Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 630. 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 630:
Scientist, Dad, and flash fiction author, Eric Martell.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“It felt like years.”
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!
There’s this place called Hidden Acres, where the rule breakers go. The idea is that we’re buried so deep in the Planes of the afterlife, that we’ll never get out; thus we can’t reoffend. But the thing about rule breakers is that we know how to escape the consequences, even when the consequences hit us hard.
Death doesn’t stop us. And HE doesn’t seem to know that, so he keeps burying us down in this Hidden Acres Plane, about as far into the Afterlife as we can go before there’s nothing else. And yet, when he finds us up top, he’s mad as hell about it. We’re RULE BREAKERS, this is what we do. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss out on life up top.
My best friend down here gives me a hug. “Good luck! Last time I was up there, it felt like years since I’d been human again. It’s changed a lot and not all of it for the better.”
I can already feel the tug of life as I approach the locked door that’s meant to keep us confined. For a split second, it’s dark and warm. Finally, I blink at overhead bright lights and a sudden burst of cold air on my skin. It’s been a while since I came back as an infant. This is going to be a wild ride.
@Aightball
230 words
“Teyanhu, I came here for you.”
They were halfway past me when they paused, glancing at me with their left two eyes. “You came here for me? What does that mean?”
“It means the Life Mother showed me you in my vision. Her message was clear. I’m here for you; to help you, in whatever capacity you need. But you’re my concern.” I hoped that sounded strong enough because it was obvious they’d send me packing if I didn’t convince them to let me stay.
Not that I’m just going to go even if they tell me to.
They eyed me so long, it felt like years passed as the moments flowed away from us. I held my breath, wondering which direction they’d choose, but their eyes narrowed and they tilted their head.
“Why?”
I blinked. Not the question I’d been expecting. “Why, what?”
“Why would you want to stay and help me? Have you looked around? There is nothing here but work, restoration, and more work. There are no communities, no joy, no yearly celebrations.” They waved one of their hands toward the empty and desolate lands behind them. “It’s a lonely existence and a hard life here. There aren’t any comforts or luxuries but what I make. Why would you want that?”
I took a deep breath. What could I tell them to make them understand the depth of my need to be with them?
237 ineligible #SciFiWIP words
@siobhanmuir.bsky.social
Anesthetic
“Darn… cant find a vein.”
“I have them. My fair share…”
“Make a fist…”
“I’m not angry.”
“Very funny. Make a fist.”
“Fine.”
“Pump it…”
“Do my best…”
“Ah, there we are. In we go. Won’t hurt a bit…”
“But I’ll feel it.”
“Done.”
“Hmmm!”
“You mean, humdinger?”
“”No…but it….”
“Now that I have a blood sample, here come the pièce de résistance…You’ll be in nod off land in moments…keep smiling…and don’t worry.”
My brain is quite busy even if my tongue is tied up like a shoe lace…hmmm, why would I think that? A poor metaphor. Should have said fishing line…a better knot. Usually. My laces are always coming undone…
Lids drooping. I’ll be out for the count in seconds. Then the knife. Then goodbye pain. How long has it been growing in me? It felt like years, but it’s only been a few months. We had been playing around, belly rubbing when she said…what’s this and I felt it, hard as a bowling ball in my belly…
“You’re fighting it…just relax…”
Can’t form words. Or find them. This is big mistake. I should have waited a few more weeks, a couple of months at best.
“We still have a backlog,” my GP said. Well, not mine. The drop-in clinic physician.
Do I have another choice, I asked.
Overseas. If you want to spend the money.
You mean to live, I asked.
And they know what they’re doing, he said.
Life’s a crapshoot, isn’t it?
Down I go.
250 Words
@billmelaterplea
On the boardwalk, I stood out of the way. The place was crowded on this first warm day of spring. I inhaled deeply, the mixed aromas filling my nose. Salty air, seawater, popcorn and caramel, foods from many cultures. I should keep walking, get to my destination but I didn’t move. I just stood there, soaking it all in. It felt like years since I’d been to Brighton Beach.
As a freshly-minted college grad, I’d packed my bags and skedaddled. I didn’t want to be here now and not just due to the family drama that sucked me back in.
Once upon a time, the beach part of Brighton Beach was my favorite place. Splashing in the surf, building sand castles grew into summer tans and boy-watching with my girlfriends. They were all married now. Not me. No, I’d run for the hills, as the saying goes. And I never looked back.
They—whoever they are—say hindsight is twenty-twenty. They also say love is blind. It had been. Blind, though in hindsight, it hadn’t been love. Nope. Just a deep infatuation that faded into the misty corners of memory. They also say that you can’t go home again but here I stood, living proof that you could.
Someone bumped me and my purse disappeared. I looked up into the eyes of the man I’d never forgotten. He’d collared the now-struggling purse snatcher.
“Well, hell.”
“I am happy to see you again too, solnishka.”
If only I believed that.
****
249 random words from future Russian Wolves WIP
Silver James @ https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSilverJames/
Sunshine had no idea how long she’d been flying beside the ocean. She only knew sometimes it felt like years. She had seen three more villages beside the ocean. She had noticed they were all different. One had no fairies. One had nothing but fairies. One was mixed, mostly humans, but some fairies.
All of them fished the ocean for food.
As she flew, she noticed the shore ran mostly north and south. It wavered some, heading east or west, but overall, it went north and south. As she thought about it, and remembered the directions she’d flown, she thought about the name of the planet. Cylinders. And she realized the planet was broken into cylindrical shapes. Like giant rings that encompassed the world. With caps on the north and the south.
It was an endless time. Every day was the same. Nothing to see. No one to encounter. Nothing but the endless ocean.
“There aren’t many people on this planet are there?”
“No.” The machines answered. “But the population is starting to grow. Slowly.”
“Do you have a map of the world?”
“Yes.”
“May I see it?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“It is not time. After you reach the Angels, then it will be time.”
She’d forgotten about the Angels. Even though a half-angel lived with her sisters, she’d never thought much about them. She wondered what they were like.
“The Angels.”
“Yes.” The machines chose to answer. “They are our one mistake.”
“Mistake?”
“They could ruin everything.”
248 Words (Per Google Write)
@mysoulstears.bsky.social
It felt like years since I’d been back to my hometown. The town had undergone a lot of changes some good mostly bad. I had bought a store for my knickknack’s, sight unseen, downtown, most of the buildings were board up and homeless people lingered outside the door. I offered a day’s wages to the homeless guy and as we began talking, I realized why he seemed so familiar this was my childhood friend, whom I had lost touch with . Finishing by five o’clock, I paid him, inviting him to stay for a pizza supper. Opening up David told me how his life had spiraled of into an addiction to the pain killers they had given him after the accident that killed his wife and children. He was clean now but with the long memories in our hometown no one would hire him fulltime , so he lived in a tent in the park, surviving on odd jobs he could pick up. I offered him a job minimum wage giving him the other apartment beside mine that I had planned to rent free for the next year.
“Why are you doing all of this?” he asked.
“Because once upon a time when I was a new kid you were the only one who was kind. You showed me in a world of ugly, choose kindness.”
This was ten years ago, my good friend David is the mayor, making a difference for all and revitalizing the town.
247 Words
@SweetSheil
“Get him out of there. Now!”
“If we terminate the convergence after the—”
“I said now!”
Vital signs flatten, the incessant drone splitting the silence. A frantic burst of panic follows, scientists rushing to input commands, to pull plugs. The body in the middle of it all convulses, limbs thrashing.
What a waste. Delgado never had the stomach for this work. Expert in chronotelepathy aside, it’s a wonder they even put him on the team—let alone lead it—with that bleeding heart.
They’d had hopes for this subject. Time is running out. Lieutenant Gregorek gestures to his aide. “Get the next one ready.“
“Yes, si—”
“He’s alive!”
The Lieutenant peers over the railing to the scene below. A sea of white coats surround the pale figure on the table. Strong vital signs and a fast, but steady, heartbeat project on the display.
“Good god,” Gregorek murmurs. It worked. The subject is alive, trying to sit up and pull tubes from his throat, coughing. Cognizant. Ambition bubbles, hot and excited, in Gregorek’s belly. This could change everything.
Delgado presses close to the man’s side, murmuring too quietly to overhear. The tubing is removed, IV lines are adjusted. The subject presses his face into Delgado’s neck.
“How long was he in there? Communing in the convergence?” someone asks, the question trembling.
Delgado answers, “Just seconds.”
The man’s knuckles are blanched a bloodless white. His voice rasps, like the draw of sandpaper across metal. “It felt like years.”
Words: 248
Welcome, Wollfgang. Please reply with your social media handle so we can notify you should you win. Thanks. 🙂
Oh, my bad.
@thewollfgang (Twitter)
He thrashed about a bit, his body convulsing, elbows and knees bony and angular. I’d surprised him when plumping up his pillow, pressing it down onto his face. He’d had a thing about hospital equipment, dissatisfied by anything but the best – I’d smuggled in a duck down one to optimise his comfort. I’d not been able to swap over his sheets for higher thread count ones, though; he’d had to make do with utilitarian linen.
It only took him a couple of minutes to die. I was heavier than him; Rubenesque he’d liked to call me when he was pimping me out, his face contorted into a leer. Even before then, I never liked him; he was too handsy and sly, his fingers straying where they shouldn’t have gone. Every second we spent together, it felt like years of subliminal torture, knowing the way his mind worked and how he’d describe me to his ‘gentlemen’ friends.
So that was how he ended his life. Or rather, how I did him in. I considered myself a saint, ridding the world of a parasite, careful not to leave to leave the bed in disarray. I expected that a nurse would discover him first, laid out with his arms crossed neatly across his chest.
He didn’t deserve an ounce of dignity, not at all. But I was always trying to better myself and eliminating that streak of slime was the only sure way I could ever get ahead.
Good night, Daddy dearest. Farewell.
250 words – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
Do nothing.
Can you actively do nothing? Usually when I’m doing nothing, I’m thinking about doing something. My brain races faster and faster about all the things that I should be doing, or I could be doing or I tune into my body and start to feel – too much.
There are those aches and pains: my wrist from working way too much on the computer, the ache behind my right shoulder. Is that normal? Should I worry about it. Honestly, it’s the entire right-hand side that aches, which really seems suspicious.
Time expands. Laying there doing nothing for ten minutes, well, it felt like years. I’m giving this advice to students, being aware of metal health and allowing yourself to have downtime and yet, what do I do that’s nothing? Do I allow myself the time?
If we’re discussing mental health awareness and what makes us happy, then I have to address writing. Writing makes me happy. No, not the pressure of deadlines, of having to write because something is due because people have expectations.
Expectations suck because rarely can you meet someone’s expectations, especially your own. But the feeling of getting words on the page, of a magical phrase that hits the right note that resonates with others and perhaps makes them feel that they’re not alone or not the only person alive who feels a lot when really, they’re supposed to be feeling nothing.
Because I don’t – feel nothing. I feel a lot, and that’s all right, too.
250 words
@LouisaBacio
The girl looked small and vulnerable. Not a good idea in this part of town. And, sure enough, a couple of unsavory sailors shoved the little lady down a dingy alley.
“Play nice, and quiet, and we won’t have to hurt you too much. Yeah?”
The first man’s voice was thick with alcohol. Or maybe it was Rhea’s ears. She shook her head to clear her vision and followed the three into the alley.
“Lookit ‘er tremble!” the second man laughed. “We got ourselves a delicate one!”
“Leave the girl alone.”
Rhea cocked the hammer of her flintlock pistol. Both thugs reached for their clubs. She narrowed her eyes.
“You get one warning shot. But think carefully whether you want to take it. I am VERY hungover.”
The men exchanged glances then removed their hands from their weapons.
“Eh, she’s not worth it! Let’s go.”
Rhea watched the sailors leave before uncocking her gun. Did she hear something? The girl’s whispered thanks were barely audible. Even right at Rhea’s elbow. The curly headed cutie looked up at Rhea with the biggest brown eyes the washed-up captain had ever seen.
“How’d you end up out here by yourself?”
This girl was no noble. But not a laborer either.
“I lost my home.” Still whispering.
Losing a home hurt. Rhea knew what it felt like. Years ago, the Law took Rhea’s home from her.
“Come on, I’ll introduce you to my boarding house mistress.”
242 words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
#ThursThreads Week 630 is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.