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:
Scientist, Dad, and flash fiction author, Eric Martell.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“I can see it beginning all again.”
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!
Boarders
“Pass the Wigglesbit, Bolly,” Snagtrip asks.
I’m in no mood to be generous with my efforts , buried deep am I in my turnip mash, covered with mayo and spices from Rajipoor.
“You’ve got two or three arms,” I say, “not to mention a leg or two, so reach for it yourself.”
“You don’t have to get all huffy-puffy, Bolly. Fine, I’ll skookum them myself.”
I can see it beginning all again, for the cranky Snagtrip is that sort. However, this time, he grabs the Wigglesbit and I return to my mash. As I scoff, I look around the huge table with our dozens of visitors, guests from around the Globe, the Universe, all of us travellers in time and space, all plopped down here in this shrinking outpost for now as the rest of everywhere battles for superiority.
We can see the explosions on the giant screen that serves as our ceiling, see and hear as forces scruffle for inches of land all around us. Some at our table duck under from time to time. Shetterjolt, a Wiperian unused to the sounds of battle, plows under the table periodically, abandoning his turnip mash, unaware that others are dipping in.
Here we are, perhaps the last vestiges of whatever we are, human, aliens, doppelgangers of every race, evacuees, refugees, all guests of the remnants of the once great country of Canada, torn apart by theatrical warmongers.
Supplies are running short but thankfully, there’s an abundance of the versatile turnip.
250 Words
@billmelaterplea
sterlings-son-2.bsky.social
@sterlings-son-2.bsky.social
“Our research will be better than the Hadron Collider, it will produce more energy than anyone needs,” my supervisor insisted.
Staff around me came and went as they were let go, because their ideas were not working. They liked mine and they decided AI was the only help I needed. I suspected the consortium I worked for were billionaires, who didn’t pay their fair share of taxes and hardly ever paid their bills, as bill collectors were always dunning them but still, they paid well..
I flipped the switch of the Energizer. The room around me spun to I seem to phase in and out of reality. Suddenly this all stopped and I found myself at my desk making the same computations, that had created the energizer. Too many late nights must have made me doze off and dream all this I concluded.
I threw the switch again finding myself phasing out again and finally was back at my desk. Three times more, I did the same thing over and over again. Back at my desk I thought, “I can see it beginning all again.” I knew what I had to do I destroyed the data all of it and the AI that had help create it. The oligarchs want my head and all that is in it. They’ve devised a technique to steal the information from my head, but I’ve defeated them I’ll soon be gone and with me the information to bend time. You’re welcome world.
248 Words @SweetSheil
Ariel waited. He glanced toward the huge windows framing the illuminated nightscape that was Las Vegas. Better here than Underhill. He would not utter the true name of the seat of the Seelie Court. All knew that true names held power when it came to magic. Had Oberon intended foul play, this command performance would be there rather than the penthouse of the glamorous Vegas hotel that was home to Seelie Fae in the human realm.
The doors opened and an unfamiliar courtier waved him in. Ari approached the throne with his head up but eyes lowered. A side door opened and Titania swept in. Settling next to Oberon, she watched him through hooded eyes. His brain whispered a few of Sade’s favorite curses as he approached.
Oberon did not dally. “We have a problem.”
Ariel remained silent, but his focus on the royal couple intensified.
“I can see it beginning all again.” Titania glowered at Oberon. “Another war would be too costly.”
Unable to help himself, Ari asked, “War?”
“Shadows are stirring,” the King admitted.
Rocking back on his heels, Ari did not like the direction his thoughts took. “The Unseelie Court?” At Titania’s morose nod, he continued. “I thought you’d bound and exiled them so they’re unable to access this realm ever again.”
“Ever is a long time,” Titania muttered. “They have a gate.”
The import staggered him. “A changeling? They found a changeling?”
“Fix it,” Oberon commanded.
Ariel was the King’s Seducer. Sometimes, he hated his duty.
****
250 Penumbra Papers WIP words
Silver James silverjames.com
I rarely visit Death in the afternoon, but God is up to something and he needs to know.
“Stan! This is a surprise!. What can I do for you?”
Horace shakes my hand, the bones of his fingers biting into my skin. I really wish he’d use his human form for handshakes. Because ouch. I shake my hand out as I sit in front of his stone desk. I always wonder why Death has such a lavish office, with gold inlays in the door and desk, and such cheap, uncomfortable wooden chairs for guests.
“I’ve had a vision.”
Horace sighs. “What have the humans done now? Because it is a mess down there and the bar is low for more trouble.”
I fold my hands, resting them on his desk. “A reset has begun.”
Horace shrugs. “Perhaps a reset is what they need. I can see it beginning all again.”
The last time God reset everything, he made a mess and couldn’t understand why I was angry. Well, he should try managing the down below when it floods and people are cold, wet, and angrier than usual. See how he likes it.
“If God’s going to get involved again, I’m going to raise Hell.”
“That did not work last time.”
I roll my eyes; he’s hilarious.
“Ha. Ha. I am not dealing with that bearded idiot flooding my area again! It took us forever to clean it up!”
Laughter rings out across the office and I growl. Stupid deities.
@Aightball
249 words
An artist lies surrounded by paintings, sculptures, pages curling at the edges. The weight of a life in pigment and stone.
No audience, no farewell. Just accomplished hands clasped over an ancient torso, barely rising.
Elsewhere, the world continues. An old woman watches a sparrow perched on a telephone wire. She recalls words he said years ago. “No such thing as wasted time. Just time you don’t understand yet.” A man at a train station absently hums the artist’s melody. A former muse finds a crumpled drawing in a drawer.
They tell lovers and friends who never knew him.
“I wonder if he… ”
“I remember when… ”
“He made you feel like everything mattered.”
A woman flips through an old notebook, remembering a sketch he gave her. A man recalls a late night debate when the artist’s words finally got through. “It doesn’t matter if it lasts. It matters that it’s made.”
The world turns outside, but the artist only hears the music playing. It fills the space, wrapping around him. His eyes close, and a thought drifts through the quiet: I can see it beginning all again.
As his breath leaves, the music expands in the spaces between words. In wind through doorways. In the breath before laughter.
The man stops humming and listens for a whisper he might have heard. The old muse unfolds the paper and feels something shift inside her.
The artist is gone. But the song remains.
246 words
@krvanhorn (Bluesky & X)
I was fidgety. Raw. I felt like I’d borrowed a skin from somebody else. A man or someone shaped differently to me. My clothes were the same ones I’d worn the day before, but nothing seemed to fit on me.
The face in the mirror was still mine, though. My hair was a mess, and my lipstick was smudged, but the bags under my eyes were the same as they’d been the last time studied this view. I was old before my time and my brain was on fire and I’d made yet another mistake.
I didn’t why I’d done it again. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d accepted an invitation from a man I didn’t know and had slipped out of the house before John woke.
John was my stability, a sponsor of sorts. He’d been a mediator, a brother, my closest confidante. He’d found the bail money I’d needed a couple of times, his university fund seemingly bottomless and his parents comfortably off. We’d never consummated our relationship because I’d been too vulnerable, his affection for me tempered by his caution. I was too unpredictable and unaware of my own needs and unsure of my own motivations.
He was a rock, and I was a hard place for him.
And now I could hear the sirens and see flashing lights, the frosted windowpane blurred red and blue.
I’d thought I was over this this time, but I can see it beginning all again.
250 words – twothirdzrasta.blogspot.com
It was a Wednesday. July 13th. 1977. A lifetime ago. If I close my eyes, I can see it beginning all again. The morning had been rough, filled with placement tests. I knew I hadn’t done well. I’d found sections on the math and science tests that I didn’t recognize.
Somehow, I made it to lunch. There we were, future college kids, eating lunch at the university’s cafeteria for the first time. Somehow, I wound up with a small group of people. Somehow, she wound up in the same group.
I only knew one way to eat a sandwich and potato chips. Quickly. I didn’t say much. Not until after I’d eaten. I sat there and tried to talk with the others in the group. I didn’t think I was doing anything abnormal or noticeable. I was just one more person in an ocean of them.
I have to admit, I noticed her. I wasn’t good around girls. I didn’t know what to say to them. I didn’t know how to behave around them. I was lost around girls. But they fascinated me. And one was sitting directly across the table from me. One I found quite pretty. One I looked at.
That’s when she asked me, “Are you watching me eat?”
It was one little sentence, but it was the start of so many things.
I don’t think either of us was ever the same after that one little sentence.
241 Words (Per Google Write)
@mysoulstears.bsky.social
I did it. I destroyed the world.
She says I’ve done it before, though I’m not the only one. She approaches and I can see it beginning all again. She’s the one who resets things, and the only one who remembers. A fascinating specimen. Her existence appears entirely accidental. And yet, if she can do what she says she can—something my tests strongly support—her power is deific.
Still, I really thought the straitjacket I designed for her would hold. I don’t mind the resets, conceptually, but it irks me losing my data. There’s so much you can only learn by observing a thing at its end. My self-enhancement cocktail might be enough for me to subdue her again. But I have to be careful. Her death is what triggers the reset.
She said this wasn’t the first time she’s trusted me. That’s interesting. There might be some way to send my data back with her.
I just wish I knew what I’ve already tried.
166 Fantasy Fighter words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
Sylvia carefully adjusted her favourite sunglasses and leant forward in full exhibitionist style. She intended being the centre of attention to at least a few of the men with dicky tickers sitting around the pool. She knew she was a most attractive slab of bait.
At the outdoor bar Benny looked out across the loungers—and loungees. “You can smell the money and egos everywhere and no one can miss the abundant plastic fantastics.” He tutted. “It’s the saddest of games.”
Claire grasped his free hand when he briefly released possession of his third mojito. “I can see it beginning all again. Sylvia must be running low on bills. The shameless harlot’s flaunting herself.”
Benny laughed. “I guess the money’s been spent on general servicing and more than a few updates and add-ons. Can’t be cheap to look that cheap whilst still having a condo on the coast and another in the mountains.”
“The sweat falling through that gorge between her twin towers must be picking up masses of microplastics.” Claire said.
It didn’t bear thinking about to Benny. All he thought of was how his father had fallen hook, line and sinker for her obvious talents and false charms. Sylvia was an experienced hunter—and was at it again in her favourite hunting ground: The Florida Game Reserve for the over rich—and not long to live, if Sylvia had her way. Husband No.4 and money to burn beckoned. It’d only have to be for a short while.
Word count and social media handle, A.J.?
Doh! My bad.
WC: 250
Social Media: Bluesky @zevonesque
“You have a treehouse?”
He grinned. “Yes. Highly defensible against ground predators.”
“But susceptible to high winds, I’d imagine.” I shook my head. “I like caves because they’re defensible, warm, and not likely to blow away.”
“Yes, but caves can get dank and don’t have a lot of air movement.” Despite his complaints, there was a glint of humor in his eyes. “Things could get rank.”
I gasped in mock-outrage. “My cave never gets rank. It always smells like sweet berries and moon flowers.”
What was I doing? Why was I teasing him? I’d known him a matter of hours, yet I was acting like a smitten youngling.
“Sweet berries and moon flowers, eh? This I need to see.” But he didn’t step into my home. “May I enter your cave to verify your claim?”
I narrowed all four of my eyes, but nodded as I moved into the interior of my space. Ryshtar ducked his head and followed me inside. I tried to see what he did, but it all looked familiar and comfortable to me. A place of refuge and safety, well disguised from the intruders to our planet.
Yeah, the intruders who’ve been gone for twenty anua.
I supposed I didn’t really need a defensible space against the intruders, but old habits died hard.
I can see it beginning all again should they return.
It was never unwise to be prepared.
234 ineligible #WIP words
@siobhanmuir.bsky.social
#ThursThreads Week 649 is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.