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.
Mark was so excited. He was finally going to get to go on a cruise. For as long as he could remember he had wanted to book a cruise on a ship. It had been his life long dream to cruise around to so many places. However, Mark couldn’t seem to save up money for the cruise. Every time he had a decent amount saved up an emergency would pop up and he would have to spend his money on whatever befell him. It started to look like he would never get his cruise. Then one day he went to his mailbox and found an envelope from G.S. Cruises. He quickly ripped the envelope open. A note said “Congratulations, you’re the winner of an all expense paid cruise.” There was a ticket and information about when and where.
When Mark arrived he was confused. There wasn’t a crowd of people waiting to board the cruise ship as one would have expected. A lone man was standing on the gang plank. “Are you Mark?” the man asked. Mark nodded. “This way.” Mark followed. “Where is everyone?” he asked. The man gave Mark a funny look. “You’re the only one we are picking up at this port.” “Why?” he asked. “Didn’t you read the fine print?” the man inquired. Mark shook his head. “This is a ghost ship the trip is one way.” Mark turned to leave the ship. They were surrounded by water, he couldn’t see the port…..
The water was still as death and nearly as cold. He wasn’t even halfway to shore and already he was exhausted. But he was away from there. He had slipped past the sleeping guard and jumped ship just three hours before the captain’s sentence was to be carried out. The captain with the dead eyes and treacherous smile of a shark. A few hundred yards more to the beach and he’d have it made. And so, he swam.
He swam toward the rocks not caring if he’d be torn to shreds. Anything was better than the belly of that ship. The beautiful, soulless ship with its music and lights and its shark-captain. Where below decks horror festered without a sound. That scene was not for him. He was going places. So, on he swam.
As the cold water slapped his face, images of her crept in around the edges of his panic. It was her fault. This whole nightmare was her fault. The kid’s a freak. Got no real future anyway. Why waste time and money? So, she takes off with the kid. Heard she put him in some kind of hospital and she’s waiting on tables in Miami to pay for it. Stupid waste.
His foot hit something. He was there. He stood and shook the sea off him. Relief warmed him immediately and he took a step forward. He heard a low chuckle and looked up into the smiling shark face of the captain.
Ship of Ghosts
It was summer, 1956. Early July. End of a long day. Hot as hades, pardon my French. My first solo assignment appeared, courtesy of a phone call to the Daily Digest, saying, ”There’s a freighter on the rocks. Danziger Cove.” Day Editor, Mickey Fountain, said, “Kid, sounds hinky to me but go and check it out.”
What was I going to say? “Can’t swim,” or “Don’t have a boat.”
I could dog paddle but never owned a boat.
I asked, “Who called it in?”
Seemed a Reasonable question.
“Gyppo tug guy,” Mickey Fountain said. “Captain Frankie Frankie…local character. Never heard of him?”
I hadn’t but I was relatively new, making my way to the West Coast from Toronto a year earlier.
I was out the door in a flash, heading down to the wharf where Frankie Frankie moored the Elvira May. He was waiting for me, an agitated guy, wiry, looking creaky and ancient and every bit an old sea dog.
“Have a snootful, youngster,” he said and passed me some whiskey in a bottle. I can’t say I hesitated. Seemed the polite thing to do. We sat on the rear deck, passed the booze back and forth and I persisted to get the story.
“Well,“ I asked, halfway down the bottle, “where’s this ghost ship?”
He looked at me, mariner-wise, gazed towards the east, the flat sea, and said, “Damn. It’s gone.”
The sun had set.
We drank all night.
My first scoop never got written.
Mrs Wainscott lay dead. She’d a crater where her forehead had been. She was the twelfth passenger we’d lost since we’d set sail, and the number of survivors was dwindling fast.
The captain’s treasure might not be claimed after all. He might end up keeping it to himself.
“Okay,” said Sparrow. “Who’s going to be next?” He dropped his musket to the deck, not caring what might happen. The passengers had all already been cowed by his actions and were more likely to run away than challenge him.
“Come on,” he said. “You’re making this too easy. There’s no sport if you don’t even try to resist.”
The first three victims were standing behind him. The Doctor of Philosophy had accepted his fate, choosing to walk the plank and get eaten by sharks. The triathlete had fallen from the rigging and died as quickly, while the Catholic priest had choked on unleavened bread. They made a sorry collection of the formerly alive: – not one had looked like they’d succeed.
Of course, Sparrow knew they were there. He’d arranged them all artfully, taking care to stage his tableau as dramatically as possible.
“Maybe I should remind you of the treasure you could win? As well as keeping your lives.” He reached behind him and lifted the chest’s lid, displaying his hoard of gold. “Come and get it,” he said. “It’s here, waiting.”
The remaining nine bodies had been left where they’d died. A reminder to the living and the dead.
Broken bone, seaweed, and blood trailed from Gemina’s body as she pulled herself to shore. What began as a quick afternoon jaunt, a weekend sail in her vintage sloop, ended violently dashed on the uninhabitable, sun-baked, jagged rock of East Point Bay. Gemina knew that her situation seemed dire, but East Point was a landmark, a popular intersection between pleasure boats joyfully flowing to and from the port. It was just a matter of time before she was spotted.
By nightfall, Gemina had stopped her bleeding. She winced as she snatched her travel log, knowing years from now, her story would be one for the ages, evidence of her great survival adventure. While she contemplated her story, a lowly lit ship appeared a small way offshore. Not a pleasant swim, Gemina thought, but doable. She lay her journal in the sand as she flung her body back into the inky, churning water. Approaching the ship, something felt off. The hull was battered, the deck rotten, and the boat empty. She called out. Exhausted and confused, she went on board and radioed for help.
When the distress arrived, Captain Hera, following protocol, logged the time: July 10, 2023. The following morning, the East Bay rescue crew arrived at the shore and spent the day scouring for clues to last night’s distress call. Nothing remained of the incident but a weathered journal poking out from layers of sand; the name Gemina scribbled next to its last entry, dated July 10, 1928.
It hangs on the misty horizon, right at the limits of perception. Sometimes you glimpse the running lights. At other times you see the superstructure, towering over the waves.
No one knows its name or its story, only that it is a shadow of the Time Before, when people lived as gods, unbound by the limitations of space and time. A world that was swept away in a day and a night, leaving only fragments here and there to remind us of what once was.
When I was young and quite proud of my seamanship, I took a notion to sail out to it and see for myself what it was. At first it seemed a simple task, until I realized that no matter how far out to sea I sailed, the ghost ship remained just as far away. Not wishing to get caught by shifting wind or turning tide while out of sight of land, I turned back.
I came home to my father’s outrage. “Would you bring the Wrath down upon us again?”
In his rage he beat me so savagely that I feared I might die. Before it was over, I was hoping I would, just to bring an end to my agony.
As luck would have it, I didn’t die. But one of the blows to the head damaged my sense of balance. I can no longer tolerate the movements of a boat upon the water, and am now perforce a permanent landlubber.
Yeah… ’s my house.
My wife’s in there… with him…… my brother… in my house… in our bed. Our kids… no idea where they are. I guess right about after she got the notice about the “incident” in that hell-pit of country where I was on my third tour, she sent them off to live with some of her relatives somewhere’s.
The day of the damn “incident” I got a short and on-point letter from some asshole attorney telling me that she was divorcing me and keeping the kids… and everything else that she could, ‘cause she felt she “deserved” it. Also she had found someone else. I was poleaxed… stunned… then furious. Probably should’na gone out on patrol that day….
I never knew what hit me. They said it was an I.E.D. ‘Course it coulda been a mine or a SAW, but what does it matter. I, or most of “I”, ended up in a hospital where I died three times. I think it was the rage that kept me around.
Getting into my house is no problem, but then I didn’t think it would be. I glide up the stairs… silently.
There they are… sleeping in my bed. I feel the wrath gather and a storm builds in my soul. I reach for her neck, blind with unbridled fury… and my hands pass through her.
Again.
Like I said, I died three times… and ya know, sometimes, “Third time’s not a charm.”
This is all wrong, Jane thought. Marble skies swam with shrieking seagulls in the dying light. Salty ocean mists the cool evening air. Jane was being suffocated, wrapped up in clouds of tight cotton. Dinner of lobster mac and cheese was sitting heavy. She thought she would throw up over the side of the wood railing onto the rough, crashing rocks below. A pity dinner. She had been blind-sided.
Frizzy hair poofed and black streaks of mascara ran down her face. She was sweating, her heart pounding. She felt like she had been sitting inside a sauna for hours. Balling up her fist fresh tears filled her eyes. And here she was for all to see. A freak in a circus show.
“Can I still drive you home?” He asked.
“What, you care?!”
“Of course I do. I just didn’t think it was fair to keep you in the dark anymore,” he said pleading.
“Fair! Fair that you love someone else! Oh thank you for your concern.” She crossed her arms as she tried to control her breathing.
He put his head down. “People change, Janie.”
“It’s Jane.You don’t get to call me Janie, you lost that privilege.”
Turning away from him she watched the ships glide across the Pacific Ocean in an eerie, ghostly way like they weren’t there. They were holograms. Closing her eyes tight, tears ran down dripping off her face and she wished she was sailing away with them to the unknown.
LATE ENTRY
Ghost Ship or….
Without a breath of communication we all gathered at night as wisps of mist rose from the river. Another ethereal scene. The colours were glorious as sundown was revealed in all its enchanting glory. The purples gave us a deep sense of peace. We all looked out across the river and the words, “Ghost ship!” mysteriously left our lips. It was really the play of light through the mist onto the river’s surface which conjured up the allusion of a ghost ship. The ghost ship seemed to sail away yet at the same time keep perfectly motionless.
“That is a glamorous ghost ship. I wonder who is aboard. Only the dead are found on ghost ships. Possibly non-survivors of the Apocalypse? Will it be able to go home? The Flying Dutchman, the legendary phantom ship, was never able to return home. Her doom was to sail the waves forever. No living crew aboard, just ghosts doomed to hell.
“Look at the colours. Glistening golds. Firework fuchsias. Passionate purples. Winking whites. The top of the ship seems to reflect the bottom half. The colours seem more to suggest a cruise rather than a ghost ship. Must be a party boat because I don’t believe the dead party. Why would they? They have nothing to party for! Rather like us.”
Suddenly, there was a penetrating chill in the air after these gloomy words.
Thankfully, someone was always ready to contradict. “Actually, we have lots to party for. After all, we are alive.”