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.
Solitude
“I’m dune,” he said. “Dune to a crisp.”
I noticed him out on the pier, staring out to dark blue sea, talking to himself the way some drunks and not a few emotionally distressed folks do when they need answers to questions they daren’t ask.
As I came closer, close, but keeping a healthy distance, a healthy Covid distance and all the other reasons one might exercise caution, I wondered if I had heard him correctly. I admit my hearing has not been the best these past few years. Friends, loved ones, have tired of me not following their chatter as devoutly as they required. It had happened more frequently than I care to admit.
Often they would say something the likes of, “Is there something more interesting over there?” pointing the way some people gesture on occasion, with a wild swirl of the hand, their finger indicating some other person or a bit of nature, something that they think is more interesting than themselves.
Though it could have been that he was simply addressing the ocean, the stars, the horizon beyond, I felt obliged to ascertain whether he was simply a sea-gazer or a troubled soul.
“Hello there,” I whispered just loudly enough to believe my voice might carry his way and not be drowned out by the light evening wind.
Perhaps I startled him?
In any event, he fell into the sea.
A wave carried him away.
I do not swim well.
I regret that now.
BURIED
I told them I wasn’t ready.
How could I be? It’s only been six months since Ralph died, and honestly, my grief isn’t as palpable as their suppressed guilt–still. After all, if not for Mitch and Randy getting plastered at the New Year’s party, none of this would have happened.
Debbie and Diane, who just played off one another with their blatant disregard for what turned out to be the only logical result one could assume. I mean flashing the paramedics just to drive their sloppy boyfriends even more out of their drunken minds? Mitch and Randy beat those guys until the paramedics needed paramedics.
Ralph bleeding out in the ambulance, half a bottle plunged in his belly, and our four best friends are too drunk to even remember it was their antics with the broken bottles that turned our party into a deleted scene of a cult classic horror. The Champagne Football Massacre.
Anyway. I told them I wasn’t ready. They all got six week’s probation and community service for reckless endangerment. I got a lifelong hole in my heart, and four best friends who I couldn’t admit to hating enough to scare them away. I just want solitude.
“Come on, Harriet. We camp every July 4th weekend. You gotta come. He’d want ya to come!” the girls said.
I suppose they may have been right. And now they can ask him.
Love you, Ralph.
Nature’s Solitude
Angela was one with nature, sitting cross-legged on the sand, thinking peaceful thoughts and enjoying her solitude.
When… out of nowhere… a large spider crawled up beside her.
“Eek!”
Flustered, and unable to maintain her sweet tranquility, Angela stood up, and began jumping up and down.
“Eek!”
Her jumping surprised the spider. It looked at her like she was a crazy person, and attempted to shoo her away with a wave of its legs.
Frustrated, she grabbed some water and threw it at the eight-legged fiend.
The spider welcomed the refreshing water and did a little dance in the sand. Then it stuck out its tongue at its human opponent.
Her anger rising, Angela began to grind her teeth. She thought she had quit the habit, but then, she hadn’t counted on a spider intruding on her solitude. So she grabbed some stones and threw them at the arachnid, which was standing on four legs, mocking her.
As the stones came hurtling toward it, the spider batted them away with the aplomb and finesse of a baseball player. Although, it had never played baseball in its life.
Seeing this display of athleticism, Angela huffed, stormed back to the cabin, and returned with a blow torch.
The spider, seeing that it was up against a determined woman carrying heavy artillery, bowed before its opponent, and made a hasty retreat.
Satisfied she had won the day, Angela let out a small scream, and then quietly returned to enjoying nature’s solitude.
Forced Solitude
History – Sandy’s boyfriend loses her puppy
Hey buddy, do you want some solitude?”
“What the hell is that?”
“You’re kidding right?”
“No, I’m lost to what you mean. Is a sol-i-tude something I can smoke?”
“You smoke too much.”
“Why do you think I would want some soli-tude?”
“Well, you’ve been rejectable.”
“Is that like being ejected? They did throw my butt out of the football game yesterday.”
“Forget it, just hop in the car and let’s go.”
“We’ve been driving for over five hours and you haven’t said a word to me since we left. Where are we going?”
“I’ve decided you need some solitude and I’ve got the perfect place for you.”
“Is this my Christmas present, or the birthday present you didn’t give me four months ago?”
“You think I FORGOT your birthday?”
“You’ve been forgetting a lot of things recently.”
“Well, I didn’t forget to shower this morning…what’s your excuse?”
“Are you telling me that I smell?”
“Well, now that you mention it, there is a strong odor in the car, and it’s not me.”
Caution – Roadway may be closed for Missile Testing!
“Are your headlights having a problem?”
“Might be…we’re almost there.”
“Wow, look at this white stuff all around us.”
Parking NOT ALLOWED in this area of the park!
“Hey dude, you better get that headlight problem fixed.”
“Now when you get to the top of that dune, listen closely to what I tell you.”
*.*.*
“Sandy says Good Riddance!”
Solitude
I loved solitude. My favourite hobby was being alone. Surrounded by empty stillness was bliss for me. Isolation, purdah and seclusion were rapture to me. For me solitude meant peacefulness, stillness and tranquility. A happy embrace surrounded me when I was sitting zenlike and alone on a sandy dune. Isolated at the top of a summit, surrounded by snow was heavenly to me. My career behind a camera wearing sound proof earphones suited my desire for solitude. Filming a high chase car skid and rev in the distance suited my nomad lifestyle. Alone from a cliff, I filmed a boat toss and turn on a turbulent sea and was at peace.
Everything I did was devoid of communicating with people. For the most part, it was devoid of people.
I should have been born a hermit.
Social gatherings should have scared me. They did not, because I remained aloof from people. Merely living on the edge.
So you would think that a wedding would have been a nightmare. Funnily enough, the wedding was not. It was small and intimate. The bride, the minister, two witnesses and the groom. It was the quietest wedding. The whole service was one long silence. Why? The service used only sign language. It was also one of solitude. How? The bride and groom married remotely. The others were in one room a whole world away from me. Alone I stood a married man in one room on the edge of the world.
Marid and Abdullah walked side by side, only one of them leaving footsteps in the sand. Abdullah trod heavily, sometimes he fell, his companion doing nothing to assist. She did little but pay close attention and speculate on how long he would survive.
She was the worst type of company, a curse dressed in an Arabian abaya gown. She was also a djinn, but that was her own business, although it would be of importance to Abdullah before the day’s end.
‘I can see a vulture circling up above us,’ she said, shading her eyes from the hot sun with her hand. ‘It’s been following us for a couple of hours. I wonder how long it’ll be before it makes a move; it must be desperate and quite hungry by now.’
Abdullah said nothing. He knew Marid could hear his thoughts and chose to save his breath. He knew they would probably be numbered, and it might be wiser for him to try to ration them.
Marid chose the path they took, leading him across the dune’s slopes as they rose and then directly down again as they fell. They continued to the west, following the sun as it sank toward the horizon. She had promised him it would be safer that way.
But the vulture had its own ideas. As did the djinn. And neither was planning to wait much longer.
In the distance a bird called, a shrill note different from a gull’s cry. Reggie Waite looked out across the dune, which superficially resembled the beaches he’d grown up with back in Salem. Back in jr. high he’d read an article about how the Middle East was importing sand because what they had in their deserts was too smooth to make good concrete.
He squinted at the abandoned buildings in the distance. Where had the sand for their concrete come from? Given they were part of an old Army installation, it could have been anywhere. San Diego or Los Angeles beaches were a good bet. Neither one was all that far, although their sands weren’t as desirable as some of the rivers around Houston.
He glanced at his watch. Another three hours until sunset, and noon tomorrow to make the rendezvous point, about twenty miles beyond those ruins. Probably better to wait until sunset here, under the shade of the parachute that he’d been given as part of his desert-survival kit.
In the meantime, he could ponder institutional inertia. Back in the days of Project Mercury, it made sense to prepare the astronauts for the possibility that they could come down far off course. With winged orbiters, was it really necessary, or just a case of “I went through this, so you will too”?
He whistled an old song about a nameless horse and a desert that turned into a sea.