Welcome back to the home of Paranormal & Dauntless Romance. Today is Thursday and that means it’s time to start flashing. We’re at the beginning of our ninth year of weekly prompts. It’s amazing we’ve gone this long! This is Week 481 of #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 Twitter handle or email in the post (so we don’t have to look for you)
- The challenge is open 7 AM to 8 PM Mountain 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, MeWe, and Google Plus, etc.
Our Judge for Week 481:
Beta Reader, Collaborative Editor, Designer, Marketer, Veronica Jorden.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“It wasn’t a question.”
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!
“You should have stayed asleep,” she crooned softly into my ear. “It would have been better for both of us. But now I’ll have to do something neither of us will enjoy.”
It was dark in my bedroom, but I wasn’t in bed. I was sitting in my chair instead, my arms taped to its arms and my ankles to its legs, her hand pulling at my hair lifting my face from my chest. The torch she was directing into my eyes made it impossible to see her face, although I didn’t recognise her voice.
Maybe I’d survive to see the dawn if it stayed that way.
I said nothing. I wasn’t in the mood for conversation.
“You’ll tell me the code to the lockbox,” the woman continued. “The one you keep under the bed. I’ve searched everywhere in the house for the pharmaceutical supplies you must have stashed away, but there’s nothing else of value here. Just the crap people like you use to show off the sizes of your bank balances.”
I said nothing. I’d been hoping it would just be a burglary, a casual break-in I could easily put behind me. Her knowledge of the drugs changed everything. The people I worked for would never write off their loss. There would be a reckoning and it would come quickly.
“I think you’re misunderstanding me,” the woman said, her voice developing an icy steel beneath its contralto. “It wasn’t a question, and you WILL give me that code.”
250 words – twothirdsrasta.blogspot.com
She made her way across the foggy moor, the damp, spongy ground giving an extra spring to her already hurried pace. She knew this land, this place, so it wasn’t a question of if she could pick her way over ancient roots and hidden hollows, but if she could make it before sunset. The dark did things to shadows here. And the talk in the village had been that of evil things. Something was happening in the moor after dark, and Rebecca had no intention of finding out what.
“What are you doing here?”
Rebecca stopped in her tracks, puzzled to see Jeremiah appear. He was even dressed funny, carrying a rifle. Tired and mean, he looked nothing like the handsome boy the village girls giggled about. Nothing like her best friend.
“Me? You! Why’re you—“
“Never mind,” he hissed. “Get. And fast.”
True. The sun was low in the sky. Too low. She had misjudged the time. Her heart thudded too loud to question when another man appeared, and then a third, her steps picking up again, her focus hard on the blurry silhouette of the village.
But she did question the rumble that made her stumble, the snap of gunfire near her feet, and the tall, whispy, faceless creature that took shape before her.
But the villagers would never understand. Not why she was there, or why she stood and took the next bullet for the dark thing. True evil had the kind face. Every monster knew that.
250 words @AngoraShade
Furious, Devlin followed his target, his wolf’s claws barely leashed. He’d overheard the argument, recognized the sound of flesh on flesh and the painful cry that followed. He had a job and it wasn’t breaking into that house to make sure the pretty woman who lived there was okay. So now he watched the sleazeball harass the girls working the stroll on Kneeland Street from his hidden position. The arse was an infinite tool. It wasn’t a question of who or how. No, it was simply a question of when. Tommy Gallagher was a dead man walking. Because Devlin would kill the corrupt cop and feel not an ounce of guilt. He’d happily put a bullet between the bastard’s eyes.
Gallagher grabbed the prostitute’s ass as she tried to squeeze past him and Dev tensed. Not yet. He couldn’t end the man yet. Not until Ronan and Brian gave the go-ahead. They had plans and taking matters into his own hands would only screw things up. So he watched. And waited. And bid his time.
His thoughts turned to Gallagher’s wife. She’d be better off without him but did she love him so much that she wouldn’t leave him? They’d been married in the Church and she went to mass every Sunday. Dev knew this because he followed her too. So was it death do they part? His wolf clawed at his insides, no longer a patient hunter. “Soon,” he whispered to his inner beast. And the woman. “That’s a promise.”
****
250 Moonstruck Mafia Wolves WIP words
@SilverJames_
Mike nodded and grunted to the old man to keep the conversation short.
Amanda had abandoned the counter and perused the electric hand tools section as he rung up the older man’s purchases. He kept going over what she’d proposed and found himself leaning toward accepting. What was the best that could happen? He’d be married to a beautiful, driven, dynamic woman who loved her kid and had money to spare. He’d have a fancy house that he wouldn’t have to take care of, his bills would be paid, and he’d end up with a place to live and a vehicle that wouldn’t break down every time there was a snowstorm. And he’d only have to stick with it a year.
Are there any downsides to this?
It wasn’t a question. It was short term and beneficial to all parties. Declining the offer made as much sense as throwing out a winning lottery ticket. Once the door closed behind the older gentlemen, Mike returned to the counter and Amanda stepped up, her gaze both hopeful and expectant.
“Okay, so I want to be clear. What you’re asking me is to marry you for a year.” Mike pushed down one finger with his other hand. “In exchange for being your husband, you’ll one, buy me a house; two, buy me a new vehicle; three, pay Sierra’s tuition until high school; and four, possibly have sex with me. Have I got that right?”
241 ineligible #WIP500 words
@SiobhanMuir
“How I Learned I Wasn’t Afraid of Heights”
It wasn’t a question of whether or not I’d die that night. Between the poison, the curse, and the score of women with crossbows surrounding the lean-to, the only mysteries were when it’d happen and how.
I sure wished I’d had a way of getting Marilee out, though. She hadn’t asked to get stuck with me tracking her brother through the mountains. She hadn’t asked for him to hook up with a witch who cursed me when I slit his throat while she rode him. And she sure as hell hadn’t asked me to cook her dinner when I had a fire and she didn’t and the snow started to fall. How was I to know that the purple berries that grew on the flutterbushes here were poison when the red ones back home were an aphrodisiac?
What can I say? Marilee had one hell of an ass.
And one hell of a mind. She just smirked at me while I ate. Then she told me why I was the one feeling fluish and she wasn’t lifting her skirt.
Aw, hell. Every man dies sometime, right?
But then I heard the yelling outside. And I knew that Lane and her band wouldn’t care that Marilee wasn’t really with me, and that she’d watched me kill myself. Well, except for the actually dying part.
Of course, the thing that surprised me most the whole damn night was when Marilee sprouted wings.
And glowed.
Turned out that dying wasn’t on the agenda.
250 words
@drmag00
Quick Bunny Moves
I didn’t have a choice. The dead, no matter who they are, what they’ve done, deserve a measure of justice. I called the cops and shuffled Henderson back up onto the porch. In the next half hour, not only the local cops but some charming-looking Feds were there.
We were all separated and grilled to perfection. I was impressed. A dead goober gopher found in Henderson’s basement-hovel rabbit warren seemed to be receiving far more law enforcement scrutiny than I would have expected.
Even my buddy from vice, Vic Abrams showed up although he was keeping in the background.
I nodded my head to grab Vic’s attention. He sauntered over as a Fed, Grimshaw, was poking into my affairs.
“Pay attention,” Grimshaw directed.
I smiled, said, ”I see a friend.”
“I’m your only friend here, Mr. Private Detective, and I don’t even like you.”
“Well,” I said, getting just a mite snarky, “I like you.”
“Don’t move. We’re not finished.”
“I think we are,” I declared.
“You stay here until I tell you. We have a dead agent here and until I clear you, you are a person of interest.”
“Zeke? A Fed?”
It wasn’t a question I had considered. I hadn’t met Zeke. All he had been to me was another tenant of Glitch Hendersons, another lowlife who lived a sketchy existence.
Grimshaw had my attention just as Vic touched my shoulder, asked, “What have you got yourself into?“
“Deep doodoo,” Grimshaw blared. “Deep bloody doodoo.”
@billmelaterplea
250 WIP
“What are you in for?”
There’s a thin figure huddled against the wall of the cell across from mine. I directed my question toward her. She doesn’t answer. It doesn’t matter. I just like to talk while I think.
“You are both charged with unholy crimes against the natural order.”
The booming voice that rumbles like distant thunder even after speaking isn’t the skinny girl’s.
“Obviously,” I spread my hands blithely.
Our jailor is too big and glowy to be human. Interesting my fellow prisoner isn’t the one I know. There can’t be that many of us. I lean my head back against my cell wall. The cells look like stone but could just as easily be crystal. Maybe even pure magic.
“You will be tried for exceeding the power allotted to mortals by profane means. You will be stripped of those powers and sentenced according to the will of the Spirit Council.”
I’m not the only one who likes talking. After a year of freezing my butt off on a tropical island, I’m starting to feel all toasty inside. I stand and raise one of my hands. Our jailor reciprocates with a raised eyebrow.
“You have a question?”
“You haven’t stripped our powers yet.”
I blow the doors off every cell with a firestorm that I then funnel to slam our jailor against the fortified door to the block. I step out of my cell and smirk at our toppled tormentor.
“Sorry. It wasn’t a question.”
247 The Ice Queen words (sorry, left in a redundant word in the previous version)
@DavidALudwig
#ThursThreads Week 481 is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.