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.
Please Step into the Booth
A bio-scanner, equipped with intelligent AI, was at the entrance to the store.
“Please scan your hand.”
“No,” Kenny replied. “I’m not scanning my hand to go shopping.”
“How about your thumb?”
“No.”
“How about scanning your face?”
“Forget it.”
“Then please step into the booth and we’ll scan your body.”
“You’re not getting access to my body.”
“Please. We really want to scan you.”
“No.”
“It’ll be fun. We promise.”
“I said, no.”
“If we scan your body, you’ll receive a $2.00 off coupon on a box of cheese widgets.”
“Cheese widgets?” Saliva dribbled from Kenny’s mouth. He loved cheese widgets. They were so tasty and delectable. They practically melted in his mouth.
“Well?”
He snapped out of his delirium and raised his voice. “I said, no!”
“You sound agitated.”
“I’m angry. I just want to shop.”
“You need to relax. Take a deep breath.”
“I don’t need to relax. I just want to go shopping.”
“You need some nice, enchanting music.”
♫ Music plays ♫
Curiously, Kenny calmed down, closed his eyes, and imagined a beautiful star-lit night.
“Isn’t that better?”
He mumbled, “Kind of…”
“Of course it is. Now, can we scan your body?”
“Will I get the coupon?”
“Of course you will.”
“Okay.”
“Step into the booth and we’ll scan your body. That’s it. You’ll feel a slight tingling sensation. Don’t be alarmed. There. All done. Now step out of the booth.”
Kenny looked at his body. “Why am I glowing?”
“Next!”
Pickleball Delight
With the tragedies in the world mounting, wars, quakes, typhoons, big threatening balloons in the sky, all of it, Sammy needed a distraction.
“What say we have a Pickleball Tournament?” he posted on his personal website. He had a small coterie of followers, mostly local folks who had little real social life and usually welcomed a half-baked suggestion of group activity from whomever.
Sammy waited a few hours. The response was minimal. The Dewey’s from down the street said “Yup.” Retired accountants who kept to themselves because everyone wanted them to volunteer for this group or that group and they had grown tired of stating the obvious, that they hated numbers, occasionally risked engagement and Pickleball seemed relatively safe…even if there were numbers involved in the scoring.
Also chiming in was Lloyd Fairweather. Lloyd was a full-time recluse, a systems analyst working from home, and caring for his demented elderly mother.
“Bring your mother along,” Sammy suggested. “We’ll be playing outdoors…yeah, it’ll be a tad cold, but the stars are in the heavens, and the skies will be shining bright. Your dear mother can be the ball girl.”
The community court was free and waiting for them. Jane Fairweather enjoyed her role as a ball girl and Sammy, Lloyd, Rose, and Lance Dewey had a fine time.
“So much fun,” Rose said at the end. “The worlds in such a state. Great therapy.”
The next day, the world of course was still the same.
Pickleball couldn’t cure everything.
Enchanted vs Enchanting
Lisa had me kneel and then placed the blindfold on me. She then led me out into the snow-covered field. I was willing to play along because maybe the blindfold would come in handy later when we were alone in our cabin.
“What do you feel?” Lisa asked.
“I feel the cold on my face and your heat against me.”
“I guess that’s a good start. I wanted you to have your night vision to appreciate the view tonight. Keep your eyes closed when I take the blindfold off.”
I was much taller and she had to press against my back to reach the blindfold. “There, keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them.”
She stepped away crunching the crusted snow. A few minutes later, “Okay, open your eyes and tell me what you see.”
I blinked and studied the sky. “I see a blue wave of snow about to wash over me. The far sky is lit with a purple glow, the trees and hillside making a dam against the back lit sky with more than a thousand stars.”
“Now turn and look at me, I’m getting very cold.”
At first, I didn’t know what to say, the night sky was illuminating her body.
“That sight was very enchanting, but your sight is incredibly beautiful. You are an enchantress and I’m definitely caught in your spell. Please don’t turn me into a frog!”
“Can’t you tell I have better plans?”
Science officer Bradley scanned the horizon. The sky was a mess of stars, drones and security satellites, each a potential source of surveillance. He wished it was overcast like it used to be every night, back before the environmentalists ruined everything. Instead, there was nothing here but the eyes and ears of the Government’s watchers.
“I don’t like it here,” he said, feeling exposed. “It’s cold, with a chance of frost later.”
Melissa hummed. She drew the embroidered rug around her. She smiled as she traced Cassiopeia’s large ‘W’ shape, Schedar as bright as ever.
“I think it’s romantic,” she said. “Comforting.”
Bradley followed the direction of her gaze, seeing danger interspersed by vacuum, the immeasurable gulfs of space offering innumerable hiding places for an infinite number of enemies.
“Another thirty minutes. No more. And then we can go back down below.”
His AI-equipped emotional-support companion sighed, her pneumatic chest exhausting a mix of oxygen and water vapour back into the atmosphere.
“I think it’s a nonsense,” she said, “sitting here, out on the surface. You know how it annoys you. And yet you persist in bringing me here each night. Scratching at an itch you know you can never hope to reach. Like sharing an EVA suit with a symbiont xenomorph or like losing your hands; it’s an exercise in futility, a self-inflicted wound -“
“Suspend vocal circuits, dammit.”
Bradley rose to his feet, shucking the hand he’d been holding.
“Try again,” he said. “I want to be enchanted.”
Enchanted
Astronomer, William Edwin, found a mysterious new blue star in the night sky. He set out to investigate its origins.
Meanwhile, on the north side of the world, a young couple finds themselves drawn to the blue star. They decide to take a road trip to a secluded area in the countryside. As they drove, enchanted feelings consumed them. They experienced a mysterious calming effect.
Once they arrived, they set up a picnic blanket and admired the night sky from afar. The star twinkled and the blue hue of the sky deepened.
As night turned to morning, they were in for a surprise when the sky appeared a deep purple. They watched in awe, realizing the blue night sky was actually the reflection of a distant galaxy.
They had heard of William Edwin news of the blue star. When they went to contact him about what they had discovered, they said he was missing.
The disappearance of him rocked the scientific community. Investigators found a hidden observatory in a mountain cave. Inside, they found William Edwin, who has been living in isolation for the past year.
William Edwin had discovered a strange, unknown astronomical phenomenon. He uncovered a complex network of clues. It lead to an ancient civilization in a distant galaxy with deep secrets. He soon realized they were on the brink of a discovery that could change the course of human history.
Enchanted- If Midnight was a Painting
By a fluke of fate, I dodged the proverbial bullet. A few days back, I was about to discuss the controversial ‘leave Kay’s Bakery or stay.’ A personal decision would mercilessly rip our group asunder. While bilge water sloshed in my belly, my heart weighed me down. A piercing scream ripped through the intensity. In foolishly racing back to land, the idiotic Twins had capsized the dinghy -the dinghy they had no authority to be using!
Biting an expletive in two, insanity fueled my speed to the river. Terror charged through the air when a cry circulated that one of the Twins was trapped under the sinking dinghy.
Over the panic, another voice bellowed, “Stand up you fools!”
Shamefaced, the Twins ceased screaming . Although far from shore, they were only in a few feet of water!. Drenched in emotion, Kay’s blustering to beat the Twins made her attempts to snap off a switch from a water oak ineffective.
My heart somersaulted through fear, anger and relief. Desperately, I needed to realign myself. While seeking balance, Midnight found me. Losing myself in the depths of her eyes, my mind wandered off. If Midnight was a painting, what genre, would she be? Like her namesake, she would be romantic and mysterious. As a painting, she would possess all the magical colours of this special time. Blues melting into blacks. Shimmering purples. The mysticism would be present in ethereal tenderness. Her soul would shine like a million stars across the night sky. At that moment the stay or leave argument was insignificant; we would survive.
As youngsters, Prince James and I were childhood playmates, but we eventually grew apart. That’s to be expected when one is royalty and the other a lowly maid’s daughter. But I never expected him to become so cruel. As a teenager he began to accost me in the hallways, shove me against the wall, and crush his lips against mine.
There was no protection from his assaults. After all, we were master and servant. I could simply endure, then escape on my horse, Magic, into the enchanted forest. James feared the dark woods and never followed me there.
On the day I found the beautiful lady enclosed in a glass coffin, I started plotting my future. I waited until a warm summer evening and asked the old groom to prepare two horses. We’d been friends for so long that he agreed to my request.
Shortly after midnight, I rode Magic and led Beauty into the woods. The coffin glowed in the moonlight. I dismounted, unlatched the lid, and held my breath.
She sat up, stretched, and yawned. Then she said, “You. I was expecting a selfish and cruel prince.”
She reached toward me. “But I did dream about you.”
As we embraced, our lips met in the sweetest, softest kiss ever. Then I pointed to our two steeds. “Are you ready to escape?”
With a nod, she scrambled to her feet and mounted Beauty. Together we raced toward the border of our kingdom and never looked back.
I still remember the internship I did the summer before my first year of graduate school. I was so proud to be selected to work at the Very Large Array in New Mexico – and then humbled to discover that my shiny new degree entitled me to be a glorified bottle-washer.
Not that I didn’t learn a heck of a lot about the routine operation of radio telescopes. But I had a learning curve – and the usual “paying your dues” pranks. Some I knew, like the old left-handed monkey wrench, but there were also some in-jokes specific to radio astronomy.
After the first few weeks, the “run the new guy” died down. Confronted with h ow much I didin’t know, I’d become useful enough to be sent out to check one of the dishes when it started sending anomalous data.
I had just arrived when I heard a screeching sound. I suppressed the urge to turn, and spoke in a calm, level voice. “Jerry, this is neither the time nor the place for a gotcha.”
Moments later a tiny form flashed through the beam of my headlamp, flying on soundless wings. I fought the urge to laugh at having been fooled by an elf owl.
New Mexico may be the Land of Enchantment, but I was still glad to head back to civilization for my first semester that August.
The bad man was dying. He knew this. He was a vicious evil man.… and he was freezing to death. This he knew most certainly.
He had long thought on his many savage and cruel deeds as he had struggled across the endless ice and snow plains… walking then crawling after he had lost feeling in his legs. And he was tired… crushingly so. As he closed his eyes for bit of much needed sleep, he heard himself rasp:
“Lord, I’m sorry fer all… fer all the bad shit I done. Please… don’t… don’t let me die. Damn… I’m… so…cold.”
The words that whispered from his cracked and split lips surprised him. He knew with certainty they would be a waste of time and breath for one such as he, and so was shocked when he heard the voice:
“Go into the forest. There you will find warmth.”
“What the hell are you… some kinda angel or something?”
“I am… some kinda… yes… I’m some kinda.”
The bad man dragged himself across the ice and eventually into the forest. Yeah… it was indeed surprisingly warm. As the heat intensified, his limbs began to thaw and he removed his now soggy clothes. The air became hotter and hotter and he felt his skin begin to redden… then blister. Soon, writhing in agony he screamed:
“How shi…lower the godamn temperature!”
Again the voice:
“Down here we never lower the… the godamn temperature.”