Welcome back to the home of #ThursThreads for Week 727. 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 Facebook.
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 727:
Cat wrangler, master violinist, and Tea connoisseur, Muirlette #1.
And now your #ThursThreads Challenge, tying tales together.
The Prompt:
“There’d be a next time.”
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!
The Debt
“He’s not expecting much,” the caller had said. I was good with that. Clients with low expectations of my skills have been my bread and butter.
“You’re his nurse?” I asked.
“Night nurse,” the reply.
“It’s noon,” I mentioned.
“I said I’d call for him. I had a busy morning. Sleeping.”
“He can’t speak for himself?”
“Throat cancer. One of many deadly afflictions he’s collected. He hasn’t got much time.”
“And he wants me to find the family of someone run over in 1944?”
“That’s it.”
“And offer…?”
“He’s got a small estate. Available pretty soon, I figure…and apologies.”
“For his dead father?”
“Yup. His old man was a Canadian who joined the American army. Visiting Vancouver in the war, he plowed into a guy. Killed him dead. I gave you the name.”
“Yeah. Pretty common moniker. Why didn’t he just take care of it when he was younger?”
“You got me. No idea. I guess he thought there’d be a next time. We all think there’s gonna be that. Time to take care of unfinished business.”
I smiled at that. That defined most of the goobers who came to me to try and fix something that they hadn’t dealt with.
“His old man. He was arrested?”
“That’s what he said. Got off with a fine. It was wartime. I guess soldiers got extra consideration. Anyway. you’ll take the job?”
“Sure,” I said.
Guilt. He inherited his father’s generational guilt.
I’d play my part, pointless as it was.
250 words
@billmelaterplea
@sterlings-son-2.bsky.social
Sinjen stared at Sade. “You did what?”
“I arrested Titania.”
“On what charges?”
“Crimes against humanity.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Why? Did she hire you as her defense attorney or something?”
He closed his eyes for a moment and rubbed his forehead. “Where is she?”
“Probably back in Vegas. Or the Fae realm. Don’t know, don’t care.”
“You released her?”
“Of course I did. I’m not stupid, Sinjen.” Besides, she knew there’d be a next time. The thought of another confronttaton with the Fae queen almost made her smile.
The vampire rubbed the back of his neck as he watched her from beneath thick lashes. “I wasn’t implying that you were.”
“The Fae are in this up to their eyebrows. Titania is a royal bitch. Ariel isn’t acting like himself. There’s a human woman who may not be human—” She paused to hit Nikos with a stare. “Though I’m not too sure of my source on that one.”
The dragon smirked. “Your source is impeccable. She is mostly human, Sade. Like you are mostly human.”
“What does that even mean? I’m human. Period. My father is human. My mother is human. That makes me human.”
Shrugging, Nikos turned his attention to Caleb. “My sense of smell is better in my true form but I picked up faint traces from the librarian.”
“Somebody tell me about this librarian and explain the hold she seems to have on Ariel.”
Nikos explained. “Ariel has been following her. Her name is Aisling Goodnight.”
****
250 Penumbra Papers #6 WIP words
SIlver James
https://silverjames.com
I let myself in.
“Gramps?” I shouted from the dusty foyer. No answer.
This wasn’t new, but scared the hell out of me. I began moving room to room and found him in his old den, slumped in the cracked leather chair, eyes staring at nothing. Alive, though grudgingly.
“Hi, Jacob. You’re the Jake one, right?” He side-eyed me.
“Right, Gramps. Didn’t you hear me?”
“I was otherwise engaged.”
“I see,” I said, stepping between him and the wall he faced. He shifted to peer around me.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“Huh? Oh, assessing, accounting, figuring,” Gramps said.
“I don’t see any paper or calculator.” I turned to see what was so important behind me.
“You know, Jacob? I hope when you get to my age, which something in me perversely hopes you don’t, you don’t feel the need for this.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’ve been watching that calendar since Sunday night like a schoolboy would a classroom clock,” he said, pointing to the 12-month 1976 one that’d hung on the wall for long as I recall.
“Months go by like seconds, minutes like years and the values and debits always come to the same zero sums.”
“Wha’dya mean?”
“I always told myself there’d be a next time. Whole life. Times I should’ve but didn’t. Or didn’t when I figured I could later. So here I sit, waiting for the next one. Don’t, Jake.”
A woman’s black and white photo fell to the floor.
“Just don’t.”
250 Words
@JAHesch
@jahesch.bsky.social
“That was amazing! Is it like that every time?”
Yuuchi expressed the excitement they all felt. Though Ermengarde, in particular, suppressed any sign of it.
Aalis answered, “The Guardian Animals never shared a battlefield before, so this was the first time forming the Great Guardian. Joining with all of them, and each of you, was totally different from the times it was just the Phoenix and I before.”
It was also different from the single prior time Ermengarde had joined with the Turtle. The power of the Great Guardian was overwhelming. Even enhanced, the greater devil never stood a chance. Still, it was troubling that Prophos had been able to force the greater devil’s evolution so suddenly.
Prophos. After Ermengarde avenged her predecessor against him, she never imagined there’d be a next time. If he could come back, did that mean their other adversaries could as well?
“What’s on your mind?”
Aalis’s hand on Ermengarde’s shoulder pulled the veteran back to the others’ victorious chatter.
“We need to prepare for next time.”
172 Great Guardian words
@davidaludwig.bsky.social
Xiao caught the young man before he gave himself a full body mud bath, and turned his face to the rain. No response. Xiao could tell he wasn’t dead, but he’d driven his body to exhaustion, and possibly starvation. Growling, Xiao laid the man on his own belongings and dragged the handcart deeper into the forest and out of sight of the road.
Xiao gritted his teeth against the indignity of a dragon hauling around an unconscious human and his stuff, but he couldn’t let the inexperienced fool sleep in the rain. What if he died? Then there’d be a body to contend with as well as all his belongings. It was simply easier to take the young man to a dry place and let him rest. Maybe feed him a little.
Something about the bronze-skinned man with his long, dark lashes, somewhat beaked nose, and full lips struck a chord in Xiao’s chest. He was beautiful even if he did smell like a dank swamp, and Xiao often collected beautiful things.
Plus, he recognized this young man had something no one else had possessed in all of Xiao’s three centuries—the mark of Xiao’s true mate. Oh, it wasn’t actually a physical mark, but Xiao could see a glow around the tired man’s body, dimmed with exhaustion though it was, that marked the man as his.
The next time he went walking in Xiao’s forest, he’d be better prepared for the weather.
And there’d be a next time.
250 ineligible #WIPwords
patreon.com/SiobhanMuir
“She canceled on us last minute,” Carlo says. He’s powerfully built, his sculpted body showing a level of care I can never be bothered with, but right now he’s a shaking mess. “I have the texts from her, if you need to see them.”
He unlocks his phone and hands it to me before shoving his trembling hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“Is that out of character for her?” I scroll through the exchanges. Nothing jumps out. They’re friendly, giving each other the kind of shit that comes from the heart.
“Nah, she is—or was—yeah. Okay. Hang on.” Carlo pauses. Swallows. His hands fist in his pockets, the denim bulging. “Was an introvert. But that’s whatever. Always figured there’d be a next time, you know?”
People almost invariably believed that. ‘Tomorrow is a new day’ holds way more appeal than ‘this moment might be my last.’
“Yeah,” I say.
Carlo drops his gaze to the floor.
“There was supposed to always be a next time,” he murmurs. “Endless next times—enough for us to graduate from dance clubs to book clubs. I dunno. Whatever comes after the young-and-dumb phase.” He lets loose a sound, something clawing between laughter and tears. “We weren’t done. I—I never even told her that I—that I wanted all of her next times.”
Carlo loved her.
“In any way she’d share them with me.”
And he’d run out of time to tell her.
“Find who did this,” he says. “Please.”
cara michaels
@raethye.bsky.social
250 words
repost to fix some formatting
It had been years since he had thought of her. She hadn’t been anything more than a friend, the wife of a friend first then friend. They had divorced, both moved away and he of course had his own life to live.
His wife died. He lost interest in people and lived on.
A memory, a moment’s thought, random neuron firing. He thought of her again.
With a bit of digging he found her address, her new last name. An obit of her late husband.
He looked at his phone, there would be another time, he would try later, yes, another time.
102 words
Boyd, do you have a social media handle so we can find you should you win?
https://www.facebook.com/boyd.miles.56?__cft__%5B0%5D=AZj7NCoaEqoGdmPkxQUet-GtcakAr0S3m7UzLq9hMt5oe2k6vAIDuC7LruA5MMbXBpNePKlUapIpKWtSJ766BA3xhEr3l6z4Mi1pGvztc55KHA6DJQRv8kDjkqgBz-DYqehQkUBHPeT_BIZTEVWCspYr76_JMCnssw6xKnM3hp274_Kle0PGiWSXdArYq6nyUVZI9tgSd7r9wFXrx3fi&__tn__=-UC%2CP-R
Well that’s what happens when I copied the link. Boyd Miles on FB, I’ll comment on the FB post.
#ThursThreads Week 727 is now CLOSED. Thanks to everyone who wrote this week and I hope to catch you next week.