Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads. Wow. Year 11. Holy smokes! Y’all kept with me past a decade. I’m astounded.
Today is Thursday and that means it’s time to start flashing, like we have for the past 11 years. I had no idea when I started it would keep going! This is Week 578 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 578:
Book enthusiast, lover of coffee, and Fantasy and Suspense author, Tina Glasneck.
Facebook | Kickstarter | Goodreads |
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“I’ll tell you later.”
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!
Eat… Prey… Devour.
Katy was shepherding her nymphs across the forest floor. There’d been heavy winds, and her eggs had been scattered. It had taken her hours to locate them all – getting them back together had been a nightmare. As a praying mantis, she already had a bad reputation, so she was keen to recover as many cute points as possible.
Nigel and Clarissa were being especially difficult.
Clarissa had climbed to the top of a fern. She’d been one of the first nymphs to emerge and had recently had her ninth moult. She was the quickest of Katy’s brood and was already a voracious exterminator of ants and beetles. There was very little more she’d have to learn before she matured.
“Ma,” Clarissa said, polishing her jaws. “Is Nigel a little simple?” Nigel was trying to eat a stone. He’d managed to pick it up but kept dropping it, his jaws unable to make an impression on it. He sometimes thought he was going to grow up to be a butterfly. He was a very special little specimen.
“I don’t like Clarissa,” he said, emerging back into the light. “She keeps talking about when we’ll be grown up and what she’ll do with me. What is it that she’s going to do? She laughs when I try to make her tell me.”
Katy shook her head, following a dragonfly hovering just out of reach. “I’ll tell you later,” she said. “But try not to plan too far ahead.”
250 words (including title) – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
“What am I supposed to do, Bowie?” Shannon stared defiantly at her younger brother. “Are you growling at me?” She sat up straighter, catching the red glint in Bowie’s eyes. “Boo?”
He inhaled. “There are days I want to challenge him, Shan, for what he’s doin’ to you.”
“A challenge isn’t the way, Bowie, and you know it.”
“Aye, I do, but I can’t bear to just hang back and watch him break your heart. ’Tisn’t right, ya know.”
“Trust me, I know.” She tilted her head toward Fiona. “Speaking of knowing…” She deliberately trailed off the last word.
“Aye. That was m’plans for t’night until that gobshite got me jammed in between the two of ya.”
“Tell her, Bowie. And make your claim.”
“Tell me what?” Fiona paled as she glanced between the siblings.
Bowie grimaced then shook his head. “I’ll tell you later.”
Hand on her hips, Fiona jutted her chin. “You’ll be tellin’ me now, Bowie Patrick Francis Maguire.”
His mouth suddenly full of spit, he swallowed hard so he could speak. “Ya know how I feel about ya, yeah?” Bowie began. “And ya know I want more.”
Fiona inhaled sharply but nodded.
“Before I can ask for more…” He cleared his throat. “Before I can claim ya proper, I have’ta explain.”
Fee looked to Shannon. “What is all this talk of claims and challenges?” She was more than nervous now as certain words and phrases finally fell into place.
“I’m not exactly human,” Bowie answered instead.
****
250 Boston Irish Mob Wolves WIP words
@SilverJames_
Reverie
He loved his brief moments of reverie. Remembering his early days, finding those emotional touchstones that triggered a strong feeling, a memory, perhaps, a dream, a look.
Writers, he’d discovered, required a capacity to draw on memory, even faulty memory, for he recognized that time withered truth, that even when it should be crystal clear, it rarely was.
At least for him. That was another frustrating aspect to aging, to recall. Each of us have to rely on how we remember events, see the world.
Of course, others would share their perspective.
Some days earlier, Anthea had brought him his coffee out to the porch and pressed him for history about her grandmother.
“How did you see her?” she’d asked. “I mean, when you first saw her, what was that like?”
Anthea was in the local college now, surrounded by inquiring minds, a raft of young people in search of their future, dependent on their accumulating wisdom, parsing what they will from their teachers, the world around them.
He was killing time, he knew, wondering how one describes the attraction of one fascinating creature to another and necessarily wanting to be overly descriptive. As much as he wanted to revel in his romantic past, he also wanted to say, “I’ll tell you later, sweetheart. Really, I will.”
And hope that the moment might evaporate.
Still, she was his only granddaughter and he had to learn to share the truth.
After all, he was a writer. He’d written a book.
250 WIP
@billmelaterplea
Mom told me you two had a spat today. Something about a laundry incident? Doesn’t matter.
So stop crying and I’ll tell you a story. It’s kinda long.
See the sun today, walking its way horizon to horizon across our little plot of Earth, taking its middle-est time until Spring?
Well, it’s not really moved.
This rock on which we stand is spinning daily ‘round our own little star. And in our top-of-the-foodchain, in-God’s-own-image way, we prefer to think the largest entity in our insignificant smudge in the vastness of the Big Banger’s creation is the one trudging like a burro around us, grinding grains of our oh so important lives.
But Earth’s spent millennia trying to escape the Sun, right? Sun’s tether is just too strong, keeping our ball of egocentric existence situated just-so, just so you can believe Sun’s spinning ‘round you.
But someday in the future, when the great ball in the sky goes black, Earth’ll slip its gravitational leash and be hurled, a giant snowball, into the void.
So in light of this, who gives a hoot if I misspell “misspell,” Mom eats room-temp potato salad, Cody short-hops a bases-loaded 3-2 fastball, or you washed new jeans with whites?
I tell you this because we love you. Always. On this last summer day, when the Sun takes its sweet time walking horizon to horizon.
The rest of the story, I’ll tell you later.
249 Dad-to-Daughter words
@JAHesch
“I’ll tell you later.” John said as I ignored what he was saying.
I chose to concentrate on me, my needs, my wants…never John, I am selfish, but I can do better if only I had one more chance, but that won’t come. The police came this afternoon and informed me, John was killed in a car accident in another State. What was he doing there? I’ll never know.
I close my eyes begging to the heavens to take this back. I awake not wanting to open my eyes, then I feel a body next to mine. My eyes fly open, John is home. I reach for him and hold him tight. He kisses me and pulls away.
He tells me he’s going flying to Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, for a business deal. I offer to go with him and play hooky from my job.
We fly to New Brunswick. He leaves me at the hotel as he drives to his appointment. I’m not worried the police told me the accident happened at 5 p.m. he’ll be back by then.
I glance at the clock in the hotel room it says five p.m. but that isn’t right, my watch says four p.m. I call the from desk asking the time. She explains they are in the Atlantic Time Zone, it’s five. The police inform me John’s dead.
I wake up next to John. I have to make this right this time, who knows if I’ll get another chance?
249 words
@SweetSheil
The ground falls away under Tenko before her companions can respond.
Arashiko spins around on the other side of the pit trap. Her light step apparently hadn’t triggered the hazard. Sora curses.
“I knew something like this would happen! Do you know why I wanted to go back for reinforcements? I’ll tell you…”
“Later.”
Tenko’s painter friend, Mana, waves Sora off and drops his pack. Mana shifts his hiking staff to a two-handed sword grip. Sora senses the tigerlings closing in around them. The young lieutenant also drops his pack and draws his swords.
Across the pit, Arashiko fades away into the underbrush. Sora and Mana stand back to back as the first humanoid tigers rush them.
“You better be able to handle yourself,” Sora decapitates his first opponent.
“But of course,” Mana smiles easily, dropping a tigerling with a sharp blow to the head.
The painter’s strike lacked the aggression of one who had seen combat. But his technique was flawless.
Arrows fly from the surrounding forest into tigerlings yet to engage with the two men. And one from out of the pit?
The one from the pit sticks in a nearby tree with a rope tied to it! That isn’t going to hold.
“Cover me!”
Sora drops his wakizashi to wrap the rope around his left arm. He braces himself and guards with his katana.
“Gladly.”
Mana steps between Sora and the remaining tigerlings. Waves of overwhelming arcane energy emanate from the unperturbed painter.
246 Tale of Tenko words
@DavidALudwig on Twitter and Bluesky
“You did what?” Matt’s voice was a quiet hiss in the massive hall with high, arched ceilings while they waited to be ushered into the Council chambers. Still, it caught a look from a passing servant.
She shot him a glare that nearly made him stumble. “Quiet. You’re going to draw unwanted attention,” Kailyn whisper-hissed with a sweetly dark smile toward the servant, who moved on faster past them.
“But you just hinted at something illeg-“
That sentence got cut off by a sharp flash of pain from her warning curse. Subtle enough to fly under the radar of magick from peering eyes. Luckily, the Council and the Guarda weren’t the only ones with eyes in these corrupted halls. Not anymore.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Matt stubbornly continued. “It could jeopardize everything you wish for, every dream of no longer being labeled the Dark Heir.”
Anger flashed in her forest green eyes, once more silencing him with a look that would make even a hardened criminal’s blood run cold. There was a reason she held that title, especially now. “Don’t act like you know what I want and don’t want anymore. You cannot begin to fathom what I have been through. I am not the same helpless witch you pulled out of those woods so many years ago.”
The tall double doors groaned as they were pushed open.
Kailyn straightened. “Now compose yourself, Rylan, before you get us both killed. I’ll tell you later.” She paused. “Maybe.”
~*~*~*~*~
249 #WiP words
@DaelynMorgana / blog: https://dmorgana.wordpress.com
Oh I totally screwed that formatting up this time. Let me fix it…Sorry about that!
~*~*~*~*~
“You did what?” Matt’s voice was a quiet hiss in the massive hall with high, arched ceilings while they waited to be ushered into the Council chambers. Still, it caught a look from a passing servant.
She shot him a silencing glare that nearly made him stumble. “Quiet. You’re going to draw unwanted attention,” Kailyn whisper-hissed with a sweetly dark smile toward the servant, who moved on faster past them.
“But you just hinted at something illeg-“
That sentence got cut off by a sharp flash of pain from her warning curse. Subtle enough to fly under the radar of magick from peering eyes. Luckily, the Council and the Guarda weren’t the only ones with eyes in these corrupted halls. Not anymore.
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Matt stubbornly continued. “It could jeopardize everything you wish for, every dream of no longer being labeled the Dark Heir.”
Anger flashed in her forest green eyes, once more silencing him with a look that would make even a hardened criminal’s blood run cold. There was a reason she held that title, especially now. “Don’t act like you know what I want and don’t want anymore. You cannot begin to fathom what I have been through. I am not the same helpless witch you pulled out of those woods so many years ago.”
The tall double doors groaned as they were pushed open.
Kailyn straightened. “Now compose yourself, Rylan, before you get us both killed. I’ll tell you later.” She paused. “Maybe.”
He slid into the space, putting the car in park. A light a few spaces over flashes on and off, creating a strobe-light effect. I catch glimpses of his face when it blinks on and darkness when it turns off.
“I’m going to miss you,” he says. “Sure you want to go on this trip?”
“Kinda too late to rethink it now, isn’t it?” After a few phone calls and an online meeting, I’m flying to San Francisco for a job interview. The distance from Los Angeles to San Fran isn’t too far, but in a relationship, it might as well be the other side of the country.
I trail my fingers over the back of his hand and up his forearm. At my touch, he relaxes, turning toward me. I lean into him, finding his lips in the flash of darkness. The rush of sensual pleasure sings through my body and in the brightness we both watch the other with open eyes as we kiss. It heightens the sensation, almost as if I’m a voyeur in the act, seeing and feeling the interaction.
If I went, odds were I’d get the job and then we’d have to make a decision – about us.
“Let me know how it goes,” he asks, already rubbing his index finger over the button to reverse.
With a nod, I open the door and hike my overnight bag onto my shoulder, steeling my resolve. “I’ll tell you later.”
Neither one of us says goodbye.
@LouisaBacio
249 words
Out of Touch
Whispers. I don’t know why, but there are always whispers., I can hear them, just as I drift into the realm of sleep, They follow me from my dreams to the waking world and back again.
I don’t know how, I just know that when I wake they are still there and every time I try to follow them, they’re just brushing the edge of my mind, taunting me.
Can a sound be out of reach? I don’t know–I’ll tell you later, but they are always part of the deafening silence that grate against my mind like fingernails on the blackest of nights. I can never remember what they say.
I sit staring up at the night sky, like a radio in need of fine-tuning. but I know, when the time comes, no one will miss the broadcast, and we will all long for silence. There is no one we can warn, because the sound isn’t there, and how can you report something like that?
I want to know what the message is, I know there is more. Each night the signal is clearer, but I can’t make out the words. I know it’s important, and I know I’m not the only one holding my breath, waiting.
Until we finally hear the words, carefully sounded out in the chosen people’s mind– in a language we cannot understand, and yet we know they are saying, “I’ll tell you later.”
Only I know, we’ve tuned in to an intergalactic telenovela.
@mishmhem
250 words not including title.
“It’s pretty late, and you’re on foot, so why don’t you stay here tonight?” He gestured toward the hallway. “The guest room is the second door on the right. I think the bed’s made up. I’m going to go down and check that the bakery is closed up while you get settled.”
“Corbin, I don’t have to stay.” Martin rubbed the back of his neck. “I can get a place in town.”
Corbin shook his head. “No, it’s probably too late without a reservation. You can stay here. I’ll be back.”
He ignored Martin’s look of mixed relief and unease as he headed back down the stairs to the bakery kitchen. He didn’t expect Avery to still be there, but they finished wiping down the counters just as he stepped in the room.
“I didn’t think you were still here. Thanks for closing up.”
Avery nodded as they put away the cleaning spray. “So, what’s he doing here?”
“Apologizing. I think. It’s too early to tell. Maybe I’ll find out tomorrow after we talk more.”
They raised their eyebrows. “He’s staying here? With you? Do you think that’s wise?”
He turned away from their penetrating gaze. “Whether it’s wise or not, it’s too late to get a room in town, and he doesn’t have a car. I’m just being a good friend.”
Avery crossed their arms over their chest. “You sure that’s all it is?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure. And that’s all I’ll tell you. Later, Avery.”
250 ineligible #WIP words
#SiobhanMuir
#ThursThreads Week 578 is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week. Happy Birthday, Mark A. Morris!
Thank you so very much for the birthday wishes, Siobhan! I’ve still got a third of the cake left, but its days (or hours) are most definitely numbered!