neatly on its rack. Across the room Gregor sits safely on his own bunk.
I sit up. “What happened?” I ask.
“They carried us in,” he answers. “Saved us.”
“Who?”
“The Yetis.”
I glance out the station window. Perhaps, in the blinding blizzard, I can see white creatures lumbering toward the distant hills.
Frost Memories
Back then, I had my own room at the end of the apartment. I could hear a radiator hissing in the nearest room, but there wasn’t any noise in mine.
Was it just frost on the inside of my window pane? Mom would come in and tell me someone left me a painting again on my window. I also remember well the three different blankets – red, white and blue. The teddy bear was someone to keep me warm too.
I, my mom and two uncles, lived with my grandmother in her city apartment. I didn’t miss a dad then, because I never had one.
They all worked, and at dinner time, the talking heads all had exciting things to share. I guess my grandmother was a good cook, as there was never anything left over. During the day, the ice and milk men were our only visitors.
Nightly entertainment for me was listening to Irish music or possibly ‘The Shadow’ on the radio. The only pictures I could view were the ones in my head. If I was really lucky, mom would play something on the upright piano. Sometimes, my uncles were in the mood to join in song.
Now the talking heads are silent on the mantle, and the closest thing to a piano is the keyboard in a box in the garage.
I wonder when I leave the window open tonight, if I will be lucky and the frost will remind me of those memorable days.
Frosty
Staring at the message, my innards turned to sickly bilge water. Ominously, the coordinates were in one of the most feared places on earth. Known as Rimy, but not in an innocent childlike way, was a location of frost and therefore devoid of life.
Crumpling the note in my fist, it immediately burst into flame. Then I shot up in the air and flew to the coordinates with fear in my mouth. Landing on the edge, I noticed that stalks were brittle with hoar frost and long dead. I nodded to the other kresniks which formed a huge circle around Rimy and we slowly began to move inwards forming a tighter net around the enemy. One daring vampire zoomed off and two kresniks itched to follow. A glance from me forbade them to follow; the net must remain unbroken. Nervously, some vampire slayers fingered the garland of stinking roses around their necks. To fortify their courage, many were thinking of their vampire killing kits containing vials of holy water blessed by priests, crucifixes and deadly wooden stakes.
Suddenly, a sweeping of frosty air and we were rushed by vampires. Fighting hand to hand, we were speedily losing ground until a burst of light broke through the frosty atmosphere. The vampires were thrown in confusion which gave us time to retrieve our most deadly weapons. Oversized mallets hammered silver stakes through the evil vampire hearts. As the vampires disintegrated around us, we smiled up at the artificial sun.
Like tiny silvery hairs, the frost clung to the bare stems of the peach trees. Through the glass that separated her from the plants, Alice Murcheson studied their length and the density of their arrangement. Even with all the sophisticated telemetry a lunar settlement provided agriculture, often a farmer’s intuitive sense of growing conditions remained her best guide.
“How are things looking?”
Alice turned to face her husband, who looked tired. Unsurprising after a full day down in Flight Ops. “I think we’re at the point where they’ll break dormancy properly when we re-warm that module. We should get a decent crop of fruit, as long as the bee-bots don’t give us more trouble.”
“All that for fresh peaches.” Bill Hearne looked up and down the window that allowed them to look directly into the peach orchard.
“Would you rather reconstituted peach flakes? Because that’s the alternative if everything has to be lifted out of Earth’s gravity well.”
That was one thing he understood. He’d spent most of his astronaut career flying from Kennedy to Freedom Station, so he knew the rocket equation the way she knew agriculture. “True. And there’s nothing quite like real fruit fresh off the tree to raise morale when every day looks like every other one.”
Alice realized just how right he was. Maybe it was time to talk to the settlement’s commandant about formal holiday celebrations. At least Captain Waite wasn’t the dour Puritan his long New Englander face would suggest.
Frosty End
As I was walking out of his front gate I heard a thud and felt a sharp pain in my head. Everything went black. When I came to I couldn’t open my eyes, but I could see light through my lids. I was in his car. “You always make things difficult” he yelled. He was angry again. He was always angry.
He stopped the car. I opened my eyes slightly. We were in the fields a few miles away from his house. This was where he brought me for a picnic one summer when we started dating, where our relationship began. It was winter now and the field was not immune to the beautiful winter frost.
He got out of the car and dragged me out into the field. “It’s over between us” he said through angry sobs. My body felt heavy. I just lay there and stared at the beautiful frosty fields. Winter is such a beautiful season.
My head hurt so much. “This is the last time that you try to leave” he said. “He said it was over between us. Leaving is irrelevant when a couple is no longer together” I thought to myself because I couldn’t vocalize my thoughts.
I heard a thud followed by a crack. The light was dimming, I couldn’t see the beautiful icy field anymore. I tried to leave, but now here I lie. This was the place where our relationship began. This is the place where it ends.
There is nothing as much fun as a good game of hide-and-seek, thought Ronnie Tuffet. Ronnie never sought the same hiding place twice. He was slippery. Found him once in a closet? Better check the trees next time and find Ronnie up amongst the boughs. Even at the call of “Olly, olly oxen free”, Ronnie would remain hid. He’d make the other kids work to find him.
Today the air was chill, damp and the sky promised snow. Not many kids showed up to play. Fatty Samuels had just closed his eyes and begun counting to one hundred. Everyone scampered to find a hiding place. Ronnie thought about where he’d hide when he remembered the perfect place.
Across a field of stubble, an abandoned shed, it’s one window streaked with frost. Parents had warned their kids from playing there. Ronnie was unafraid. Only the bravest seeker would dare look for him there. His record as champ would hold.
The sun goes down early this time of year; the cold days grow colder. Ronnie shut the creaking door behind him and sat on an old barrel. Night came. No one had come to look for him. Ronnie was a little miffed at this—and, he was cold. That’s it, he decided, game’s over. He tried the old wooden door but it had frozen shut. It started to snow.
They found him the next morning, frozen to that barrel, eyes staring at the frosted window pane.
His record held.
**LATE ENTRY**
A FROSTY ENCOUNTER
I found her, plopped on the front steps of her yellow house with black shutters, icy and unspeaking like a statue.
Scraggly black locks caught the falling snowflakes. Her lips were pursed, her hands like a huge knot in her lap. She stared with tears at the winter landscape covered in white.
I saw the sadness. “It’s not easy being frosty, ” I said.
How still she was. She could not break the silence.
I tossed my top hat on her head. “…now be alive as you can be…” I sang and took her hand.
I sang some more.… “a jolly happy soul
…and thumpty thump thump with me, over the hills and snow. ”
The lips smiled. The hands moved through the air. The tears dried up.
“Let’s run. And we’ll have some fun. Now before I melt away.” I sang.
Her voice rose through the air as she joined me and we danced down the hill.
I had to hurry on my way.
But I waved good-bye, saying, “Don’t you cry
I’ll be back again some day!”
Your Friend, Frosty the Snowman