Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 652. 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 652:
College professor, equality enthusiast, and romance author, Louisa Bacio.
Facebook | Bluesky | Instagram |
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“He intended to find out.”
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!
The Yelapa Trail
They’d hugged and she’d handed him a slice of sun-scorched lemon pie. Lemon or lime, he couldn’t tell. And it didn’t matter.
He gulped it whole.
She’d laughed, said, “there’s always more.”
“Good,” he’d answered. After he had finished, she had reached up to his lips, brushed flakes of pastry away, stepped even closer and kissed him.”
Three of the other pie ladies were watching, giggling, having a rare old time.
“We’ve a bit of a walk. Come on, lets go,” she said and then, as we left her pie-lady compatriots,
added, “Es solo un amigo, senoritas.” He’d smiled at that. His Spanish had improved by quantum leaps since they’d last been together. So, word would spread throughout the community that Senorita Lucy had a visitor but apparently he’s just a friend. If that was the way it was, the way she wanted it, then so be it. He intended to find out if that was a permanent designation.
“We have to walk through the village to get to my Palapa,” she’d said. “Palapa?” he’d queried.
“Where I live, where we’ll live, over there,” she’d said pointing to a tip of land across the beautiful bay.
“Waterfront?”
“There’s lots of it.”
The trail through the village was inches away from the small adobe homes.
“Not too private,” he’d commented.
“No, but they don’t seem to mind. I meant to ask, is it true, Nixon resigned?”
“Yup. A week ago.”
“That’s great news.”
He couldn’t have agreed more.
250 possibly from a WIP
@billmelaterplea
@sterlings-son-2.bsky.social
Nikos watched from the shadows. When he’d confronted Ariel earlier, he’d been honest. He was here in Rochester on business—just not the business Ariel would assume. His own king had sent him here to discover why Oberon and Titania were so interested in events occurring in this somewhat backwater upstate New York city. Once thriving, now Rochester clung to past glories with tenacious grit.
Yes, there was the yearly Lilac Festival which drew the Fae like bees to honey. Yes, there were lay lines here where magic swirled right under the humans’ noses.
He stiffened, noticing for the first time the beings gathered in the pool of darkness across the way from Ariel. His sharp dragon sight focused but the entities wavered, incorporeal spirits peering through the Veil.
Nikos swallowed the flame threatening to escape on his next breath. Those creatures raised the scales on the back of his neck, despite his human glamour. Dragonkind and Fae maintained a tenuous truce since the Veil ripped and the magick realms had been revealed. That did not preclude them from spying on each other.
Laughter carried in on the breeze. Ariel froze, as did those other hidden watchers. The woman appeared and the world inhaled sharply and held its breath. She wasn’t beautiful but the air around her glowed with a golden opalescence.
Intrigued, he watched her walk up the block followed by Ariel and the two spirits. Who was she? More importantly, what was she? He intended to find out.
****
250 Penumbra Papers Book #5 WIP words
Silver James https://www.facebook.com/AuthorSilverJames/
After ten hours of driving to a small town on the other side of the mountain for business Paul, he was tired. There had to be a quicker way and he intended to find out. A smaller unpaved road on maps would take him there. Paul drove his four-wheel over the rutted road, two hours later he cursed his foolishness. Where was the turnoff for the highway Paul thought. There it was, he turned off and saw a gas station up ahead. Trying to fill up, Paul found the pump was very old looking and inactive. He pulled away and soon found himself driving into a small town that hadn’t been on his map. People were milling about walking on the sidewalks.
He became fearful something wasn’t right about this and it wasn’t just the pitchforks that every person had in the hands and were now pointing at his truck. The people were sepia colored, faded like an old photograph. As they advanced on his truck; he gunned the truck and soon back on the road he noticed unbelievably he was at the gas station again and then the town, the people still with their pitchforks. Flooring his truck, he turned back towards the way he came; five hours later finding himself in the town over the mountain. He had been going in the opposite direction, how was this even possible? He asked at his hotel and was told people don’t take that road, for that’s the road to Hell.
250 words @sweetsheil.bsky.social
Taking a deep breath of fresh air that smelled like snow, he retreated to the back of his car and unloaded his bags. Laundry beckoned, as well as work email and any messages on his house phone. Friends teased him about having one, but he wasn’t bothered by spam calls and telemarketers on his cell phone, and that’s the way he liked it. Plus, his family only had the house line, a necessity for peace of mind.
Andrew unlocked his door and pushed inside. The air smelled stale and a little like the apple cinnamon muffins he’d made before he left. All his plants looked healthy and happy, and he didn’t have a pet so no one desperately needed food. It made it easier to travel, but then, he didn’t travel that often, so not having someone looking forward to seeing him was a little sad.
Still, the space was his and he didn’t have to make room for anyone else’s quirks. He pictured Ryan and smiled as he carried his bags into the bedroom.
I might be willing to make room for his quirks.
The idea of having Ryan in his space made Andrew’s lip curl in a happy smile. He didn’t know what the future held when it came to the budding relationship they’d started in Vegas, but he intended to find out.
Starting right now. He pulled out his phone and searched for Ryan’s name in his contacts.
241 ineligible #TripleStarRanch words
@siobhanmuir.bsky.social
Lord Eric Pembroke’s algorithm wasn’t a weapon. Yet it was how he made his initial fortune. These days, weapon design and manufacturing kept that fortune growing obscenely. The same unique perspective that allowed him to come up with the algorithm also allowed him to develop weaponry that countries, mercenaries, and megalomaniacs would kill to get their hands on.
He, of course, kept a few choice pieces for himself and his private security. It discouraged those who lost the bidding on his technology from seeking to remove him from play. Officially, there were states and entities that even he didn’t do business with. They paid particularly well.
They had other uses, too. Certain of Eric’s designs required testing that couldn’t be ethically accomplished. Testing the backroom customers were happy to provide, sometimes unknowingly, in exchange for early access. His current area of interest was entering a phase that would require extensive such testing.
The distinction between superpowered aliens and gods was too philosophical for Eric. What he knew was that a mere handful such beings had changed the Earth irrevocably. His question was whether weaponry could level the field between these beings and humans.
He intended to find out.
198 Lord Pembroke and Dream Girl words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
𝙀𝙭𝙥𝙞𝙧𝙚𝙙
The envelope had no return address. Either it was a bill or a cult. He opened it anyway.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, printed in bold, no-nonsense Bureaucrat Sans:
𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐫.
He checked the back. Nothing. No signature, no instructions. Not even a friendly Best Wishes. Just a blank void, like a missed opportunity.
He tossed it on the counter and forgot about it. Later that night, when he tried logging into his bank account, he got an error: User does not exist.
Then, at the clinic the next morning. He signed in on the clipboard. Ten minutes later: No record found.
By noon, he wasn’t in his company directory. By three, his childhood yearbooks had mysteriously misplaced his name. Even the “Love you always” from his high school girlfriend had vanished, like she knew all along he wouldn’t make it.
He called his mother. “Mom, what’s my birthday?”
“Honey,” his mother said, gentle but confused, “I think you have the wrong number.”
He sat down. The letter was still on the counter, waiting.
He told himself he intended to find out who’d sent it.
Or maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe some celestial supermarket employee was just checking the shelves, tossing out the milk past its date.
Maybe he was already sour.
He glanced at the kitchen window. A faint outline of a man stared back. He lifted a hand. The reflection followed, lagging. Just a beat too late.
244 words
@krvanhorn (Bluesky & X)
Lawrence couldn’t keep his heart from pounding so hard he thought Michael and his goons could see it through his suit jacket. He’d expected this to suck, but…
Absolutely nothing was going the way he intended.
To find out where Mary had gone had taken every penny he’d saved and every favor he could think to ask for. And even then he’d had to lie, steal, and one cold, snowy night, run from both the cops and someone who he knew reported to Michael.
But finally, Lawrence had everything he needed to force Michael’s hands and tell him what he needed to know.
Or so he’d thought.
Everything he had been told to bring – the knife that had been used to slit the Senator’s throat, the eyeballs from an albino goat, a poem so erotic it made the Pope revoke his vow of chastity – lay side-by-side on Michael’s desk, but the big man refused to even look at them, to acknowledge them. Instead, Lawrence had been tied to a stiff wooden chair and a gun with a muzzle the size of a sewer drain was challenging him to a staring contest. He was afraid to blink, expecting it to be the last thing he ever did.
He heard a door open behind him and saw Michael’s eyes widen in surprise, but he didn’t dare to turn his own head to find out who’d come in. He didn’t have to wait long.
“I knew you’d do it, sweetie.”
Mary was here?
250 words
@drmag00.bsky.social
#ThursThreads is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.