Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 706. Year Lucky 13! The last year of the cycle, the Moon Year. To those who keep coming back, I’m delighted to see you again!
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 Discord 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 Bluesky, MeWe, Discord, and Mastodon, etc.
Our Judge for Week 706:
Gamer, writer, and responsive connoisseur of characters and stories, David Ludwig.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“Wish he was still here.”
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 in the Moon Year. Good luck!
A Character Flaw
I was closing up shop when he whipped open my waiting room door and stood there, neon from the hallway blaring in behind him casting his tall thin ominous shadow into my face.
“Thank God,” he whimpered, “ You’re still here. You gotta help me find him.”
It was late and I was wankered. I’d spent the past twelve hours bird-dogging a known dognapper, Missy Pickering, seeing if she’d lead me to her kennel hideout.
The rub was, I recognized him, my emaciated interloper. Mac Holbrooke, old school mystery author. He wasn’t half bad. So, though my eyelids were weighing heavy, I thought, what’s the harm.
“Sit down, Holbrooke. Who’s missing?”
He plopped down on my waiting room sofa, caught his breath, said, “I thought he was still with me. Wish he was still here where he belongs. By my side. We’ve been together almost forty years.”
It was sounding like his boyfriend had finally gotten wise. Love sucks when you get old and tired. But he was here with his twisted hanky.
“So who is he and are you sure you want to find him?”
He gave me a look like I was the last fool in the world. “He’s…all I’ve got. You must know him. He’s like my brother. Donnie The Bruiser Trumper…that’s who he is…”
That knocked me back on my buttered flanks.
Donnie Trumper was his hard-ass detective creation.
Holbrooke had finally snapped. A case of Fictional Personality Phenomenon.
Too sad for words.
250 Words
@billmelaterplea
@sterlings-son-2.bsky.social
I can really feel, and relate to, how worn down and out these characters are.
Aisling followed Carla’s suit and plopped her sock-covered feet on the coffee table. She sipped the chocolaty liquid in the mug she held and sighed happily. “What did you call this again?”
“Loco cocoa.”
“Well, it tastes magical.”
Carla let out a gigglesnort. “I may be a witch, Aisling, but magic potions are not my forte. It’s the peppermint schnapps.”
“Ah, that explains the loco part.” Aisling sipped again. “I’m okay, you know.”
“I know.”
Aisling’s sips turned into gulps. Carla wisely headed to the kitchen and returned bearing a thermal carafe. She refilled the other woman’s cup.
“I really am,” Aisling insisted.
“I know.”
Aisling sighed, the sound unhappy now. “Still…”
“Yeah, still.”
“Wish he was still here.”
“First love is like that.”
Aisling bolted upright, her feet hitting the floor and the cocoa sloshing over her hand. She quickly licked the spill off her skin before confronting Carla. “I didn’t love him.”
“Uh huh.”
“Still don’t.”
“Uh huh.”
Settling back down on the overstuffed couch, Aisling placed her feet back on the coffee table, once more mimicking her friend’s posture. “Why did he leave?”
“Don’t know.” Carla sipped her own drink. “But I get the feeling he didn’t want to go.”
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“Don’t know.” Carla lifted her shoulders in a negligent shrug.
“You don’t care.”
“I care about you, Aisling. I don’t want you hurt.”
“I’m not hurt.” A silvery tear trailed down her cheek. “I’ll be okay.”
“Of course, you will.”
****
249 Penumbra Papers #6 WIP words
Silver James
https://silverjames.com
Loco cocoa sounds like a drink I know as a snuggler, and added a nicely cozy element to this for me.
Lisa watched the doctor leave and waited until she was sure no one else was coming in before resettling in the chair beside the bed.
“I hope you don’t mind me calling myself your fiancée. I just didn’t want to miss out on her diagnosis.” She rubbed her hands on her thighs.
“I don’t mind.” Barrett shook their head. “Just remind me what day it is right now.”
“Wednesday, July first.”
“Oh, that’s right.” They sighed with relief. “That means I probably won’t have to be here longer than a couple more days.”
“I promise to come visit every day so you’re not bored.” She paused, looking uncharacteristically vulnerable. “I mean, if you’d like that.”
They reached out to grasp her hand. “I’d like that very much, Lisa. How long have I been here so far?”
She frowned a little and bit her lip. “Surgery was on Saturday night, so four days now, I think.”
“And you’ve been here every day?”
She rested her other hand on theirs. “Without fail.”
Warmth filled their chest. “Thank you. And thank you for coming to rescue me. I didn’t want to end up like Carl.”
She shook her head and squeezed their hand. “There was no way in hell I’d let you end up like him.”
“Is it weird that I really wish he was still here? I mean, Carl was an asshole, but he didn’t deserve what happened. Eddie was a monster.”
240 ineligible #SirensInc words
@siobhanmuir.bsky.social
I love the chemistry between these characters and the good feelings after what they’ve been through. I also appreciate how the prompt pulls the story back down to a more somber ending that ties the larger narrative together nicely.
“I wish he was still here,” I said looking at a picture of our dead dad.
“Actually, I don’t. Caroline, we grew up with two different dads.”
“We had the same dad!!”
“He yelled at me all the time, belittle me, and beat me,”
“You were so mouthy, if you had just listened and not argued so much…”
‘Right, it’s okay to do that to a thirteen-year-old kid.”
“I …”
‘Listen I understand you were only five, and dad’s favourite. He saw me as masculine competition even though I was a kid.”
“I’m sorry Trevor. I never thought about it , is that why..?”
“Mom sent me away to protect me? Yes.”
“Did he do that when you were an adult?” I asked.
“Yes, before our brother died. I pulled him off him. Dad was drinking and he saw Bob as a threat.”
“Your lying’ he wouldn’t hurt Bob!!”
“Caroline, I’ve tried staying silent to protect your image of him but if you think back how many times, did he yell and scream at Bob and I? How many times did he grab us and belt us?”
“I’m so sorry, if I still love dad will you forgive me?”
“I love you. You’re my sister my feelings ar complicated; we can both feel the way we need to. Just can you not bring him up to me?”
Sometimes you have to put yourself in the others shoes. Trevor and I stayed close by never speaking of dad again.
249 words @sweetsheil.bsky.social
I love the complexity of feelings between the siblings and how they’re able to give each other room to feel the way they do.
“He’s smaller than I wish he was.”
“Still, here is an able-bodied man volunteering to fight the dwarves. With how things are going in the west, I wouldn’t wait for formal reinforcements.”
Captain Lowe sighed into the stinging easterly wind. Mayor Bragg was right. As much as she hated agreeing with the oversized official on anything. Bragg noticed her reticence and continued.
“Besides, he isn’t all that much smaller than a dwarf.”
The treefolk in question had scaled Lowe’s main mast as easily as one of the valley’s ancient oaks upon coming aboard. Counterbalanced by his too large longbow, he leaned far out from the crow’s nest. Gaze on the horizon.
“Can he even draw that bow?”
Lowe’s skeptical inquiry elicited a chuckle from Bragg.
“I’ve never seen him do it. But the knights he came with spoke quite highly of his proficiency. They say his archery contributed enormously to Norwood’s defenders holding out against three dwarven squads long enough for the knights to arrive.”
Lowe wasn’t sure she’d believe that if she’d heard it from the knights herself. But from Bragg? The man had a bad habit of embellishing.
The captain called up to the treefolk, “You there! What can you do with that weapon?”
The little man nodded acknowledgement of Lowe’s question. He tossed an apple from his satchel in the air. He nocked, drew, and released an arrow; pinning the apple to the center of a barrel lid to Lowe’s left.
“Yeah… That’ll do.”
247 ineligible words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
Politics and Religion. Two things that turned brothers against each other, turned children against their parents, and caused marriages to break up.
My father made it even more difficult. He was a US Navy Chaplin, and church pastor. My father always had the answer to any question. At least that’s what I always thought. It made it hard to talk with him.
My brother topped it off when he became an ordained pastor himself.
Politics and Religion. Driven like a wedge between us. Between me and my father. Me and my brother. Me and my cousins.
Being different. Being able to say, “I’m wrong,” and change what I think. Being able to read the science news, and understand the models of the weather, the models of social and economic behavior, the way that medicine works. Being able to understand that science doesn’t lie. But it does change when it learns something new.
Isn’t that what life is all about? Change when you learn something new?
Sometimes, I think of my father, and I wish he was still here. So he could see what I’ve become. How different his two sons are. And I could explain to him that it wasn’t anything he did wrong. That it’s just how things are. But my father is gone. He ran out of time years ago.
My brother tried to reach out to me. But Politics and Religion got in the way.
Like they have since the dawn of time.
Like they always will.
250 Words (Per Google Write)
@mysoulstears.bsky.social.
The contrast of being able to say “I’m wrong” versus always having the answer particularly resonates with me.
The little ball in the box labelled grief doesn’t hit as often as it used to, but when it does, it still cuts to the core. It’s the little things that remind me of him, things he liked or enjoyed or said.
“Wish he was still here,” I say to my brother over dinner as we talk about the Artemis II launch. “Dad would’ve loved this.” He nods in agreement, sadness clouding his expression despite our mutual excitement over the event.
Dad is who got me interested in aviation and space as a little kid. I was swaddled in Star Trek, Star Wars, and the original Battlestar Galactica. Weekends were spent at the local county airport to watch the airplanes take off and land. We had a model of the space shuttle with the launch vehicle signed by John Glenn on our living room mantle for as long as I could remember. And of course, we had all of the original Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica toys.
It’s been about two and a half years now. Years. Remember when we were kids and a year seemed like such a long time? Now two and a half years feels like yesterday.
As I watch the preview for the new Ryan Gosling movie, I know Dad would have been blowing up my phone asking me to take him to see Project Hail Mary. In IMAX of course. I wish he was still here so I could take him.
Amaze. Amaze. Amaze.
249 words
@mlgammella.bsky.social
I love the strength and uniqueness of the opening image.
Her tongue did that thing, and I responded the way she knew I would. Things continued in that vein for a while, with tongues and fingers and lips and all the other parts doing the things we both liked.
When it was over, she laid her head on my chest, uneven breaths on sweaty skin sending chills up my spine. I thought the dripping I felt was her own sweat until I heard the sob.
“Wish…um. Do you wish he was still here?”
She didn’t respond for long seconds. When the pause was long enough I thought she might not respond at all, she finally spoke in a rough voice. “Yes.”
I froze. That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I wasn’t surprised. What else could she say?
Swallowing, she continued. “And no. How can I wish for him instead of you? Or you instead of him?” She took my hand in hers, pulled it to her heart. “You’re both in here. There’s no part of me that hasn’t been intertwined with you. Or with him.”
Her eyes came up to meet mine. “And that means that every part of me is filled with light and laughter because you are here and that every part of me is filled with loss and grief because he is gone. Being with me means being with both parts of me.”
She grew quiet, waiting, her eyes searching.
I kissed her softly. I hoped she’d never find out why he was actually gone.
250 words
@drmag00.bsky.social
This is an impressive number of layers for 250 words; every time I thought I’d figured things out more was revealed.
#ThursThreads is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.