Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 656. 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 656:
Cat afficionado, Editor, and Mid Week Flash host, Miranda Kate.
Facebook | BlueSky | Goodreads |
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“How did you ever find it?”
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!
Yelapa Flame
Morning drifted by. He was hungry but the sun, the smooth stones, and the sea consumed them both for the longest time.
Finally, as the fierce 10:00 o’clock sun swooshed down on them, she whispered, “We should eat. You must be starved.”
He smiled and agreed wholeheartedly.
“Great. It’ll be ripe mangoes with lime?”
He readily accepted her offer. She scurried over to a nearby lime tree, picked three fresh limes and sliced the waiting mangoes, selected earlier from a giant tree at the back of her property.
“After breakfast,” she said, “we’ll go visit my friend Manuela. She’ll have fresh coffee and straight out of the oven pies…”
“You don’t bake your own?” he asked.
She let loose with a deep laugh and confessed, “They’re her pies. Sometimes Manuela is so busy baking that she asks me to do the selling. We’ve become close friends so I do what I can.”
He thought back to the morning when he has asked her, “how did you ever find it?” and her response that Yelapa had found her. He thought it more than that for she had always had that light within her. Positivity was drawn to her. Then there was Altamont, a dark experience for many, for America, an errant bullet that had found its way into the flesh of his thigh, her ministering to him, an off-the-books medic she knew who had no qualms about aiding a friend of hers…
He was a firefly, she, his flame.
250 words possibly still a WIP
@billmelaterplea
@sterlings-son-2.bsky.social
“A few years ago, I had a really good friend fought and died from a rare form of cancer. I was with him through it all, and watched him get smaller and more frail as the weeks went by.” Barrett took another bite of cake. “It was so hard to watch, but I tried to spend as much time with him and support him as he fought against the disease. In the end, I felt both great sorrow and great relief at his passing. And then, I felt guilt for being glad he was gone so I didn’t have to watch him fade.”
Lisa nodded, trying to swallow against the lump in her throat. “Survivor’s guilt. Yeah, I know that one really well. It mixes with the sadness and just sits there like a big rock in the middle of my life. I can’t seem to get past it. How did you?”
“Ever find it interesting that emotions are a little like the weather? It comes up out of nowhere and then just rains all over you. And then it blows away like it never existed once the squall is over.” Barrett took a sip of their water. “It comes and goes, but I think the best way to deal with it is to feel it. Really feel it in a place where you’re safe. Sometimes, that means with a good friend, and sometimes that means alone. There’s nothing wrong with feeling the emotions, even the really uncomfortable ones.”
249 ineligible #SirensInc words
@siobhanmuir.bsky.social
She refused to cower, lifting her chin in defiance. She was tired of bullies.
The man’s gaze raked her, automatically dismissing her as no threat. , Full of arrogance, he said, “How did you ever find it?”
Puzzled, she racked her memory but found no helpful frame of reference. “Find what?”
“Don’t pretend innocence.” The stranger seemed to swell in size, looming over her.
Aisling opened her mouth then closed it. She had no words. Her thoughts were too chaotic to make sense. Who was this man? How dare he try to intimidate her. Adrenaline surged inside her as her anger spiked.
“Back off.” Her voice cracked in the middle of that order so she cleared her throat.
“Back off!” she repeated, forcefully this time.
He leered until another voice whispered in the darkness.
“You heard the lady.”
Aisling and the stranger both froze. She slowly turned her head. And blinked. The being standing not three feet away all but glowed. He was… She exhaled, knowing it was a sigh of pure feminine appreciation. Then she had a little trouble inhaling because he left her breathless.
“This is no business of yours, mealltóir.”
She got her first clear look at the stranger. He was shadowed darkness to the other’s radiant light. She repeated the odd word. “Malthor? What’s that?”
“His title. The King’s Seducer.” Then the shadow man disappeared. As was the other.
Aisling was alone.
The wind whispered, “Beware the deceiver.”
Totally freaked, she still didn’t know what it was.
****
250 Penumbra Papers WIP words
Silver James
FB: https:www.facebook.com/AuthorSilverJames/
Cap awakened to the whirl of a lawn mower: his neighbor, a leech who borrowed things and never returned them. Books, tools, a heavy six-inch kitchen knife. It drove Cap crazy. And his nymphette wife. Not Cap’s, the neighbor’s. Cap had to go over and ask for it back, whatever “it” was. Sam always hemmed and hawed: Didn’t I return that? I’m sure I did. Well, I’ll have to look. But not right now—busy. I’ll get back to you. But Cap didn’t complain; his idiom was, Treat others the way you would like to be treated. He wished Sam had the same philosophy. But he didn’t. Even though confrontation didn’t appeal to him, he decided today was the day—he’d had it with all the excuses. Throwing on a shirt, he went over to the fence, where Sam was now busily engaged in pruning the bushes. With Cap’s hedge trimmer. Cap pointed at it. I thought I remembered loaning that to you. Last year, wasn’t it? And you said you gave it back. Then you said, no, it was in the garage. We went around and around like that all summer, me asking for you to return it, you saying you didn’t know where it was. Now, here you are, using it again. How did you ever find it? Cap asked, his voice sharp.
Sam looked down, blinking as if he hadn’t noticed it before. Oh, this? It was, uh, right here all along. Meant to return it.
249 words
Social media handle or email, Terri?
Secrets are never good, they always come out in the end. I thought everyone knew that even friends, but I guess I was wrong. I knew my friends were keeping something from me, something big.
I’d gone to work arrived home and heard whispering. I ignored it and went into my room. Maybe they were planning my birthday party next month? Every time I left the apartment and came back to the home; they were whispering. It was making me exhausted. I was starting to wonder what the heck they were hiding.
I decided to come home early from work; wouldn’t you know I ended leaving at the same time I left every day. Entering the apartment, However I heard, “How can she not know?”
I was mad I went into my room slamming the door. Enough was enough.
Then I heard, “We can’t do this anymore it has to stop. It’s making me sick.” Jasmine commented.
“Me too, I was her best friend but…” Karen exclaimed
I thought they were my friends; what had I done to deserve this?
I went into the other room to confront them and that’s when it hit me what they’d been talking about.
“I’m sorry,” I said
“How did you ever find it?”
“Going through the wall was my first clue. Can you except me still living here.”
“Yes, just don’t sneak up on us.”
We’re happy just the three of us for now; but I have final say on any new roommates.
250 words
@sweetsheil.bsky.social
The Sea Beacon creaked and groaned. Elodie Lee frowned.
“What are you sorry about?”
More creaking timber.
“Oh dear!”
Elodie adjusted her thick spectacles and hurried up to the main deck. Starlee Swann, the first mate, was directing the crew. Elodie had charted the calmest route she could, but even under ideal conditions there were always jobs to do. The little navigator made straight for the hatch to the captain’s cabin and slid down the revealed ladder.
Captain Rhea Damas was sprawled on the floor against her cot. A severely depleted brandy bottle in her hand.
“Captain…” Elodie shook her head. “That bottle was for your birthday.”
“Itssa good birthday,” Rhea sniffed with half lidded eyes.
“How did you ever find it?”
Rhea tapped the side of her nose with a finger.
“If there’ss liquor about; I’ll find it.”
The moment was shattered by the boom of cannon fire and an uncomfortably close splash. Captain Damas lurched to her feet, shouldering her bandolier and cutlasses, and scrabbled up the ladder to the deck with bottle in hand. Elodie followed apprehensively. Sea Beacon had already told her what was out there.
Captain Damas scowled at the HMS Temperance off their starboard side. The flagship of the captain’s nemesis, Admiral Aguilar.
“Sweet Isobella’s backside! How’d they sneak up on us?”
Starlee turned sourly to the captain.
“We think Lord Nacht cloaked their approach. Also, Angelina says she spied my uncle aboard.”
“Damnation! Together three months and our enemies are already joining forces?!”
250 words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
𝑺𝒂𝒍𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑪𝒊𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒔
She found him out near the coast behind an old hardware store, tending to lemon trees that shouldn’t have survived the salt.
She stood on the gravel path, watching him, waiting.
He looked up once, then again. A pause. A slow nod.
“Mister George,” she said, smiling. And then he smiled too, in that quiet way she remembered.
They sat on the porch. She handed him a photograph. Her mother, hair tied up, laughing in a way she never did at home.
“She told me a few things,” the woman said. “Near the end.”
He studied the photo like it was a living thing.
“She loved you.”
He nodded. “I loved you both.”
Silence followed, soft and warm. The porch smelled like rain and rot.
Like love.
She reached in her bag and pulled out a marble, blue swirled with gold, worn from fingers.
His eyes flickered. “The magic marble.”
She handed it to him and he held it up in the light.
“How’d you ever find it?”
“Turns out it didn’t roll that far away after all.”
A gull cried somewhere distant. The lemon trees swayed like they remembered, too.
She left before sunset.
He placed a lemon in her hand. “Thank you,” he said. “For remembering.”
She drove away with tears in her eyes, the taste of salt and citrus in her mouth. Wondering why the gentlest love never made it to dinner tables.
236 words
@krvanhorn (Bluesky & X)
You ask me why I drink so much – it’s just because I’m weak. That’s a lie, and it isn’t. Will we ever walk again? I think you’re better at ignoring the stares than I am. How many more months will we be hobbled, crutching around the school, struggling in and out of the car, limping back from the bathroom? I haven’t revealed this to you, but the 5-year OS is about 20%. That number festers inside me so I try to drown it. I can’t cry this early in the morning and class starts in 10 minutes. The doctor said our margins were good. He called it a “limb salvage” but I think there’s an extra letter in that word. That’s okay. They saved it. All that metal and cement in the femur! Doc said he stopped counting screws after 40. Jesus! And do you remember the TSA agents? Their shock, like WMDs were hidden under your shriveled thigh. That was a great Christmas. (Was it our last?) To get back home after those years trapped in China was so good. And sad. I know your leg hurts all the time. It hurts me, too. I’m proud of you. I love you. That hurts, too… So I buy another little flask of the cheap stuff at 7-Eleven and I drink in the car. I hide the flask under my bed. How did you ever find it? I come in the door with a smile that’s a lie, and isn’t.
(249)
@ErnestWilde78
#ThursThreads Week 656 is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.