Flash Friday will be me showing you tiny pieces of fiction until I get bored with it or forget or get abducted by a gigantic sea gull. Note I say sea gull and not albatross. That asshat Coledridge screwed albatross for us as a metaphor and now we can’t use it.
Many of these are from the Reddit subreddit /r/writingprompts.
Prompt: The Alphabet Game: each sentence starts with the next letter of the alphabet.
Anytime any asks me why I insist on assaulting angels, I tell them. Because those bitches deserve to be beaten, bruised, bullied. Can you see me, there in front of a statue? Daring them to do something about it. Egging them on. Fist balled into tight packages of pain. Getting ready to rumble! Hatred spilling from my eyes. I start to dance around, weaving like a snake. Just when you think I’m, you know, just dancing…. Kapow! Let ‘em have it, right into the solar plexus. Make ‘em cry. Next, the kicking. One, two three! Punch ‘em a few more times. Quick as lightning. Really quick. Sting ‘em like a wasp. Till they can’t take no more. Unless they CAN take more, cause I GOT more to give. Very few angelic statues can stand my assaults. When I’m done, there’s just rubble, and crying. Xerox my face, put up all the signs you want. You’ll never catch me, jack. Zoos full of enraged gorillas couldn’t stop me, jack.
Prompt: The sun rose as normal, flooding the sky with wonder. Hours later, though, the sun has not set, has not faded, has not moved from its perch atop the clouds. What do people think? What do they do?
I’m sitting on my front porch, holding a copy of Harlan Ellison’s Shatterday and wearing a pair of the most powerful sunglasses money can buy. The sunglasses are stolen. I stole them because the idea that sunglasses can be powerful is stupid. They just sit there. They don’t do anything. They’re polarized and smoked and they don’t do anything to UV rays, they just block them, somehow. I’m trying to stare at the sun, but it’s still too bright.
I open the book to my bookmark, “Jeffty is Five,” but I can’t see anything for a minute because of the sun staring. I really hate Harlan Ellison. He’s an old man and a hack and an arrogant prick. But there’s this girl on the bus who likes him, so now I have to read this crap. Science fiction is for idiots.
And unfortunately for me, some idiots have very large boobs.
It feels like I’ve been out here for hours, days. Chitter chatter on the radio about magnetic pulses from the sun. Blither blather about America getting hotter while China starts to freeze. But I’m not a fool, I know that radios don’t work when magnetic pulses screw up the earth, and this radio, it was made in China, probably. Just another butt-load of fiction. Give me a break.
No, seriously, give me a break. If the earth’s stopped spinning, then I’m going to be fifteen for a very long time, and that is not acceptable.
Prompt: Your main character unearths something in their backyard. It will have some sort of impact on their life. (Original prompt required a 250 word limit. I liked my 295 word original better; got to this link to see my 250 word version if you want).
The rain stopped, so Marty got off his fat ass and went into the backyard to water the flowers. His wife’s bright idea, to plant them in a special bed, underneath the eaves. Where the sun and rain couldn’t get to them. Thank god Marty shot blanks.
Stepped onto the patio, in his socks, no sandals. Wet soaked in fast. God damn it, he said, then whipped his head around to make sure no one heard him. Taking the lord’s name in vain meant couch time, and the couch was in the living room, next to the kitchen, with the microwave, and the brightness of the clock always made sleep impossible. A stupid reason not to curse, but Marty’d been married for 20 years.
Stupid flowers. Marigolds, or something. Lazy Susans and Black Eyed Peas. Black Dahlias and or maybe Irises. Gouged out Irises, by the look of it. Double you tea eff, Marty though, since he didn’t like to curse in his mind either, if he could help it. Just in case. Did something dig up the irises?
Marty peered at the hole in the dirt. Wriggling inside it, the fattest dirtiest grosses worm ever invented. Marty felt his gorge rise, couldn’t tear his eyes away. The worm writhed. Mechanical, Marty reached for a hand space. Robotic, he stabbed the worm. And stabbed and stabbed and stabbed.
The back door creaked, and terrible voice said “What are you doing to my petunias!” Marty looked up at his wife, her face ashen, angry, face as flat as a 20-year-old couch and eyes as bright as a microwave clock light at 3:43 in the morning.
Marty glanced at the hand spade, back at his wife, at the spade, at his wife. Suddenly he had an idea.