Week 668 of #ThursThreads was a success, and y’all never disappoint. Thank you to everyone who writes each week. You are why we’re still doing this, and why we’ve made it almost 13 YEARS!
If you’ve just found us, welcome to the crew! May you come back again and write more great flash. A thousand thanks to Eric Martell for judging this week. Follow Siobhan Muir on Bluesky or check out the #ThursThreads #flashfiction group on Facebook or the #ThursThreads Group on MeWe to keep up with news, etc.
Entries:
- Bill Engleson
- Jacob Summers
- Silver James
- Sheilagh Lee
- Siobhan Muir
- David A. Ludwig
- K.R. Van Horn
Honorable Mention
Silver James | Website
Eric says: I don’t always like WIP pieces (although I’ve submitted my share) because I tend to like my flash pieces to be entire stories, but I really enjoyed this one. I could hear the sound of the gooseneck lamp and see the words on the page, a small except that made sense, and yet didn’t. Nice work, Silver!
winner announcement
Week 668 Winner
Eric says: When I saw the prompt phrase, I instantly wondered if anyone was going to make Time a tangible entity, not just the unidirectional arrow of causality, and KR did just that. Not only that, but they gave Time agency, trapped though it is in a painting. Capturing the way a painting (or a photo) freezes Time in place while allowing us to imagine the Before and the After, this story made me want more. Tell me more of the curator and her newfound awareness.
– The Time –
In a dusty wing of the city’s oldest museum hung a painting no one remembered buying. It showed a sun that never quite rose over a field that never quite ended. Visitors who stumbled in by accident lingered before the image. Then they left with their shoelaces untied and their thoughts slightly out of order.
The placard read: “The Time, Oil on Canvas.”
What no one knew was that 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘪𝘮𝘦 was not only the name of the painting. It was something more. Tangible. And it had been trapped inside the painting for centuries, brushed in with hurried hands by an artist who’d used stolen minutes from a thousand sleeping clocks to finish it. And thus, for ages, The Time coiled in the space between strokes of gold and rust, a sentient shimmer aching to stretch.
At night, the shadows slept and the cameras blinked. But The Time wasn’t idle.
The painting wept oil onto the floor. The Time crept like molten wax toward the exits, dripping footprints shaped like calendar days that never existed. Clocks in the museum slowed, and the night guard aged an entire week during his nap.
The Time rewound dreams frozen inside ancient sculptures and whispered leap seconds into the bones of the marble lions.
In the morning, the curator noticed the frame had grown warm to the touch. She pressed her ear to the canvas and heard a ticking pulse.
And for just a moment, the sun in the painting blinked. Only she noticed.
~~~~~~~
Congratulations TEN TIME WINNER K.R., and Honorable Mention Silver! Don’t forget to claim your badges and display them with pride. You certainly earned it!
Pass on the great news on Facebook, MeWe, Bluesky, Mastodon, shiny mirrors, Morse Code, and signal flags. Check out all the original tales HERE. Thanks for stopping by and happy reading! 🙂
