Welcome back to the Weird, the Wild, & the Wicked. Are you ready for November? No? Well, it's Thursday today, so what should you be doing? Writing #FlashFiction, that's what! Welcome to Week 96 of #ThursThreads, the challenge that ties tales together. Need the rules? Read on!
Here's how it works:
- The prompt is a line from the previous week's winning tale.
- The prompt can appear ANYWHERE in your story and is included in your word count.
Rules to the Game:
- This is a Flash Fiction challenge, which means your story must be a minimum of 100 words, maximum of 250.
- Incorporate the prompt anywhere into your story (included in your word count).
- Post your story in the comments section of this post
- Include your word count (or be excluded from judging)
- Include your Twitter handle or email (so we know how to find you)
- The challenge is open 7 AM to 7 PM Pacific Time
- The winner will be announced on Friday, depending on how early the judge gets up.
How it benefits you:
- You get a nifty cool badge to display on your blog or site (because we're all about promotion - you know you are!)
- You get instant recognition of your writing prowess on this blog!
- Your writing colleagues shall announce and proclaim your greatness on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus
Our Judge for Week 96:
The Iced-coffee drinker, purveyor of hot hunks of the day, and erotic romance author, Alicia White.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
“It’s moving day.”
All stories written herein are the property (both intellectual and physical) of the authors. Now, away with you, Flash Fiction Fanatics, and show us your #ThursThreads. Good luck!
“Hey, Daydream.” Jason Winslow’s voice buzzed from the radio clipped to my shoulder. “You wandered off. What’s your position?”
ReplyDelete“Don’t call me that.”
“I’m not the one who got lost on her own street.”
“That happened one time.” My cheeks burned as I remembered being found half a block from home and utterly lost.
“And believe me when I say you will never live it down, darlin’.” His laugh set my teeth on edge. “Now where are you? Do you know?”
“I’m tracking.” So yes, damn it all, I knew where I was. “Down by Wildcat Lake.”
“Shit, Lenora. You’re over three miles from me. And you’re alone? You do understand how this whole team thing works, right?” He made a sound that rattled the speaker. “You do your tracking magic and I make sure nothing eats you while you’re in your zone.”
“You were busy flirting.” I couldn’t even blame him. Officer Danielle Foster was gorgeous. If I had more than a healthy appreciation for female beauty, he’d have had competition.
“I was not flirting. I was gathering intel.”
“Did this intel come with Officer Foster’s phone number?”
“No.” The drawn out syllable, laden with offense, made me smile.
Ten meters out, the scrub brush crackled.
“Jason, I found it. It’s moving.”
“Daydream, say again?” The radio speaker crackled, drawing attention I didn’t want. “Len, what’s moving?”
“I don’t know.” I reached up and spun the volume wheel down to zero. “But I’m going to find out.”
@caramichaels
248 words
“I don’t want to leave, all these moves kill me,” protested the girl.
ReplyDelete“You knew we couldn’t stay, Ashley.”
“But I made a friend, Clarisa,” Ashley complained.
“I’m sorry. This takes us different places, and it also allows you to learn and have all the things you want Ashley.”
“But I don’t have a dad. Everyone has to have someone, Mom. You have no one.”
“We’ve been through this Ashley. I need only you.”
“Can I go to this one last dance at the school? It starts in a half an hour?”
“Is that the one your teacher, Mr. Simpson wanted me to supervise?”
“Yes.”
“Fine!”
Ashley and her mother went to the dance. When it was time to go Ashley’s mom found her with Clarissa.
“Can I keep her mom?”
“Good grief Ashley you have to stop doing this. It doesn’t always work and I didn’t plan on having another child.”
“Please?”
“Fine!” Ashley’s mother frowned but picked up Clarissa and took her to their moving van. Ashley dripped blood from the blood bags in the van into Clarissa’s mouth. Ashley strapped Clarissa into the van and then she noticed Mr. Simpson sitting next to her mom.
“Why is he here?”
“You said you wanted a father.”
“Really Mom?” the girl cried excited, “I get to have a Dad and a sister?”
“I spoil you rotten.”
“You do but that’s why I love you, Mom.”
“I love too, pumpkin. Now let’s go it’s moving day.”
246 words
@SweetSheil
ugh that supposed to be Clarissa at the beginning.
ReplyDeleteWell, wasn't this just fine and dandy. She knew this was going to be the day from hell the minute she got up this morning, and now this.
ReplyDelete"It's moving day." Serena reminded her with that cheerfully annoying voice that made Jenny want to throttle the woman. Seriously, who could be that happy all the damn time, and especially at barely nine am on a Monday morning.
Jenny was on her third cup of coffee and only just waking up.
"I thought we had a week," she grumbled under her breath, whilst mentally stapling the other woman's ridiculous grin shut with her new heavy duty stapler.
"Boss brought the date forward. There 'was' an e-mail Friday evening."
The inference was clear that Jenny should know that.
"Well, sod you, Miss-Super-Efficient-Serena-Happy-Pants." Jenny muttered the words to Serena's retreating back and resisted the urge to lob her now cold coffee at her.
"Not a morning person then, are we?"
The amused male voice behind her seemed to have jumped straight out of every dirty dream Jenny had ever had and she spun around to come face to face with a very impressive chest. Covered by a black tee, emblazoned with a well-known removal company, that chest belonged to a deliciously disheveled looking sex-on-legs male who gave Jenny's office attired body an unabashed appraisal that made all of her feminine parts tingle in anticipation.
The man grinned down on her with a wink.
"At your service, ma'am."
The day was suddenly looking up!
250 words
@mamaD8
Secrets of Starsky and Hutch
ReplyDeleteMy parents willed my childhood home to me. For six months I avoided occupying it, until Joel took me by the shoulders and said, "It's moving day. It's time, Dana. We'll make it our home."
We moved into the lavender Cape Cod and began extensive renovations, demolishing old memories to make room for shiny new ones.
“Look what I dug up in the yard,” Joel said one day. He produced a very dirty and rusty tin box with faint traces of Starsky and Hutch on the cover.
“Have you opened it?”
“Nah, it says ‘private’.” He grinned at me, the same killer smile that slayed me at fifteen.
I wrestled with the rust and wiggled the lid off.
“Looks like some sort of journal,” Joel said.
All the hours I’d spent pouring my heart out onto the pages came rushing back. I remembered the types of things I’d written, but did I dare share them?
“Yeah.” I flipped to the entry I made on my sixteenth birthday.
Joel read aloud, “Dear Diary, I will marry Joel Sabinowitz. I love him. I will always love him. And one day he'll love me, too. On January 9, 1984, I will become Mrs. Joel Sabinowitz.”
Wonder danced across Joel's face.
I closed the journal smiling. I didn’t want him to read any more, because if he had he’d have seen similar swoony entries declaring my love for Grant Swerdel and Larry Josephs. And what he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. ;)
@lila_shaw
248 words not counting title
Ha! I loved Starsky & Hutch. I'll even admit to writing a fanfiction screenplay with me in it. LOLOL *blush* Oh, Hutch...be still my heart!
DeleteNice! :-)
Delete“How are you doing? Can you get in on your own?” Lindsey's breath brushed his cheek and his cock hardened again. At least that part of me still works.
ReplyDelete“Yeah.” John reached for the car as she pulled the door open.
“Good. Let me recline the seat. When I drive out of here I don’t want you visible.” She pushed the leather bucket seat flat. He admired the sleek lines of her dress against her ass and closed his eyes, remembering it without clothing.
“John, are you okay?”
He snapped his eyes open and nodded, swaying a little.
“Get in and we’ll get out of here.”
He wedged his body into the seat and lay back. God it felt good to relax after trying to walk all that way fighting the ketamine. But they’d made it to the car. All they had to do was get out of the parking lot.
Lindsey settled into the driver’s seat and started the engine, the rumble adding to the tremors rippling through his body. Fuck, I hate coming down off drugs. The car moved and his sense of orientation shifted, the glow of the Strip’s lights washing across the windshield in a kaleidoscope of color.
“Wow. It looks like it’s moving. Day and night, always moving.”
“Sorry? What’s moving?”
“The lights. In Sin City. Did we sin yet?”
Lindsey shot him an incredulous look, but she just shook her head. “Yep. Plenty of times.”
“Good.” She looked like a woman good at sinning.
250 ineligible words from Bronco's Rough Ride
@SiobhanMuir
He stared into her dulled eyes, red-rimmed and rheumy with age. Her gnarled fingers plucked at the softly woven blanket covering legs bent and twisted by the years of her lifetime. With a hand shaking with gentleness, he smoothed listless gray locks from her face.
ReplyDelete“Are you ready, sweetheart?”
Her eyes lifted to his and for an instant, he saw the lively, funny girl who’d once lived inside her. Then she blinked, and the girl he’d once loved was replaced by the old woman with no memory of their time together.
His heart hurt, as if such a thing was even possible for someone like him.
“Ready?” She formed the word with great concentration.
“It’s time to go.”
Hands fluttering like nervous birds, she gestured around the small room in the nursing home. “Don’t understand…” Her frail voice whispered like snowflakes drifting on the wind.
“It’s moving day.”
“Oh.”
Just as he picked her up and settled her easily in his arms, a nurse appeared in the doorway.
“What are you doing? Who are you? Put her down! I’m calling security!”
He ignored the woman’s tirade. Gold sparkles swirled around them. “Close your eyes.” Moments later, they appeared in the Summerlands, met by the Goddess and his Queen.
“Where am I?”
“Your forever home, love. As I promised.”
Titania’s lip curled into a disdainful smile. “This is why fae don’t fall in love with humans, Ariel. They die too soon.”
And took a piece of his heart each time.
----
249 words that I need to find a place for somewhere.
@SilverJames_
Oh-ho-ho! So Ariel has an interesting backstory. ;)
DeleteWell, d'uh! Of course he does. LOL He's one of mine, right? *gigglesnort* Too bad his book is #4. ;)
DeleteOh my... :'(
DeleteWonderful... :-)
DeleteThe front door shut behind him, the thunk signifying the end of everything that had been, and the start of something completely new. Hank walked to the old Jeep he’d purchased with part of the money he got for the house. He’d be long gone before anyone knew what was happening.
ReplyDeleteHe didn’t even look at the house. He got in his Jeep, turned it on, put it in gear, and drove away. He knew exactly what would happen when the new home owners arrived. When they unlocked that front door, and pushed it open.
The entire neighborhood would find out.
He drove for three hours before he stopped for lunch in a little town call Silver, at a diner called “Marcia’s Munchies”. He sat at the bar, and ordered a beer, and a burger and fries. As he ate, he watched the TV over the bar.
It was the Global News Channel. They had cameras on the ground, reporting on the home explosion, and fire in a suburb of Columbia. The fire was still raging. The explosion killed the new homeowners. A married couple and their three children. It destroyed 8 houses around it, and damaged nearly forty. Eight people were in critical condition in hospitals, including two baby girls. 35 people had been treated for various injuries.
Hank sat at the bar, and smiled. “It’s moving day.” He paid for his food, and continued his journey to his new home, in Kentucky. “It’s moving day.”
245 Words
@LurchMunster
Keeper
ReplyDeleteI’d just stowed all my Jane Austen’s with Tetris-like precision in fresh cardboard. Reaching for the tape gun, I saw his lanky frame looming in the doorway. Colin had finally showed. Figures.
Jaw clenched, I taped up the U-Haul box and hefted it onto the waiting stack with more vehemence than even Mr. Darcy deserved. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s moving day.” No hurled accusations. Just fact.
“You can have your place back.” I hid the encroaching loneliness behind snark, knowing I’d caused this.
“Meg. Adrian told me.”
The cold flush of guilt made me sway. “Now you know why we won't work out.”
“No. I don’t.” He closed the distance in two steps, smelling of grease and Goop, his usual slouched jeans and sneakers replaced with cruddy Levi’s and work boots. His arm slid around my waist like it belonged there, like I belonged there with the heat of him searing through my practiced cool.
“Don’t.” I pushed at him half-heartedly.
“Why?”
“I wouldn’t want you to see me like that. Sick. Puking.” I couldn’t look at him.
“Don’t you know I love you?”
Stone-faced, I refused to let hope in. He couldn’t change. He needed to go. “That’s easy to say,” I grumbled. “Prove it.”
“I got a job.”
“You what?” My walls crumbled with the shock.
“I want to stay here and take care of you.” He kissed me, taking the tape gun out of my hand. “And the baby.”
245 words (with title)
@rowanwolf
Wow! That's a zinger at the end. :-)
Delete“Remember, I’m just a phone call away.”
ReplyDeleteI nodded, taking my duffel bag in hand. It’s moving day, the day I’d been alternately dreading and waiting for impatiently. My boyfriend stood to my right, an arm around my still too-skinny waist, waiting to take me home.
Theresa, house mother at the halfway house, hugged me. “Good luck, Jimmy. I don’t want to see you back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, hugging her back. “Thanks for being good to all of us fuck ups.”
She nodded, her brown eyes bright. “You’re a good bunch that just need some guidance that’s all.”
She stood on the porch as I put my bag in Jack’s truck. I climbed in, nerves on fire; I wasn’t ready for the real world. I wasn’t strong and I still had cravings for drugs. But my doctor and my counselor said I was good. I was holding down a job, clean and sober for six months. They have more confidence in me than I do.
“Ready to go home?” Jack asked, backing out of the driveway.
“No. But at the same time, yes. I miss you and the cats. And my folks.”
“Eleanor and Hank will be waiting at the house for us. I hope you’re hungry.”
I laughed. My adopted parents spoiled me and their son with their amazing food. Okay, it’s mom’s amazing food but still. Watching the city of Omaha disappear as we merged onto the interstate I took a deep breath. I could do this.
@Aightball
250 words
#ThursThreads is now CLOSED. Thank you to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to see you next week. :)
ReplyDelete