Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 625. Year 12! What a fantastic testament to the writing community. Y’all rock!
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 US.
- 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 625:
Dead Thing Specialist, Mining Geologist, and Original Book Boyfriend, George Varhalmi.
Facebook |
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“But I heard the system break.”
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!
Invasive Species
He wanted to tell her. There she was, lying next to him. Next to him for all those years. Of course there had been real world secrets between them: small indiscretions, errant thoughts, idle excursions of the mind.
Fishy fantasies.
At least on his part.
He assumed not hers but that was more wishful thinking than knowing.
This was different.
He’d entered an entirely new world.
The world of his sleep.
Tiny footsteps walked in his brain. And their voices. They whispered. Ominous, he thought. How could those muddy booted footsteps and squeaky voices be anything other than ominous.
They knew his every thought.
He couldn’t remember when he’d first noticed that they had wormed their way in, not only to his sleep, his dreams, those most private moments of Morpheus, but also into his waking moments. Occasionally he feared that they had been there since childhood.
He remembered a time, a field, a hillock, the wind and pollen, he thought it was pollen, swirling in formation, and his father, standing next to him, agitated, asking, “did you here that, boy?”
He was frightened by the tone and shook his head, but his father yelled, “it made sense once, but I heard the system break…just now…you must have heard it. Don’t lie to me…” and his father had shaken him violently until they were both exhausted and lay down on the hilltop.
The system had always been broken.
He blamed the worms.
The alien worms in his head.
250 Worms (I mean) words
@billmelaterplea
Josten resisted digging his toe into the mud.
“I think that’s fair.” Mectarn nodded. “What do you say, Highness?”
Josten blinked. “What do I say? I think those are admirable things.”
Mectarn closed her eyes and heaved a breath before rubbing her eyes with her good hand. “Highness, you’re the most vexing male I’ve dealt with in a long time.”
Allira laughed and Josten shook his head. “What?”
“Let me spell it out for you.” Mectarn’s voice grew patient, like one explaining a concept to a child. “You donned the Iron Crown, so you made choices when you were younger you wouldn’t make today. But you’ve spent your undead life helping the denizens of the Tombs protect their homes. You even befriended an invading knight and helped her set up a temporary home and find her new purpose. You’ve done your time, Highness. You’ve worn the Iron Crown, but I heard the system break when you put others before yourself. Now you must choose which ending you want.”
“Ending?” He couldn’t help his jaw dropping.
“Oh my glory! The Curse of the Rusty Crown.” Allira turned wide eyes to him. “‘The Crown’s gifts are dearly bought, it requires atonement in trade, for all the actions the wearer has wrought, only in kindness are the debts repaid.’ Torsha the Bold found the Iron Crown before and wrote about it. But Josten, the curse is broken. Mectarn’s saying you get to choose to die for real or live a new life.”
250 ineligible #Dreadstone words
@siobhanmuir.bsky.social
Maura stared out. Boston’s buildings crowded around like a scrum of rugby players. Her scattered thoughts weren’t condusive to explaining her actions.
Judge Francone cleared his throat. She didn’t turn around. “Ms. Brannigan?”
“I don’t know what to say, your honor.”
“We aren’t in the courtroom, Maura.”
“No, but you are still a judge.”
“And you are still an assistant district attorney.”
“Am I?”
“Have you filed a letter of resignation?”
She had to consider that. Alex had, for all intents and purposes fired her. But that was before… “It wasn’t like that.”
“Talk to me, Maura. Me. Not the old fart in the black robes with a gavel in my hands. It’s just you and me here. Off the record. Just Maura and Tony.”
She almost giggled but reined in the slight hysteria rising up inside her. “Tony? Really?”
“My mother only called me Anthony when I was in trouble.”
“What did your father call you?”
“Trouble.”
They both laughed and she relaxed, finally turning away from the world outside the window.
His voice was soft and curious when he spoke again. “What happened, Maura?”
Where did she begin? Her falling in love with a criminal mastermind? Her boss turning into a homicidal megalomaniac? Her snooping? Maybe. Or not.
“I learned the system was rigged. Law and order. My guideposts have always been law and order. Then I discovered what was happening. I thought I could fix it but I heard the system break.”
“Then fix it.”
“I can’t.”
****
250 Moonstruck Mafia WIP words
Silver James
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSilverJames/
Gah! I really need to proofread closer! It shoul be: …for all intents and purposes fired her. FIRED not FILED. 🤦🏼♀️
Silver, I’ve often thought Trumps signature phrase should be, “You’re filed!” Like in court documents…
“See? No comic books.”
Flora Granger pitched her voice up through a forced smile. She hadn’t exactly gotten authorization to take the conspiracy nut into the secure archives. Which was increasingly feeling like a bad idea.
Johnny Reeves ignored her, focusing on a computer terminal. Fortunately, the whole system was designed by Toni Tyler and there was zero chance of him getting into anything Flora wasn’t cleared for.
A few keystrokes later, heavy security doors sealed the archive in an inescapable, technological tomb. Klaxons blared and the whole room sharply switched to emergency lighting.
“Shit! What the hell did you do?!”
More cabinets and drawers had sprung open than even Flora had known the archives contained. Johnny was already rifling through them. That’s it. Flora was fucked. They would definitely kick her out of the Powered Response Unit for this. Time to start on her tell-all biography.
Switching from her tinted glasses to her readers didn’t help. Whatever Johnny did locked them out of the console but good.
“Shit, shit, shit…”
“Damn it!” Johnny kicked a shelf of mission reports.
The geek stormed back to the locked console. Reaching past Flora, he hit several keys with one hand while fiddling with something on the back with his other. And the lockdown ended. Completely.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“Toni Tyler was trapped in here by Dungeon Master in bonus issue #5.”
“But, I heard the system break…”
“Doesn’t matter. Someone moved the comics before we got here.”
249 PRUDENT words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
Denise checked the load indicator. There was at least one round left, maybe two if she’d counted the number of shots they’d fired correctly. She could shoot both off in less than a second, emptying the magazine and transforming the complex laser-assisted rifle into an elaborate carbon-fibre cudgel. The night sight it had attached to it could be used as a spotter scope but, without sufficient ammunition to take out at least three of the rebels tracking them, they’d be outnumbered and outclassed in the inevitable firefight that would follow when the sun sank beneath the horizon.
“What do you think?” Thomas lifted his face from the monitor, looking for an answer that might give them more hope than the figures on the display before him.
Denise shook her head. “We’ve finished. Whatever we do now will only antagonise them. We should tie a handkerchief to the barrel of this rifle and then step out into the open, hoping that whoever’s got a bead on us isn’t feeling nervous. And then they send a drone over to investigate, letting its AI assess us and decide whether we’re a threat or not.”
“A drone? Surely, we disabled them?”
“Nah. They’ll have rebooted and restored their mainframe connection. Five minutes is all we usually get.”
“But I heard the system break down. Their patrol craft will be in pieces. It couldn’t have survived a fall from that height.”
But the blip on the monitor suggested otherwise.
Maybe surrender was their best option.
250 words – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
Jean-Pierre stared at the bank of monitors in front of him, bored and impatiently waiting for the end of his shift. All the monitors were green, nothing out of regular parameters. Perfect way to end the day. He glanced at his watch and willed the minutes to move faster. No such luck.
He pulled out his phone to pass the last few remaining minutes. This was typically a no-no, but he couldn’t see what would possibly happen in the few minutes that were left. Nothing ever happened. In the five years he’d worked here, nothing happened. There had never been an incident on record in the company’s history.
Once his shift ended, Jean-Pierre eagerly signed off on the logbook. Thoughts of what he wanted to make for dinner flit through his mind and whether he’d have to run to the grocery store to pick up any ingredients.
The door to the room slammed open and his coverage for the next shift popped his head in. “JP! What the fuck, man!”
“What? What happened, Martin?”
“You didn’t trigger the alarms!”
“What? Why would I? Everything has been fine all day, like it is every day.”
“Everything’s fucked! How did you not notice?”
“How? I didn’t see anything on the monitors.”
“But I heard the system break,” Martin insisted. “Come on, we got to get out of here.”
Martin grabbed Jean-Pierre’s arm and dragged the man outside. Once there, he heard the alarms and explosions. And the screams. So many screams.
249 words
@mlgammella
“You can’t be in here, Dan! We’re being recorded.” Violet’s voice was low and had overtones of annoyance, but I’d felt the passion in her lips and the way she’d pressed her hips against mine before pushing me away.
“But I heard the system break,” I whispered, abashedly. “I missed you.”
“You…Taking five,” Violet called out. She glared at me. But her eyes were sparkling.
She led me out of the recording studio and softly closed the door behind her. I saw her eyes dart left and right up and down the hall. Being the middle of the afternoon, other people were going about their workday, and I saw someone give a little wave to my girlfriend. She either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
Violet’s office was two floors down, but she drew me into the single bathroom two doors down instead.
“The video system broke, not the audio,” my soon-to-be (though she didn’t know how soon) fiancée said as she undid her belt and pushed her pants down. “You can’t just … uh! … barge right in when I’m working.”
“You’re not dissuading me, sweetie.” I tried to keep my thrusts slow and steady, not wanting to call any more attention than necessary to what we were doing, fruitless though that might be.
“I said I was taking five, not twenty. Hurry.”
I hurried.
Dressing, after. “Will I see you for dinner?”
“If they get the system working in time.”
I winked. “I’ll bet they already have.”
248 words
@drmag00.bsky.social
#ThursThreads Week 625 is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.