Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 627. Year 12! What a fantastic testament to the writing community. Y’all rock!
Today is Thursday and that means it’s time to start flashing on #ThursThreads, the challenge that ties tales together. Want to keep up each week? Check out the #ThursThreads #flashfiction group on Facebook and the Group on MeWe.
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.
- The prompt must be used as is. It can be split, but no intervening words can be inserted or tenses changed.
Rules to the Game:
- This is a Flash Fiction challenge, which means your story must be a minimum of 100 words, maximum of 250.
- The story must be new writing, not a snippet from something published elsewhere with the prompt added.
- 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 in the post (or be excluded from judging)
- Include your social media handle or email in the post (so we easily notify you)
- The challenge is open 7 AM to 8 PM Mountain Time US.
- 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, Bluesky, MeWe, and Mastodon, etc.
Our Judge for Week 627:
Book promoter and fantastic beta reader, Heidi Rundle.
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And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“I looked at the signs.”
All stories written herein are the property (both intellectual and physical) of the authors. Comments do not represent the views of the host and the host reserves the right to remove any content. Now, away with you, Flash Fiction Fanatics, and show us your #ThursThreads. Good luck!
Judgment Day
Clouds swarmed like ravenous tigers. Snarling, chomping in the blood-red sky.
“Not lookin’ good, Amos.”
I wiped my brow. There should have been sweat but all I felt was roasted skin.
“Not good at all, Henry.” I wanted to say more but my mouth was as dry as dead soil.
We’d been warned that rotating crops wouldn’t cut it anymore, that infestation, pestilence, all the ancient biblical horrors, were about to be visited on us and we’d better head inland, into the mountains, forge a barrier for as long as we could.
“I looked at the signs, Henry. We both did.”
“Well, we were both wrong not to heed them. And now…”
Amos’ words were left hanging in the swirling wind. Dust blew into his open mouth, and he started to choke.
“Look away brother, look away,” I yelled.
He remained motionless, deft to my screams. I grabbed him by the shoulders and twisted both him and me away from the billowing mass of ‘hoppers and dust that were streaming towards us like a mammoth runaway train.
We’d already sent the children and the compliant woman into the far hills. And the few old men who could make the journey. The rest were just waiting for the not unexpected finale.
Our valley had flourished for two hundred years. Now, with the Asia-Europe Twenty-Year War, the unending slaughter in the Middle East, South America in turmoil, North America in racial shreds, it wasn’t even a matter of time.
249 Words (of warning)
@billmelaterplea
She wasn’t sure why she’d come. She didn’t belong here, wasn’t comfortable, especially since Dimitri was there. If she’d known, she wouldn’t have stayed. Yet…
Yeah, she thought. That’s a lie. She’d come to the restaurant in Brighton Beach with the express purpose of finding him. The hair on the back of her neck prickled as the hostess led her to a table. She didn’t have to look to know that Dimitri had eyes on her.
She sat, opened a menu, waited. It took five minutes before he slid into the chair opposite her. She prayed he couldn’t hear the rapid beat of her heart.
“Why are you here?”
She held up the menu. “Dinner?”
“You are asking or stating?”
Laying the menu on the table, she inhaled deeply to settle her nerves and to fortify them. “I…uhm…” She breathed again. “Okay. It’s like this. I have this…hobby.”
Dima smirked. “You are called Gypsy for a reason. Why are you here, Gypsy girl?”
“Someone came to me and asked about you. I looked at—”
“The signs are all there,” he interrupted.
Wide-eyed, she stared at him. He believed in signs? She’d expecting him to dismiss her theories because they came from her reading of the Tarot cards. No one ever believed her when she tried to explain what she’d read there.
“Then you know?” she asked.
“Know what?”
“Whatever you plan to do tonight, you can’t do it. Not and live.”
His smile chilled her. “Challenge accepted.”
****
249 random words that will probably end up in the Russian mob book eventually
Silver James, https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSilverJames/
I looked at the signs of strain bracketing her mouth and eyes, and made a decision. “Get on. We’re getting out of town for a while.”
“What? No, I can’t.” Anna stepped back.
I narrowed my eyes. “Why not?”
She hesitated and her gaze slid around the parking lot like the vigilant U.S. Marshal she was.
“I have to find out why someone’s following me. I haven’t done anything but look for a friend of mine who was missing. I can’t just disappear in the middle of it.”
“You can, and right now, it’s best if you do. If someone’s after you, we’ll figure it out, together. But I’m not letting you go at this alone.”
“‘Letting’ me? I don’t recall needing your permission, Anubis. This is my life, not playtime.”
Out of the corner of my eye, Flint’s head turned and he raised an eyebrow before going back to watching the parking lot. I tried not to grind my teeth.
“I understand, Little Bird, but it’s my job to protect you. And right now, the best way to protect you is to make you disappear off regular channels until we can figure out who’s after you and why.” That sounded reasonable, right?
Her hands fisted and her shoulders tightened, but her expression told me she was thinking about what I’d said. I waited, resisting the urge to grab her and plonk her onto the back of my bike.
239 ineligible #ConcreteAngelsMC words
@siobhanmuir.bsky.social
The lawn needed work. So did the flower beds. The backyard was worse than the front. You could be forgiven if you thought that the person who lived in the house didn’t care, and only dealt with the lawn when they had to.
You’d be wrong.
Instead, he stared out the window once a day and looked at the lawn and flower beds. “I really need to work on them. To at least mow the lawn.” But he had problems translating thoughts into actions. He knew what to do. But he never seemed to do any of it.
What you couldn’t see was the war for survival that raged in his soul. He could name the people that mattered to him. He would tell you they were the reasons he was still here, on this miserable planet. They were why he hadn’t left.
You couldn’t see him push himself to stay alive. The daily routine he did that included his workout, washing the dishes, dealing with laundry, and making sure he ate.
You couldn’t see the emptiness in his eyes. How they were always glazed over. Like he had no thoughts in his head.
What was wrong with him was invisible to most. Maybe there was a chemical imbalance in his brain, maybe it was learned, maybe both. Who knows. I looked at the signs, how he moved, how he looked. Where you would see lazy, I saw a man wounded by life, trying to survive.
247 Words
@mysoulstears.bsky.social
Hughie pushed out the glass window and it fell like a hailstorm, creating a pyramid against the door. He pulled himself out through the hole and placed his feet on the ground. He was having trouble standing, clearly suffering from shock even though there were no immediate signs of trauma.
“I suppose you know how fast you were going?” The officer consulted his clipboard, reading the notes he’d already made. He was halfway through writing up the notice he was going to serve, needing only the driver’s details to complete the form.
“No. Not at all. But I guess you’re gonna tell me.”
The officer consulted the indicator on the back of the radar. The LED digits had frozen, having recorded the car’s maximum speed. It was well above the national limit and significantly higher than any other reading he’d seen.
“How does one-hundred-and-thirty-two miles an hour grab you,” he said, gliding forward, pulling his cuffs from his belt. “You’ve gotten yourself a county record. The kind that’ll get you free meals and accommodation for a couple of years.”
“I looked at the signs as I passed. They said nothing about speed. They mentioned that the bridge was out. And then something about a diversion. But I ain’t got no time for anything like that. I got some pharmaceuticals to deliver. People’s lives are at stake. I’m sure you can make an exception this one time.”
“Pharmaceuticals,” the officer said, his grin widening. “My day just keeps on getting better.”
250 words – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
Johnny punched out the weary man who answered the door. Damn that hurt! But at least it worked.
“What the actual fuck?!”
Flora reflexively activated the fern in the entryway to catch the falling resident. By then, Johnny had already dashed inside and up the stairs.
When a search of the PRUDENT archives hadn’t turned up anything, Johnny thought that the world’s greatest hero might be keeping the comics in her private residence. Now her secret housemate, that he just punched out, seemed as likely to be the one behind the coverup.
Still, his feet followed the path he’d envisioned on the way over. To Jian’s room. Flora caught Johnny by the arm.
“You can’t just go around punching people out and breaking into their homes!”
“It’s not exactly his home.”
Johnny pushed the bedroom door open, revealing the dresser with the vertical sword stand and featureless bust wearing a lacey butterfly mask.
“Oh, fuck…”
Flora blanched as her arms fell limply to her sides. To her credit, she recovered in time to pull Johnny away before he opened the top dresser drawer.
“What the fuck are you doing? You REALLY can’t break into Jian’s house and go through her things! How did you even know which house it was?”
“I looked at the signs.”
“What signs?!”
“The street signs. They’re the same as in the comic.”
“I promise you; no one would EVER print a comic with a hero’s home address in it.”
“And yet, here we are.”
249 PRUDENT words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social