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.
Deadline
There’s time, I tell myself. I always do that. Summon pace. Plead to ease up. To watch my heartbeat. No sense ending up in an early grave.
It’s my mantra.
Who am I kidding. There’s no such thing. The early grave. It doesn’t exist. When your times up, its up.
Finito. That’s all she wrote.
I wonder sometimes. Who the hell is she? The singing fat lady? Does she ever really write anything?
I know death is a void.
You can’t avoid it.
It’ll get you whenever it wants.
No cool jazz for you buddy. Just some screeching operatic fingernails squalling down on a blackboard, scratching, piercing, and then a cold eternity.
Where am I going with this?
There’s as much time as you are permitted.
So slow down.
Fine.
I’ll listen.
And then there’s the silence.
I’m not producing.
You take pride in your work. I do. It’s all part of the package.
You are your work. You slow down, hell, it doesn’t get done.
That’s how they think of you, right?
Old on time and on budget.
That’s you.
That’s me.
What does it get you? You get done. Then they hand you another task. The whole damn things an interminable assembly line.
Widgets. That’s all you produce. Widgets.
There’s never enough of them.
There’s always a deadline.
Someone else sets that.
Someone up the food chain.
Further up than you.
Gobbling your life.
Until you reach the end.
The very dead line.
As the engineer soldered the metal pieces together, she thought about her father. He was the one who had taught her how to weld and fix things. But he was gone now, and she ran the family business on her own.
The workshop was a place of comfort. It reminded her of all the times she had worked alongside her dad, learning, and watching him bring his ideas to life. But now, every tool and every machine held a bittersweet memory.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to shake off the sadness that threatened to overwhelm her. When she opened them again, she saw the finished product, a beautiful piece of machinery that would soon be put to use. And she felt a sense of pride, knowing that even though he was gone, a part of him lived on in everything she created.
But running the business by her self wasn’t easy. The orders were piling up, and she struggled to keep up with the demand. She often found herself working long hours, but she refused to let her father’s legacy die.
She thought about all the times her father had encouraged her to pursue her dreams and never give up. And with that in mind, she got back to work, eager to bring more of her ideas to life. Even though she missed him terribly, she was determined to keep his memory alive through her work.
Jamie was late. Henry sat there dead, his mother board opened and battery set aside. Jamie set the soldering gun aside and started putting Henry together. The atomic clock flashed minutes, 6:15 then 6:30 and then 6:46. Henry beeped his wake up song and Jamie stepped aside to give him room and sat on the work floor.
“What happened?” Henry said.
“Malfunctioned, again. You will need new parts soon. I used whatever was in the ‘Spares’ box”, Jamie said.
Henry’s metal face looked towards the said box. His camera eyes scanned the dingy little oily thing. Henry shook and hummed.
“You are lucky you never have to stop like this”, Henry said. Seeing him reminded Jamie of the angry engines his father used.
Henry got up and moved around like a athlete warming up. He lifted the shutters behind Jamie. The sky was dark but the city was awake. Space ships flew fast crowding the sky while a dog trotted past their garage.
“Traffic, everyone wants to see the pink moon. It’s all over the internet”
“I see you already gained access to the web, now get back to work. My shift ended an hour ago”
“If there was another bot to fix me I would have called them”
“Yes, and you will still need a human if all bots malfunction”
“That will never happen”
Jamie grabbed his jacket.
“Everyone is walking towards their death”, he said and walked out. The clock said 7:04.
The oxy-acetylene torch tore through the metal sheet like the proverbial knife through butter, quickly yielding the sought-after component for the piece of art on which he was working. Removing his gloves, the artist, using tongs, grabbed the hot metal part and, plunging it into an oil bath to increase its hardness, savored the thought he now was one step closer to meeting his client’s deadline for delivery of the mobile.
The unpainted sculpture on which he had been working around the clock for more than four months was suspended from the ceiling above him. Comprised both of massive and delicate components linked to various hanging arms a la examples produced by the likes of Alexander Calder, he now held the last piece needed. It had taken him three days to get its dimensions just right, considering the shape, thickness, and density of the metal used, so once cut, the piece would balance exactly the weight of the two pieces near the other end of the arm to which it would be attached.
It was all about the physics here, all about balance. Still, it was nothing he hadn’t faced before.
The only problem was, he had no balance in his own life, given his wife of ten years had left him a week earlier after giving him a deadline: go with her to counseling to save their marriage, or she would leave him to his work, to which he had seemed “wed” for the past three years.
“And I said to myself, when I got up this morning… what would George Foreman do?”
“He’d crack on and weld another dozen barbeque grilles. That’s what he’d do. We don’t pay you to stand here and philosophise. There’re people in China that’d be glad to be given the opportunities we give you. And they’re cheaper to pay. A cup of rice, a dribble of tea, and they’re good for the day. And none of that health and safety nonsense. Folk don’t need that if they’re good at their jobs…”
“It’s only the unskilled that need cosseting. I know, Hughie. You say it every day. It’s a conspiracy to reduce your profits, to make it easier for the Eastern sweatshops and the developing countries to undercut the honest man. When your dad was a boy, the employer was king…”
“Well, yes, he was. And my dad made his way up without any need for steel toecaps, tinted glasses, or a government-issued nursemaid to hold his hand. He grafted from first light until when the sun went down, never stopping for nothing. He worked his hours and never complained. He was a bull of man, a prince with the salt of his sweat on his brow…”
“And then he married the daughter of the company’s owner. But not before he got her pregnant. That’s something you always forget to mention…”
Hughie said nothing more. There was some stapling in the office that had become urgent and couldn’t be delayed another moment.
Deadline- Be All You Can Be
Sometimes I woke up in a fog of uncertainty. Sitting up in bed, my mind swayed like an irrational pendulum. Where was I? What day was it? Was I supposed to meet some one today? What was happening ? My stupor was abruptly shaken by shouts from outside.
“Be all that you can be!”
“Hoozah!”
Those annoying twins were playing military games again, but at least they brought me back to reality with a solid bump.
My feet took me outside while my senses were awoken on all fronts. The enticing aroma of bread attracted me to a table with colourful wild berries as machinery buzzed in the background and I could taste the loveliness of the day as my hand ran over Midnight’s rough coat.
On the breeze, I caught isolated words. The one which repeated in my mind was “Deadline.” This word was the reason I had woken with a sense of stress.
After breakfast, there would be a general meeting about our future plans. Many wanted a deadline; one which determined when we would move from Kay’s Bakery to continue looking for other survivors. Others wanted to stay where they were. Perhaps the complacent ones were happy in a comfortable lodging with good food and a pleasant way of life fishing, relaxing and letting time heal. The problem was the group was evenly divided between Stay and Go!
I felt like the Monopoly Man; I had a choice to make some Go and some Stay. It was a knife edge of a deadline.
Dispatch: Weekend Edition of The Aunt Moore Park Village Star Herald Dispatch Times Tribune
– Correspondent: A. B. Dearhart
I met with W. I. (Woefully Inept) Willbash Johnson, the deeply bizarre inventor of notably useless devices and at the reveal of his latest his new passion: world hunger. Mr. Johnson, great great great grandson of the famously inept inventor Bergholt “Bloody Stupid” Johnson, held a news conference yesterday at the Crunchy Bun Bakery and Tire Recapping Service parking lot near his state of the art research and development facility, where he has developed such memorable inventions as the solar flashlight (worked solely in direct sunlight), dehydrated water (just add… well you know), and the under water hot air balloon.
In this reporter’s opinion, the conference was rather uninformative as Johnson spent the time allotted describing his latest macrame projects. I later caught up with Johnson in his machine shop and inquired about any inventions that would actually address world hunger. Johnson smiled and held up a piece of metal plate perforated by a seemingly random series of punched holes.
“Ms. Dearhart, may I present my first shot in my battle against with world… world hun… world whatever you call it… stainless steel cheese!”
“Mr. Johnson, you do realize that people can’t eat stainless or any other kind of steel… yes?”
“Oh, I figure they will if they get hungry enough. Besides, for the time my research is funded by an outside agency… the Nation Dental Association.”
-30-
Aleksander was born in Novgorod, Russia. His parents called him Alex, a derivative of the famous Greek name Alexander, “defender of men.”
His interest was working with his hands. When he was sixteen, he left school and began an apprenticeship as a welder. He worked hard and soon he was one of the most skilled welder in his trade.
He always dreamed of moving to the big city and working in a large factory. When he was twenty-two, he finally saved up enough money to make the move. He packed up his belongings and said goodbye to his family and friends, and set off for Moscow.
He landed a job in a large factory as a master welder using hand tools, clamps, jigs and fixtures. He’d work from specifications, drawings and weld symbols. Day after day, he’d cut, grind and clean metal into full masterpieces.
Alex continued to work in the factory for many years. As the years went by, his steady hands and extreme hand-eye coordination began to fail.
Knowing he was on his way out, he decided to take his master skills and enter a contest. The Arc Cup International Welding Competition.
The judges viewed his work. They were in awe of the beautiful metal sculpture he made of a majestic Golden Eagle. The Eagle stood 3 ft. high with a wing span of 7 ft. They knew right away he would be the winner of the prize of $100,000.00.
He was set for life.
Kevin had several things to take care of before the deadline.
He stopped to look at Luke welding some parts together. Luke is one of his ‘work’ children, and he called them his kids. Many have been with him for over forty years. He can remember hiring every worker, most right out of high school, many on a part-time basis before they graduated.
Ever since he was sixteen, he had deadlines. His mentor was the metal shop teacher, Mr. Cogan. There was a sophisticated new machine Mr. Cogan bought and asked him to help him program it. Together, they not only programmed it, but after a few initial contracts they managed to get more work than they could handle.
Within a year, Cogan opened a small shop and he became his right-hand man. That was forty years ago, and his dear friend had to take on an important job in heaven, and he now owned the company. They should have built each building in a complex, instead of all around town, ‘would have, should have.’
He was making his rounds to each member of the company to give them a partial ownership. They will be surprised, but they truly made the company a success. Yes, he trained them, but they turned out the quality products.
Today, he had no regrets, and his faith had made him a success. Now, his final deadline wasn’t his, it was God’s.
Jim-Bob Ryland pulled off his welding goggles and studied his work. Not bad, at least for amateur work, and strictly speaking, he wasn’t a professional welder. Nope, he was just a kid pressed into service because Shepardsport needed every worker it could get.
He’d been in his last semester of a mechanical engineering degree at Georgia Tech when the Expulsions hit. Just a few credits short of his BS, but without that diploma, more responsible positions were out of reach. Training Department said they were trying to find a way for him to finish his degree through MIT’s online program, but right now the priority was getting him basic certifications so he could work outside. That meant first aid, then oxygen delivery, then EVA training.
In the meantime, he had a job to do, and he didn’t want to get crosswise with the boss. Especially not when he had good reason to believe that the piece he was supposed to be fixing had come from something vital to keeping a lunar city running. Why else would Ken Redmond have put a hard deadline on the job?
Which meant there was nothing to do but keep working until the job was done right. Only then could he cycle through the airlock from the welding room to the rest of Engineering and present the finished piece to the boss.
Jim-Bob put his welding goggles back on and got back to work.