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 507 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 507:
Mammal mama, Eden Books owner, and avid reader, Robyn Crawford.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“Boy, do we have a lot of work to do.”
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!
Very Solly
I hate it when I don’t protect my flank. We had been so consumed by finding Terry that we forgot for a deadly moment that Solly was a planner, a grifter who rarely left anything to chance.
We three turned around to stare at our captor.
“Hey Solly,” I said thinking there was maybe a 10% prospect that we might regain the upper hand if I could schmooze Solly with some slaphappy repartee. Not that that was my forte, but I didn’t relish immediate extinction.
“Save your baloney, Peeper. I appreciate you bringing Frankie to me. Who’s this goober?”
“Henry Samuels…Hank, meet Solly Vapers. Our host.”
Samuels grimaced, nodded, kept his cool, imagining I supposed that we were in the soup, were about to be emulsified and he didn’t want to stir the pot.
Frank however was not that smartly put together. “Let Terry go, Solly…Mr. Vapers. We’ve got a child who needs her…”
“HA!” laughed Solly, “So now you’re a family man, Frankie. Boy, do we have a lot of work to do. And by we, I mean me. Terry,” Solly said addressing Terry who was cowering on the bed, “You seriously need this bundle of bunkum?”
Terry got up from the bed, grabbed a few clothes that Solly clearly had removed, dressed, said, “He isn’t much, Solly, but he has a few uses. I can mortgage my shop, cover his debt to you…would that fix it?”
The wreaking ball was clearly in Solly’s criminally inclined court.
250 WIP
@billmelaterplea
Terim frowned. What’s she looking for?
Before he could join her, she turned her attention to the open space around the cave. She cleared away any debris that showed their occupation before she returned inside and removed the rocks from the fire pit to the base of the walls. She poured water on the pit and thrust her hand into it to be sure it was cold, before rinsing off the soot.
“Are you ready to leave?” She fixed him with sharp scrutiny as she shouldered her pack.
“Yes.”
She nodded once. “Good.” She handed him his much lighter gear and struck out for a trail up the mountain.
“Shouldn’t I take the heavier pack? I’m bigger.” He followed behind her, uneasy with their distribution of weight.
Kulastri snorted. “You’ve just recovered your strength from your journey here. You’re going to need all of it to make it another ten kilometers over rough terrain. If you’re weighed down, you won’t make it to our next destination.”
“But—”
“Do you understand that women are full people?” She didn’t look back.
“Yes, of course.”
“Do you believe that women are equal to you in skill and expertise?”
“Well…”
“Boy, do we have a lot of work to do to fix that. Try to keep up. It’s a long hike today, given your lack of strength.”
Terim wanted to protest her dismissive response, but he found keeping up with her sapped much of his energy after only a few minutes.
248 ineligible #WIP500 words
@SiobhanMuir
When they covered up the existence of life on the moon, the politicians only thought it had been once, not that we were in hiding. I was only the second of my kind, a hybrid of human and star-souled, and the first was only remembered in legends.
It was easy to infiltrate their base as a child, slipping in on a shadow when a new shuttle docked. My father raised me and loved me as much as he did his fully human children, and as long as I kept my eyes out of the sunlight, it was easy to hide what I was. It helped that his home bordered the fence keeping humans away from the dark side of the moon.
And now, I was on Terra… Earth.
I was the first natural born werewolf in over three thousand years, and NASA didn’t know what to do with me.
The businesswoman whose office they’d locked me in looked over her computer. “Boy, do we have a lot of work to do to clean this mess up. Do you speak?”
“Five languages you have the capacity to and three others, so I likely do it better than you. I’m also not a danger. I just want to learn about my human side before I’m sent back.”
“Staying is not an option, I’m afraid.”
I smiled, showing her my fangs. “I have all the options,” I replied before walking into a shadowed corner and out into the shadow of a large tree.
250 words
@miya_kressin
The lab was deserted. Or what was left of the lab. The building. The campus. The world—after the apocalypse.
“What are we looking for?” Maya asked.
Lily was already on her hands and knees sifting through the debris. “This.” She held a sheet of programming code. “Professor Avery entered a code that ended the world.”
“Holy shit. He did it deliberately?”
Lily entered something on her laptop. “I don’t know for sure, but we have to reverse it.”
“Is that even possible?” Maya said. “I mean how do you reverse the end of the world?”
“With magic?” It was more a question than a statement.
“You’ve got to be kidding, Lily. Magic can have unintended consequences,”
“What’s the absolute worst that can happen, Maya? I mean what’s worse than the end of the world?”
Maya thought about that for a minute. “Well, I suppose that using magic can be good and bad, Lily.”
Lily shook her head. “Nothing can be good and bad at the same time, Maya. Remember our logic class? The Law of Non-Contradiction?”
“Okay, well, let’s just say I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me, too,” Lily said.
Lily checked her laptop and also consulted a small leather bound journal she carried with her.
“A spell?” Maya asked.
“My gram taught me this spell,” Lily said. She entered the spell into her laptop and they waited.
After a long minute, Maya looked around. “Boy, do we have a lot of work to do.”
Catherine Verdier
@CatherineVrdr
250 Words (from my YA fantasy WIP)
Six months ago, I died, so how am I actually writing any of this incredible story down, you ask? Read on. Six months ago, my friend, Annie, her husband Tomas and I graduated from our residency, ready to move on to our new pastures in full fledged specialities, we decided to have one last dinner in town before we take up our jobs as a nighttime emergency doctors.
Tomas pulled out his car, Annie in the front in me in the back when Annie said “Watch out Tomas Annie brace,” then the cement truck hit us.
The first thing I remember hearing is someone saying, ““Boy, do we have a lot of work to do. Their bodies are broken possibly beyond repair and we have to get them out. Where’s the jaws of life?”
I felt hands lift me and my next memory was waking in the hospital. Annie and Tomas were and their faces said it all.
“You died,” the doctor told me. “We managed to get your heart beating again and rushed you to the OR where we put you back together, piece by piece. It was touch and go but we believe you are out of the woods now Annie.”
I picked up the mirror and looked at it and gasped for I was looking at Doctor Annie Rivera, not myself Doctor Annie Gates. I died that day and yet somehow, I live on in Annie’s body helping others like we’d always planned.
246 Words
@SweetSheil
Dalton stared at Loch. “What are you saying?”
“You aren’t a Wolf so I’m thinkin’ you’ll not understand.”
“Try me.”
Loch glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention to them. At this distance, the only member of the team who might be able to hear them was Kin. Wolf hearing could be both a blessing and a curse.
“Fine then. What d’ya know of our culture?”
Dalton blinked. “You mean Irish culture or—”
“No. I’m talkin’ about Wolves.”
Scratching his head, Dalton offered a boyish grin. “Dude, until my old SEAL team was assigned to take out a unit of Wolves who used to be in the Army, I had no clue y’all even existed.”
Loch didn’t smile. “How’d that work out for your team?”
His grin turning to a smirk, Dalton admitted, “We pretty much got our asses handed to us. Until we figured out it was a double cross. At that point, we worked together and got the job done. But I still don’t know all that much. I mean I know y’all don’t turn furry on the full moon and I can’t get it if you bite me.”
Resisting the urge to smack the cocky surfer boy, Loch quickly explained. “Like our wild brothers, we mate for life, if we find the right one.”
“And you think Kin and Meg…” A canny expression appeared on Dalton’s face. “He’s afraid it is her.”
Loch nodded.
“Boy, do we have a lot of work to do.”
****
250 Hard Target Crossfire WIP words
@SilverJames_
Aww, Kin and Meg. That should be a wild ride. 🙂
She pushed the button and we waited for the soft boom that told us that the passageway was clear. No one had opened this door for more years that we could recall, but given what had happened that led humanity into these holes, clearing debris was the first task.
The door opened slowly, and she went first. She’d gone first in everything, from coming out of the womb to making her first kill. He’d caught her alone in the showers and thought that his size and strength meant he could take what he wanted.
As if.
Mine had come not long after, when one of his friends thought he’d exact some sort of revenge. But mom had taught us well. There were things about our family that no one could know, at least not while we were in here, and we did what we had to do.
I followed her out, both of us blinking at the sunlight. It was different outside – just the word ‘outside’ felt strange in my brain. The charge we’d set off had created a path to the surface, but nothing had prepared us for what lay in front of us.
Her shoulders fell, and I heard her soft voice almost crack. “Oh boy.”
“Do we have a lot of work to do?” I stepped up next to her, put my arm around her. “Yes. But this is what they made us for.”
It was my turn to take the lead, here, outside in hell.
249 words
@drmag00
Rose watched the trees and bushes get out of the way of her crescent moon shaped boulder as it floated through the woods with her on it, heading toward the ocean. A bluejay sat on her right shoulder, a rabbit sat on her lap.
A family of rabbits had brought her a bouquet of roses for her trip. Though she couldn’t see them, she knew there were six wolves arranged in a circle around her, to keep her safe.
When she got hungry, the moon stopped moving, and walked around a bit to gather berries and nuts to eat. She didn’t have to gather many. The birds, rabbits, and foxes all gathered plenty for her.
As she ate berries and nuts, she looked around. The forest was quite nice, but she missed the flower gardens she had at the lake. With that, she walked around the moon, and wherever her feet touched the ground, a large circle of flowers, several feet across, sprouted, grew, and bloomed. Chrysanthemums, Daffodils, Irises, Roses, and Lillies, from bare ground to full bloom, until they surrounded the moon. Rose loved the flowers.
After she had eaten, and the flowers were in bloom, she got back on the moon, and resumed her journey. As she did, she decided to leave flowers everywhere she stopped. She patted the rabbit on her lap, and said to the Bluejay on her shoulder, “Boy, do we have a lot of work to do on this trip.”
246 Words
@mysoulstears
“Did you know she could do that?”
Floyd’s voice was flat, but his eyes were fixed on the fifty-five-foot tall college girl fighting back the sixty-foot tall gorilla. The gorilla seemed surprised.
“Of course not!” Saito scoffed. “But I bet the doc is loving this!”
“Yeah, I am!” Doctor Murray called down from atop the sundered warehouse. “Though, someone might want to get the bucket truck in case they come back this way. We can’t reach either of the stairs with the hole in the roof.”
Floyd whistled at their busted-up base of operations. Working for Doctor Murray was never dull, but this particular disaster had to be some kind of record.
“Hey, doc? Who’s going to clean all of this up?”
“Who do you think?” Doctor Murray laughed.
Saito shook his head and sighed, “Boy, do we have a lot of work to do.”
The gargantuan gorilla knocked the overgrown undergraduate flat and beat his chest with a terrifying roar. The other college girl screamed from on the roof with Doctor Murray.
“Can’t any of you do anything to help her!?”
“We patched our alarm through to PRUDENT!” Saito called up. “A team is probably on their way as we speak!”
“Hey, PRUDENT might help us with cleanup,” Floyd suggested.
Saito winced as the giant girl scrambled in wailing panic away from the agitated ape in fierce pursuit.
“If that spills over into downtown, I think the PRUDENT cleanup crews will have their plates full.”
246 PRUDENT words
@DavidALudwig
I begin.
The task seems to be large and forbidding, but I’m a grown man. I eat challenges for my breakfast, lunch AND dinner. And eat seconds every time. A weaker man might say to himself – Boy, do we have a lot of work to do – but that man isn’t me.
Not at all.
I look at the word count – 61 words and rising – and I blink at the total. It’s running away, faster than money into a gas tank, but with none of the fumes in my head.
I used to take a lot of time herding words and culling them back to create my entries. I used to trim and tweak and trim again, killing the flow on the page. I used to agonise and beat my head against the wall; nothing seemed to work. And I used to swear, think I was cursed, every word I wrote a fake.
Time passes.
Words failed me.
My sentences fell apart.
I wrote, and I wrote and then I wrote some more. And then I wrote again.
And then I stopped fussing about poetry. And also, the arts. I just listened, and I forgot everything I’d learned. I still carried on writing, building a wall on every page.
I forgot about the rules. It’s easier to be reckless, I guess.
But I kept on banging the keys. As you do.
And then, before I knew it, I was writing my truths.
Well, truths of a sort.
250 words – twothirdsrasta.blogspot.com
#ThursThreads Week 507 is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.