Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 612.
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 612:
Renaissance Woman, Newfie mom, and Romance Author, Silver James.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“He knew the end was coming.”
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!
Conflab
The impromptu pre-lunch panel planning meeting convened in a woodshed at the rear of the community hall. Four writers and one moderator, all five new to each other, hunkered down on dry stumps.
“Short of actual meeting rooms, these days,” Herb McEnany apologized. “Keep your eyes peeled for spiders…no racoons, hopefully…big claws, dangerous up close,” Herb sputtered with a guilty giggle but offered a sympathetic smile that didn’t quite bring any ease.
Gronsky immediately stood up and scanned the neatly piled wood searching for tarantulas, black widows, and any other wild creature that might be lurking.
“Don’t worry about bugs, Gronsky,” Herb tried to reassure Gilbert as well as the others he supposed.
“Nothing all that exceptionally deadly in this neck of the woods…occasional cougar, of course…they swim over from the big island every so often…pick off lazy sheep, the odd goat…”
Hardly reassured, Gronsky sat down on the spiderless stump and grimaced.
“So,” Herb picked up the meetings theme… “our topic du nuit…Writing as Revolution: Bloodless but Unbowed…I trust we are all ready to have a spirited discussion tonight?”
His co-panelists all nodded their experienced heads.
Gronsky had struggled to think of writing as revolution, bloodless or otherwise. He had certainly gone around and around in circles as he cobbled together his first novel. Now he had to participate in his first ever literature panel and he was all atwitter. He knew the end was coming. Tomorrow morning, this horrid event would be history.
He could hardly wait.
250 WIP
@billmelaterplea
“This death witch you knew. He knew the end was coming?” Heath stares at Will, trying to wrap his head around the idea. “Not in some kind of abstract way, but like—”
“He likened it to sand in an hourglass, feeling his time slipping away grain by grain.”
“So, Seonhwa,” Heath says. “She feels this, too?”
Will nods, jaw clenched.
“They all do,” he says softly. “They are brutally aware of their mortality.”
“That’s a cruel system,” Heath murmurs.
“Tell me about it.”
“And she gave you a year when you asked her to come here?”
“Yes,” Will says. “But…”
“But?” Heath’s heart pounds in his chest, so hard it aches.
“She warned me that it was—” Will’s jaw shifts with an audible crack. His upper lip twitches as though he wants to growl. “It was an ‘optimistic’ timeline.”
“Will.” The name barely makes it past the lump in Heath’s throat. “Does she still think—does she think she’ll make it?”
“No.”
The finality of that hits Heath like a freight train.
“I don’t think she ever really did, but the situation here hasn’t helped.”
“Too much death?” Heath asks.
“And not enough support.” Will’s shrug is anything but dismissive. It’s… helpless.
“What can we do?”
“I don’t know,” Will says. “But I’m putting my fucking foot through the next idiot who tries to tell me that woman—” He jabs his finger toward Black Cat. “That woman? Is a killer?” He scoffs. “Not a fucking chance.”
249 WIP words
Viggo inhaled the heady scents of the battlefield. His eyes roved wildly for his next victim and fixed on a crimson haired woman. Her armor was unlike the other defenders, and three of Viggo’s raiding party lay dispatched at her feet. She had to be their leader.
The young warrior charged with an exultant whoop, stopping short of his similarly young target.
“You! Me!” Viggo emphasized his words with sharp gesticulations. “Single combat!”
The woman nodded and touched her sword to her shield respectfully.
Viggo hefted his stone maul and flung himself at his opponent with the force of an avalanche. She calmly received his blow with her shield. Instead of crumbling, she pulled his momentum into a tumble, stabbing through a chink in his armor on his way by.
The raider kept his feet and turned for the next exchange. At least, he meant to. He seemed to be on his knees with his hands on his wound instead of his weapon. He knew the end was coming.
“You fought well, warrior.”
He steadied himself with what might be his last breath.
“Viggo! Viggo Wildheart!”
“Bridget O’Riley.”
She nodded one more time before knocking him out with her shield.
200 At The Gates words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
He watched the clock, anxious to leave, but the call came in.
To him, innocent lives mattered. By answering the call, he became responsible for them. His experience and skill forced his choice even though he’d promised Julie a celebratory dinner out tonight. Would she forgive him for doing just “one more” job before he walked away from his chosen profession?
Maybe, if he survived.
His supervisor pointed at the bomb’s clock. Only one minute remained. Damn!
Wordlessly, Matt knew what had to be done. Even though the ticking bomb seemed to be laughing at him and his brain screamed for him to get away, his heart begged him to act.
Forty-eight.
He blinked to concentrate.
All the wires were one color. Julie would be mad that he’d chosen the job over her – again. As his light examined the wires, he remembered tracing wires with his father every time a vehicle needed work.
Forty-four.
Choosing a random wire, he carefully followed it around several bomb elements to a neutral post.
Thirty-three.
He traced another wire to ground.. No time to send Julie a text. She would be mad – again.
Twenty-one.
He traced a third wire to a different ground. Did the bomb have more than one ignition switch or was this wire a red herring?
Ten.
Three wires remained. He knew the end was coming. Julie had given him a choice: her or the job.
Five.
He cut the line closest to his heart and prayed Julie would forgive him.
I forgot to add 250 words and pjhh@embarqmail.com
It didn’t take long for him to gather what the alleged informant wanted. He was not a poor man and had multiple resources available to him, some less savory than others. However, this was important enough to call in a few of the more colorful favors. What was telling wasn’t so much what information they were offering, but what they were asking for in return. He’d laugh if he wasn’t so filled with rage.
The location of the hand-off was fairly non-descript: the stereotypical abandoned warehouse. Places like that didn’t scare him, and he wasn’t about to walk in without taking some precautions of his own. He had learned very early on in his long life what happens when you don’t.
He arrived at the given address at the exact time requested. A single light shone from overhead illuminating a partially open steel door. He pushed the door the rest of the way easily, the well-oiled hinges silent. His footsteps were the only sound as he walked into the middle of the vacant warehouse. There was no other illumination present but he didn’t need them to see the interior.
It was several minutes before he heard another soul. A gust of air behind him was the only indication he was no longer alone. He didn’t bother to turn. He didn’t need to. He knew the end was coming. The end of this charade that his family actually cared about him and his life.
“Hello, Brother.”
245 words
@mlgammella
The footsteps continued. Up above, beyond the original oak floorboards and the layer of foam deadening every heel strike, Adams was pacing up and down. He was agitated and angry, too upset to sit or settle, convinced someone would be coming for him. He didn’t know that we’d broken in already, forcing one of the windows to the rear of the house. We were sitting in the dark with the debris of his life, stifling sneezes and moulding ourselves around packing cases that had been filled and never emptied.
He would settle down eventually and relax, tension exhausting him, senses blurred.
And then we’d emerge like shadows made real.
Nightmares incarnate.
He’d refused to sell his home. The property developer we worked for had offered him a series of bids, at first generous and then outrageous, the value of his property skyrocketing as more of his neighbours succumbed, this plug of a house blocking the realtors’ plans. We were sure he knew the end was coming soon; there were other ways to guarantee a sale.
A heart attack. A stroke. A fall from the top of some stairs. A man living alone was so vulnerable, even more so when the houses to either side had been demolished.
And when two strangers surprised him, their torsos and faces – greyed with a layering of mud…
It would be too much for his aged brain to withstand.
And we’d both enjoy play-acting our roles.
Zombie#1 and Zombie#2 – ready for our entrances.
250 words – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
True to his word, Josten was in Allira’s camp early the next morning. He’d wanted to share the s’mores with her more than anything, but he wasn’t ready to reveal his ghostly status yet. But he could build something important, as Mectarn had said. Maybe in his time with Allira he could figure out a way to tell her he wasn’t just an old knight who lived near the Tombs. Soon, all the knights would either leave on their own or die withing the Tombs, and Allira would head back to her grandmothers’ farm. He knew the end was coming and he’d be out of time to strengthen the tenuous friendship they had.
Allira emerged from her tent, scrubbing her face with her hands, and he was struck how beautiful she was in dawn light. She stretched and her shirt tightened against her breasts, reminding Josten that he might be dead, but he wasn’t dead.
“Oh, glory, I didn’t see you there, Josten!” Allira gasped and pressed a hand to her chest. “How long have you been here?”
“Not long. I just arrived a bit ago.” He gave her an easy shrug. “Did you sleep well?”
She nodded as her jaw cracked with a yawn. “Yeah, actually. Best sleep I’ve had in a while, actually. Had a crazy dream where I met the Dreadstone King, and he warned me to be kind to the orcs and goblins with whom I shared the Tombs.”
His gut sank. “Really? That sounds scary.”
250 ineligible #WIP words
@siobhanmuir.bsky.social
#ThursThreads is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week. There will be NO #THURSTHREADS next week.