Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 601.
Today is Thursday and that means it’s time to start flashing on #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 social media handle or email in the post (so we easily notify 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, Bluesky, MeWe, and Mastodon, etc.
Our Judge for Week 601:
College professor, equality enthusiast, and romance author, Louisa Bacio.
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram |
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“How was your first week on the job?”
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!
Twisted Threads
Danny had never quite faced this type of situation before; one thread of his life wangling its way sideways into another. The past would never stay the past if a future event had the temerity to step in. He’d been a private investigator now for thirteen years. No one would be asking him how was your first week on the job.
Maybe it was something he should be asking himself.
There was always something new under the sun.
Even on a rainy day.
Which this day wasn’t.
He would have to work with it. All of it. The things he knew and the things that he didn’t.
And perhaps this latter-day excursion would bring a smidgen of clarity to some of his own loose ends.
He’d arrived at Bea Sutherlands, a little after nine in the morning. He suspected that she was a late riser. He pressed the buzzer and waited.
Moments later her door opened.
Though in her early sixties, somewhere around there at any rate, she seemed to glow in the doorway. There was still a hint of light brown hair with a few splashes of grey. Her skin was mostly smooth except for the slightest of wrinkles, minute furrows surrounding her lips.
“Mr. Hawkins. Danny. Sorry, of course you’re Danny. I prefer that people call before visiting. You must know that.”
She had him. He had breached one of her cardinal rules. Not that he knew many of them.
Any, really.
He started to answer.
250 WIP
@billmelaterplea
I sat in Jitters, a cute coffee shop in downtown Fort Collins and tried to figure out what was happening. Why the hell had I gone to the Concrete Angels’ compound? I’d been in there several times and had the protection of their Nomad, Anubis, but I was no closer to figuring out what had happened to my former partner, DeVille. Granted, I saw him all the time, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk to me, and no one else around us seemed to know him as anything other than Eric Marshall.
I snorted and shook my head. It was a helluva undercover name to choose when he was a U.S. Marshal. No one else seemed to see the irony.
But it wasn’t like I had anyone to talk to about my own undercover work. No one to ask me, ‘how was your first week on the job’ because no one knew where the hell I was or what the hell I was doing. And even Coop was avoiding me.
I ran my hands over my face, hoping to scrub in some sort of intelligence—as in news, not smarts. I’d gotten answers to the questions of where and what had happened to Coop, I just didn’t like them. Coop was off the reservation and deep into the Concrete Angels. Hell, even the Marshals thought he was dead, and it seemed that’s the way he wanted it.
How would I know when he won’t talk to me?
247 ineligible #ConcreteAngelsMC words
@siobhanmuir on bluesky
I cringed as the apartment door closed with a groan. I was going to take care of that while she was out of town and I’d totally forgotten.
Maybe I could distract her?
“Hey, Muri! How was your first week on the job?”
Muri stuck her head into my office, saw the pile of dishes and Coke bottles, and bit back the obvious reply. “‘On the job?’ Who am I, Andy Sipowicz?”
She padded into our bedroom, partially muffling the rest of her reply. I caught the end. “…fine. They trained us pretty well.”
“Days not too long?”
Muri tossed her shirt at the hamper and grimaced as it fell off the heap. Her bra followed, then her jeans and underwear, but when she caught my hopeful look, she just stared meaningfully at the bag of chips that I’d left on her side of the bed and stepped into the bathroom, turning on the shower.
“Not too long. And I like my team.”
I put down the toilet seat and sat down, looking around the bathroom quickly, trying to see it with her eyes.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah. I thought it’d be weird being in the capsule all week with Kyle, but he’s really thoughtful and funny. Helps when there’s no privacy, y’know?”
“Uh-huh?”
Muri turned off the shower and grabbed her towel, drying off behind the curtain.
“I am so tired. Oh, by the way – they want me back on the launch pad in the morning. Two weeks this time.”
250 words
@drmag00
Madame Zelda swirled her tea. The contents of her cup were a murky beige spotted with islands of cream, the clots stubbornly refusing to break up. There was thunder in the air, and her additional senses were tingling.
“How was your first week on the job?”
Madelaine pursed her lips and rocked her head, considering the experiences she’d amassed. She’d already learned nothing was what it seemed. And that Madame’s respect had to be earned.
And you volunteered nothing until you had the clients’ cash tribute tucked away in your hand.
Finesse was for amateurs. Professionals did nothing for free.
“It’s been an eye-opener,” she said. “An education.”
Madame Zelda took a drink. The wart on her chin wobbled, the nubbin twitching in a widdershins direction as she whirled the tea around.
“Hmmph,” she said, remaining tight-lipped. “Your mouth’s moving, but you’re saying nothing.” She spat her drink into the cup, not caring if it sprayed her apprentice. She was here to clean, prepare the tent and engage the marks in polite conversation. She’d be her eyes and her ears on the outside, eliciting information, guiding their clients into divulging the information they’d come here to hear.
“Well,” Madelaine continued, feeling uncertain. “Everybody knows this is all a sham, but they still want to believe. The crystal ball and the velvet drapes – they’re window dressing. A feng shui for the unimaginative.”
Madame Zelda shook her head. There was still a lily pad outside on the pond needing a sitter.
250 words – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
How do you explain something you don’t understand? Helen had rehearsed a dozen versions of what to say and only succeeded in confusing herself further. Whether a person has superpowers or not seems like the sort of thing they would know about themselves.
She allowed herself a bracing sigh before ringing the bell of her father’s classic ranch home. After her customary six count, she let herself in.
“How was your first week on the job, honey?”
Seriously? Why did her dad have so much trouble remembering what she did? She’d been a receptionist at the gym for over a year. And it smelled like he’d started without her. How he hadn’t learned not to burn the food after all these years cooking for himself was another mystery.
“Something happened at work today…”
Colonel Harper turned from his smoking skillet to hand his daughter a glass of red wine.
“Nothing bad, I hope.”
Helen resisted the urge to gulp the whole glass.
“I, uh… I duplicated.”
The Colonel paled partway back to the stove.
“You what?”
“Multiplied. There were three of me. You didn’t hear about it?”
“That was you?!”
“Who else would it have been?!”
“Gemini! That’s her Power! She said if you weren’t exposed to stress, you should be able to live a normal life!”
Helen felt like she’d run face first into a brick wall.
“What… What are you saying?”
Colonel Harper mumbled uncomfortably into his mustache.
“You… are Gemini. One of her, anyway.”
247 The Many Lives of Gemini words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
“How was your first week on the job?” her mother’s e-message asked.
Amy thought house-sitting the menagerie of pets had been uneventful.
• No strange people came to the door.
• No neighbors complained about wild parties.
• No socks or shoes went missing.
• No plants turned over.
• No “accidents.”
• No excitement.
But that changed before Amy could type a response.
The parakeets, who usually went to sleep when Amy covered their cage, began squawking and screeching. Luna and Sunny, the inseparable cats, hissed and yowled from their cathouse. Lady, a miniature mutt, began panting as Flash, the pure-bred Aussie, herded her toward Amy.
“What’s wrong, boy?”
Flash ran to her bed and back to the door, so Amy set the laptop aside and rose.
Then she bent and picked up the little dog. The Aussie moved behind her and pushed her toward the bedroom door. When Amy didn’t move fast enough, Flash nipped at her pajama bottoms.
“Hey, stop that! Just show me what’s wrong.”
As his name implied, he flew into the living room and disappeared.
That’s also when the electricity went out. Amy wasn’t frightened until savage winds blew the locked front door open, splintering the frame. Wind, water, and stygian darkness flooded in.
Amy clutched Lady to her chest as Flash pivoted, herded, and forced them behind the couch. Then Flash spread-eagled himself over them, protecting them. For a moment, Amy couldn’t breathe.
Overhead, the roof vanished.
Inexplicitly, Amy thought, “How am I supposed to answer Mom’s question, now?”
###
250 words
Full House at the Appocolypse Inn
“Floods, fire, and famine! How the hell am I supposed to get anything done around here?”
“Now what?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you.”
Mirrored expressions faced each other through the glass as Ian tried to find something positive to say. His twin, Nial just shook his head, “Don’t even try.”
“That bad?”
“That bad.”
“So you want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what? The forty-seven customer complaints, or the twenty-seven harassment charges pending, Then there were the three OSHA violations and a goat.”
“I guess that answers that question.”
“What question?
“How was your first week on the job?”
“Week? That was the first day.”
Nial looked totally defeated as his brother again tried to think of something positive to say then frowned. “A goat?”
“He was the only one making sense.”
They watched each other silently for a moment.
“So, Tuesday?”
“That was when the locusts hit.”
@mishmhem
155 words not including title.
#ThursThreads is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.