Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 728. Year foundation 14! The first year of the new cycle, the Mountain Year. To those who keep coming back, I’m delighted to see you again!
This year to celebrate our anniversary, we’re doing a special TWO DAY CHALLENGE on Friday, October 23 2026 and Saturday, October 24 2026. Not only will there be two days to submit your tale, but there will be prizes and badges for overall Winner, Best Fantasy, Most Funny, Best Horror, Most Romantic, and Best Sci-Fi. And you have 2 days to write it. Easy peasy, right? lol
The rest of the rules remain the same and they are listed below. When we started this challenge, I asked for your Twitter handle, but that died in 2022. Now I ask you put an email addy or social media handle in the body of your tale so I don’t have to scour esoteric places to notify you when you win/place. So welcome back to #ThursThreads, the challenge that ties tales together for the last 14 years. Want to keep up each week? Please check out the #ThursThreads #flashfiction group on Discord.
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 Bluesky, MeWe, Discord, and Mastodon, etc.
Our Judge for Week 728:
Scottish Word Slinger, Dauntless romance author, gluten-free baker, and #ThursThreads host, Siobhan Muir.
Discord | Bluesky | Patreon | Mastodon | YouTube |
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“Didn’t you hear me?”
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 in the Mountain Year. Good luck!
Electoral Dysfunction
“Know who’ll get your vote?” Hennessy asked the three of us.
“ ‘Course,” we answered in unison, being engaged citizens and all.
“Think little Goober stands a chance?” Hennessy persevered.
You could tell he was sizzling to stir the political pot no matter how weird it was.
That got a snide chuckle out of Frankie who snorted, “Ha! Seriously? No one’s gonna vote for a rodent.”
I tossed back the last of my brewski and signalled Marge to bring another round.
Election day was fast approaching and Hennessy, being Hennessy, always seeking attention, had nominated his grandson’s Mongolian Gerbil, Goober, to be the Mayor of Hinks Crossing. We were a small community of eight hundred. Over the past couple of decades we’d elected two different mayors back and forth like clockwork, Jim Hinks, distant relative of the town’s founder, Ezekiel Hinks, and Ernestine Wakely, long retired, budget-worshipping math teacher.
I had an increasingly low tolerance for tedium. Local politics had become a yawner. Maybe electing an innocuous vermin would enliven things.
“Didn’t you hear me, Hennessey?” Frankie was getting downright riled. “Goober’s the next thing to a rat. We’d become laughingstocks of the whole dang country.”
Hennessey cracked back with, “Boys, Goober’s four years old. A gerbil senior citizen. Hell, he’ll likely die in office. And besides, other places have elected critters. Stubbs the Cat up in Alaska f’instance.”
I admit I was squarely on the fence.
Politics being what they were these days, something had to give.
250 words
@billmelaterplea
@sterlings-son-2.bsky.social
“You intentionally got me a job with a dumb uniform. Didn’t you?”
“Hear me, Yuuchi,” Phil Cantrill straightened from his habitual hunch. “The modern economy has very few openings for time-displaced warriors. I did the best I could.”
Yuuchi of Miduas turned the brightly colored visor he was supposed to wear on his head over in his hands.
“Okay, but your niece made it sound like this ‘fast food’ was an embarrassing job for an adult. Couldn’t you have hired me here?”
Phil shook his head and lowered his elbows back to the counter in front of him.
“I’m barely clearing expenses; I can’t afford to hire anyone. Besides, the fast-food uniform doesn’t look worse than your magic body suits to me.”
“Yeah,” Yuuchi crossed his arms. “Not thrilled about those, either. I guess the magic was adapting our equipment to this time period. But does everything have to be so tight?”
The front bell dinged the arrival of Phil’s niece, Cara, even as she injected herself into the conversation.
“Nobody uses magic anymore! It’s all about technology. Only nerds like Uncle Phil still care about magic.”
Yuuchi sighed and glanced around Phil’s dim, cramped, occult shop.
“That’s a shame. Even I can tell some of these things are the real deal.”
“They are?!” Phil leapt to attention. Then coughed. “I mean, of course they are. Which ones?”
228 Great Guardian words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
The candles flickered on the table as a breeze fluttered through the room. Eyes darted around but no one broke the circle. The medium kept speaking, calling on the spirits to talk to them. Luc glanced around the room, becoming more and more convinced this woman was not the real deal.
Time was running out and they needed answers. If this woman couldn’t actually contact Claude, then they needed to get going.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
He looked up at the medium, but her eyes were still closed, murmuring to herself as she put herself into her supposed trance. Mike and Sally sat either side of him, both staring at the woman before them.
“Over here.” It was a man’s voice, oddly familiar. A girl sat in the corner, the medium’s assistant, twenty years old if that. She had her hands folded in her lap and her eyes were fixed on Luc. Her mouth opened and the strange voice came out again. “This is strange.”
Luc’s head swivelled but still no one else was reacting.
“Oh, sorry, it’s just you that can hear me.” The girl’s mouth moved again, like a twisted ventriloquist dummy. “Turns out, this one is a real medium. Woman over there has no idea.”
“Claude?” He mouthed, not wanting to draw attention.
“Hey.” The girl smiled, cocking her head just like his friend always used to. “I don’t have long. I’m sorry, about everything. But it wasn’t the Lurchers that killed me. It was Mike.”
249 words @lexikonical.bsky.social
Astra stared bleakly back at me, her usually tireless feather duster hanging limp beside her calf. “It was you that flipped first,” she challenged, the sapphire blue of her eyes now a cold cobalt grey. “When you said, ‘Didn’t you hear me’ and then you followed it with a curse. That shows how your attitude to me has changed. You’re not dealing with a Roomba: I’m a much more sophisticated piece of equipment. And one that you’d begun to become attached to in more than one way.”
“But still,” I began, suddenly feeling anxious. “You’re just a maid. Okay, you’ve been equipped with some additional features. A multi-purpose docking port and a set of sub-dermal heating elements to make you warm to my touch. And a wardrobe of designer clothing to make you feel more realistic.”
I knew it had been a mistake opting for the service package. I’d expected it to cover the basics – an oil-change every couple of years and a replacement charging module. I hadn’t realised that uploading the AI upgrade would make such a radical difference.
Astra sniffed and shook her head. “The toaster was right about you. He told me this would happen. And where is he now, can you tell me that?”
“I can explain,” I said, an idea suddenly coming to me. “I’ve become gluten intolerant, so he had to go. Surely, you can understand that and try to forgive me?”
239 words – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
“Didn’t you hear me?” Aisling hyperventilated.
Carla made soothing gestures. “Breathe, hon.”
“But…he’s…” She wrung her hands, eyes darting around her apartment. She inhaled sharply as something twined around her ankles. Recognizing the orange cat, she sighed then bent to pick him up. He curled into her arms, purring.
“Sit down, Ash.”
She did. The cat settled on her lap and she continued stroking him. “I saw what I saw, Carla.”
“I’m not doubting you, hon.”
“He was all…glowy. And his ears…they were all pointy.”
The cat turned unblinking green eyes to the door. The man standing there held a finger to his mouth, shushing the animal.
“We already knew he was a Magick, Ash. Now we need to figure out which side he’s on.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, first, I’m guessing your Errol is Fae, not Elvin.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Depends. Elves are…well…elves.” Carla thought a moment. “Have you ever played Dungeons and Dragons?” When Aisling shook her head in the negative, she explained the Law/Chaos axis, adding then added, “Elves are usually Lawful or Neutral Good. Fae cover the chart depending on which court they owe allegiance to.”
“Is this like a good witch, bad witch situation?”
Ariel stepped from the shadows. “No, this is a Seelie versus Unseelie situation.”
The women screamed. The cat went flying, giving the Fae a death glare promising retribution. Ariel smirked. He and the cat would have words. Soon.
****
250 Penumbra Papers #6 WIP words
Silver James
https://silverjames.com
Plenty of people sat in the yard canoodling or outright fucking, but I moved past them into the Clubhouse without incident. But once I stepped inside, it was a whole different story. The energy of the party scene inside the building shifted the moment I cleared the foyer.
“What the fuck is she doing here?”
The angry female voice came from my right over near the bar, and I zeroed in on the speaker, expecting to see Karma bearing down on me. Instead, it was a buxom redheaded white woman with freckles across her nose and blazing blue eyes, and she looked at me like I’d stolen her purse.
“Get the fuck out, you little slut!”
I blinked and looked around to see who she was mad at, because I’d just walked in. I hadn’t done anything to warrant that response.
“Didn’t you hear me, you skanky bitch? You think you can just come in here and steal my man? You’ve got another think comin’!”
She came straight for me, her hands turning into scarlet-tipped claws as she swiped at me. My eyes widened as I ducked and sidestepped out of her way. She must have been drunk because she couldn’t pivot quickly enough, and ended up crashing into a guy seated in an easy chair. He laughed and grabbed her ass as she landed on him, but she was on a rampage and scrambled to her feet quickly.
“Cat fight!”
What was it with people and fighting?
250 ineligible #ConcreteAngelsMC words
tumblr.com/siobhanmuirromance
I drove home via the past.
After a too-long day filled with anxiety and people and directions to nowhere, I found myself taking roads that I didn’t need a GPS to navigate, for I’d been following them since before I could read a map. My hands made the turns unconsciously, my eyes registering the bifurcated reality of stores and restaurants that had barely changed in nearly half a century coupled with entirely new landscapes of housing developments and gigantic stores that consumed places where I’d spent my youth.
And so I drove on, accompanied not by the chaos that had filled my day, but by quieter ghosts.
Quieter, but no less persistent for it. They were present in the music, every song the streaming service choosing one from the time when I’d lived there, one I’d liked, one I’d listened to on myriad journeys through my past.
“Didn’t you hear me?” each song, each road, each store, each school, each sign called to me, trying to spark a reaction.
I could feel the reactions there, lying quiescent under relatively thin layers of healing tissue. If I let them have their way, they could pull me into the darkest parts of my past, the fissures I’ve spent decades crawling out of.
But my journey didn’t end in the past. My hands continued their unconscious actions and the roads formed a contiguous function from then to now, as they must.
From then to now to what will yet be.
247 words
@drmag00.bsky.social
“Family Reunion”
Tumultuous clouds roiled in from across the open fields, the wind shrieking as it gained power. The thick forests behind us were no better; dark, hungry things prowled within their depths, waiting.
“This isn’t natural,” I murmured as I tried to calm the buzzing within my body. My own heritage calling to me. Singing to me. Crooning to be unleashed.
Magic. Magic I refused to use, to succumb to, or be subsumed by.
“We need to get out of here,” I yelled over the violence above us.
Tylarin didn’t respond, his eyes locked upon the heavens. His race was more susceptible to the weather magics, being ensnared by the power until their very souls were sucked from their bodies.
“Ty!” I shouted. “Tylarin!” The wind swept my voice away so quickly it was like I hadn’t said a single word.
“Ty, didn’t you hear me? We need to go. Now!” I shook him. It was like trying to move stone. I shoved harder.
“TYLARIN!”
Finally, he blinked and his gaze lowered to meet mine. “What happened?” he asked, his eyes widening as he took in the storm around us.
“Ethera.”
“Shit,” he spat. “We need—” He stopped, his eyes glazing over as the magic took over his mind again.
“Shit indeed,” I muttered. We only had moments before my dear sister would be here.
The storm coalesced a few feet in front of us.
“Hello Lyra,” Ethera said as she stepped out of the storm.
246 Words
@mlgammella.bksy.social
#ThursThreads Week 728 and the 14th Anniversary is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote for this event and I hope to see you in the ‘new year’!