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.
We were alone on the beach doing our thing with the large bubble-making wands.
A small group of onlookers gathered and watched us making huge bubbles, much to the delight of the families.
Amy whispered that our bubbles were much larger than we had ever managed previously.
The group watching us had turned into a crowd. Their whooping and hollering gave us the incentive to create even larger bubbles. We were feeding off each other.
Amy suggested I run as fast as I could and sure enough the resulting bubble was at least twenty feet long.
Then we experimented further with even more amazing results.
*.*.*
“Yes, officer, that’s what we are trying to tell you. They were all standing just a few feet from where we were making giant bubbles when one of the giant bubbles engulfed them and burst. They all disappeared in that instant.”
“Have you two been drinking?”
“No, sir. We have been much too busy.”
“I bet, I’m curious, show me what you were actually doing?”
“Randy, show him how you make those huge bubbles.”
Randy dipped the rope into the solution and took off running. A huge multi-colored bubble appeared and floated over to the police officer. When he reached out to touch it, it burst, and he disappeared.
“Honey, did you add anything different to the solution?”
“There was something in a small bottle under the sink. What the hell do we do now?”
“Definitely hide this bubble solution from the government.”
ELIGIBLE FOR EDITORS CHOICE ONLY
Bubble-Bobble Head
“It’s trying to eat me. Help!”
I’m looking at the kid, four foot nothing, running along the beach like a monster was after his sorry butt, screaming cannibal nonsense. The beach is bare. We are alone except off in the distance, the Scientist is on the prowl.
“There’s nothing there, lad,” I shout. “Just Old Popoff.”
Or is the kid a mere pocket-sized man.
Cataracts.
Can’t trust what I’m seeing anymore.
Maybe never could.
The kid pulls up sharp. He is a child. Ten? Eleven?
And I can see old Popoff.
Retired Soap Scientist.
Yeah! Soap Scientist.
A tourist attraction, the local Chamber of Commerce head once called him.
And it stuck. The University eventually let him go. Couldn’t have the head of the Biology Department suggesting that there was too much soap in the ocean, that one day it would risen up in one giant toxic mass and swallow the land and all the living creatures. His career at an end, publicly ridiculed, he spent his days blowing big bubbles on the beach, proving his[point, he argued, that suds killed.
The kid sees he’s not going to get a rise out of me. I yell at him as he starts up again on his escape from Popoff. “It’s nothing, laddie. Just Bubble-Bobble Head. Babbling.”
The kid stops again. Looks up just as a mass of bubbling soap descends on him, engulfing him whole.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I say just as another one consumes me.
BUBBLES
My grandchild was given permission to chew gum … finally. “Only sugarless,” warned my daughter. As the seven-year-old unwrapped a small, strawberry-flavored stick, her mother cautioned. “And don’t swallow it!”
I observed quietly as Katie popped the cube-like product into her mouth. Her younger sister watched in awe, pointing in silence as Katie’s jawbone moved in circles, grinding the leading chewing gum brand in her back teeth.
“Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.”
Who said that!? I surveyed the room for my mother, who passed two decades earlier. The former matriarch forbade the practice of gum chewing in any form. Mom also disliked product slogans. Intensely.
Suddenly, the ghost spoke again, drowning out my youngest granddaughter’s demand: “Blow a bubble, Katie. Blow a bubble.”
“If you swallow gum, it will sit in your stomach for seven years before it can be digested.”
Tears welled in my eyes as Katie sealed the gum firmly around her teeth and opened her lips slightly. She blew gently through the air pocket. A bubble the size of a Barbie Doll shoe accessory escaped. Before it deflated, my youngest granddaughter called out. “IT’S BIGGER THAN MY BUBBLE WAND!”
My four-year-old granddaughter mastered the art of exaggeration before mastering a sippy cup. I scooped up the thirty pound child in my arms and headed to the yard, where we spent the next hour blowing bubbles that floated towards the clouds … and my beloved mother.
Allan bowed at the waist, preparing himself. It was a part of his performance, but it was still better to show respect, his duties as a conduit enhancing his status. The ones he was serving were inordinately powerful; it wouldn’t do to upset any of them in the slightest.
He entered the meditative state and gave himself up to the moment.
“Look at the man. It’s Mister Bubble. He’s the one I told you about.” A man in a red cap had brought his son with him, having heard about this spectacle on YouTube.
Allan dipped his loop into the solution and began.
His first pass was hesitant, as it always was. The cord took time to find its optimum form, even when it had already been wetted, the weight of it pulling the noose into a length rather than the open-mouthed aperture he required. The first pass rarely ‘took, the dimensional barrier remaining stubbornly intact, the only creatures able to pass through then being the runts and the more malevolent individuals of the Elder race. It usually took him three or four attempts to align the opening sufficiently well enough so his Masters could pass. The multiverse had an inherent resistance, preventing travel between the continuums.
“He’s a dweeb. Bubbles are lame. I grew out of those before I reached first grade.”
Allan rent the fabric of the universe asunder, and Cthulhu emerged, rearing up and swallowing the child whole.
It wasn’t going to be a boring Sunday today.
Lord of the Bubble
We all needed a break from the monotony of merely trying to survive. Otherwise, we were not living and certainly not enjoying life. Instead of a merry-go-round of joyous life there was a constant bitter never ending cycle of boredom, worry and fear. With astute realisation, Kay handed everyone a bottle and wand. When shaken, sublime iridescent rainbow colours formed. Pianissimo. Shake pianissimo.
Giggles rippled through the company as everyone returned to their childhood. We needed this. A return to innocence, a lack of responsibility and a childhood without cares.
To keep the excitement alive, a variety of competitions were organised. There was a healthy helping of good-natured cheating too. The first competition required the participants to run with a bubble on the end of his or her nose. Who knew that bubbles could cause so much sneezing and laughter? There was a competition for the most beautiful, odd shaped and largest. The Twins being forever children at heart tied wire together to achieve the largest bubble. They took the competition to new heights of grandeur. While working on this, the more intelligent and garrulous Twin talked about the frailty of bubbles. Yet he was positive that their brevity and transience only enhanced their overall beauty.
One of the Twins boasted, “I am Lord of the Bubble. This behemoth bubble will swallow us all and take us to a magical realm where we will find eternal happiness and safety.”
Everyone paused, looked at one another and thought,“If only…”
I was four or five when I saw him. We were on vacation in Florida, and my folks had rented a little beach house instead of a hotel room. So we were right there on the seashore with a great view of everything.
I looked out the window that morning and there he was, making soap bubbles so big they looked like gigantic transparent monsters floating on the air. They’d hang there for what seemed like forever before popping.
I could’ve stood there for hours, just watching those bubbles floating in the early morning sunlight. But Mom was calling us for breakfast, so out I went to the kitchen table.
By the time we were done, he was long gone. But the image stayed with me, and as I got older, I tried so hard to make bubbles like his. Even with the biggest hoop I could find, my bubbles wouldn’t last more than a few seconds.
Sometimes I’ve wondered if I dreamed the whole thing. But today my chemistry teacher described how to combine soapy water with glue to make bubbles last longer. He filled the classroom with clusters of bubbles that hung in the air and even kept their form when they stuck to objects.
Tonight I’m going to see if it works for big bubbles too.