Category Archives: Flash Fiction Friday

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22-Jan-2021

I used the internet to generate these:

Character – Werewolf
Genre – Romance
Random Object – Perfume

“Are you sure about this?” my best friend, Jana, asks for the sixth or seventh time in a minute.

“Shh.” I check the time on my phone and look up at the full moon.

“This is such a bad idea,” Jana says.

I turn to glare at her. “I didn’t make you come.”

She whimpers. “I know. I just…are you sure you want to attract a werewolf?”

We’d been over this a hundred times since the last full moon. The night when I’d seen Daniel change from a mild-mannered computer nerd into an alpha-male werewolf. Just thinking about it got my blood pumping. “It’s just Daniel,” I say.

“Yeah, with homicidal tendencies and the urge to bite people.” Jana shivers as a breeze blows through the park. Leafs rustle. A cat hisses.

I refuse to be afraid. “You can leave whenever you want.”

Jana doesn’t move.

We’ve been sitting upwind of where I think Daniel is hiding for fifteen minutes. There’s no way he could have missed our scent. My pheromones.

A tree rustles from my left. It’s far away, but my breath catches in my throat as I think about him coming. Coming to me.

Jana grabs my arm and squeezes.

I see now that I shouldn’t have brought her. Sure, she knows about the supernatural aspect of our world, but she’s never had to face it.

“You should go,” I tell her. “Before he gets closer.”

She shakes her head and her grip on my bicep tightens.

More rustling sounds, each one louder than the last. I’d bet good money that Daniel could be perfectly quite if he wanted to be. I’m not sure if he’s giving us a chance to run, or just plenty of warning before he appears.

What little I could find on werewolves said that they retained a portion of their humanity during the full moon, which is why the whole world hadn’t been bitten and changed.

Another thing I’d found was that they relied heavily on scent.

“Is that him?” Jana asks in a squeaky voice.

I squint into the darkness, hoping to separate the monster from the trees.

A blacker shape within a nearby grove moves. My heart speeds up. My mouth goes dry. A pair of glowing yellow eyes regards us.

It’s him.

A tiny part of my mind screams at me to run, but the chemical reaction I’m feeling shoves it aside.

I want him. I need him. I don’t care if he’s a monster.

“It’s him,” Jana whispers.

I nod and retrieve the small bottle of perfume from my purse. My hands tremble, but it’s not fear. I shake then unstop the perfume—it had taken me a week to find out what Daniel’s mother wore—and dab a bit on my wrists. A sharp, floral scent fills the air and slowly drifts toward Daniel.

A low growl sounds.

Jana gasps and puts a hand over her mouth.

“Shh,” I tell her again as I slowly creep around the bush we’ve been hiding behind.

The yellow eyes are riveted on me. The growl continues. I find it anything but alarming. In fact, it’s as if he’s calling to me. “Daniel?” I whisper. I know he can hear me.

The growl stops, and he steps forward into the moonlight.

He’s beautiful. For a moment I can’t breathe. Powerful muscles bunch and twist beneath his brown pelt as he slowly comes toward me.

Every natural reaction to a predator I have flees, replaced by what can only be the need to mate. I also step into the light.

His yellow eyes study me with a combination of curiosity and what I hope is desire.

“Be careful,” Jana hisses.

We both ignore her as we take one step, then another, toward our destiny.

“Daniel.” I hold out a hand when we’re just a few feet apart.

He might bite it. He might lick it. He might kill me. He might do something opposite of that. In my heart, I know he’ll turn me, then he’ll take me. My body wails for this to happen sooner rather than later.

Daniel, or the creature he is now, stretches his neck out and takes a sniff of my hand.

He immediately jumps back. Like a startled cat—a strange motion for a five-foot tall werewolf.

I freeze.

Had I done something wrong.

Daniel shakes his head and then does something completely unexpected.

He sneezes.

“Daniel?” I ask.

He continues to shake his head as he retreats. Another sneeze escapes right before he gives me a look of regret and retreats into the trees.

I watch him, my hand still reaching for him. When his shadow blends with the grove, my hand falls to my side. Heartache and loss rushes through me, and I fall to my knees. He—he’d rejected me. I continue to stare at the last place I’d seen him.

Jana comes to my side. “I was worried about this.”

I manage to tear my eyes away from the spot and look at her. “What?”

“I think he’s allergic to perfume.”

“What?”

“He takes allergy medication every day. I didn’t know if it would carry over to werewolf form or not.”

“Allergies?” My mind scrambles to catch up. I try to rub the perfume off onto the grass, but of course it doesn’t work.

Pond. There’s a pond nearby. I jump to my feet and run toward it.

“Where are you going?” Jana asks.

“To wash this off.”

“What about the Loch Ness?”

“Screw him,” I say as I strip off my clothes. “Nothing is getting between Daniel and I.”


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15-Jan-2021

Character – An Astronaut
Random Object – A Hammer
Genre – Mystery

“Morning, Pursuit, how did you sleep?”

“Like a baby, ground.” The woman on the other end of the monitor smiled.

I glanced at Mike, the other communications officer, and repressed a smirk. “Good to hear, Pursuit. Anything to report?”

“Negative. All systems are in the green.”

Mike snorted.

I waved him to be quiet. “Good to hear, Captain.”

“What do you have for us today?”

I wasn’t surprised that Captain Jones didn’t mention the incident from the night before. “Nothing terribly interesting. You’re on deck to run diagnostics on the water filtration system and the sensor array. After that Command wants you to take some new readings on Mars.”

“Sounds exciting.”

Next to me, Mike brought up the video feed from the past twelve hours. He propped his chin on one hand and began fast forwarding through the footage.

“We’re hoping for no excitement, Pursuit. We only believe in dullness.”

“Oh?” Captain Jones raised an eyebrow.

“Of course.”

A clanging noise coming through the earphones made me jump. It sounded like a ball peen hammer on a metal picnic table. A muffled curse followed the noise.

Captain Jones winced.

“Problem?” I asked.

The woman rolled her eyes and leaned into the camera. “Arjun is convinced he’s hearing strange noises coming from the hull.”

I managed a convincing frown. “Has to doctor done a checkup?”

“Have you ever tried to get Arjun to comply with an unscheduled medical checkup?”

“No, ma’am.”

She made a face. “I wouldn’t advise it.”

Mike slapped my arm where Captain Jones couldn’t see it. I followed his pointing finger to the monitor next to mine where Arjun floated next to the hull of the spacecraft with his ear on the surface, like an old-fashioned safe cracker. Mike had the playback on high speed, so it looked ridiculous when Arjun suddenly pushed off the hull like a frightened cat.

A snort escaped.

“Something funny?” Captain Jones asked.

“No, ma’am. Allergies.” I grabbed a tissue and wiped my nose.

“Uh-huh.”

This time the cursing from the background got louder, along with Arjun’s angry voice.

“There, did you hear it, Captain?”

Captain Jones sighed. “I’ll get back to you when we’re finished with the diagnostics.”

“Sounds good, ground out.”

The monitor went black.

Mike broke out into peals of laughter. “He looked for that thing for three hours!”

A few of the others in control drifted over.

“Did the first one go off?”

“Where is it?”

“Does the crew think there’s something wrong?”

Mike transferred his screen to the large one at the front of the room and replayed Arjun’s search on high speed.

“What sound is it making?” someone asked.

I consulted the list on my phone. “It should be an eerie groaning sound.” I watched as Arjun floated around in an attempt to find the source of the strange sound. Everyone started to laugh as he retrieved a hammer and started tapping the inside of the hull.

“Lindon is coming,” someone near the door said.

Mike returned the screen to normal and we all went back to work.

Well, everyone who’s monitor wasn’t in direct line of sight of Lindon kept watching Arjun looking for the source of the sound.

“He’s going to kill us,” Mike said with a laugh.

Lindon—a tall imposing man—strode into the room and draped his suit jacket over the back of his chair. “Arjun has reported a strange sound coming from the hull. I need everyone from engineering working with him ASAP to find the problem.”

“He called Lindon?” Mike muttered.

“Apparently.”

The engineering crew, who had planted most of our little surprises, ran into the conference room with coffee and tablets in hand.

I watched Lindon follow them. “Forget Arjun, Lindon is going to fire us all.”

“Naw.” Mike waved a hand. “Captain Jones will get a kick out of it.”

For the next hour the engineering team went over the report Arjun had sent. Mike and I speculated on what they thought was wrong.

I wasn’t surprised when a message came through to my terminal.

Arjun scowled at me. He had a small device in one hand, which he held up in front of his glare. “You will pay for this.”

“Pay for what?” I asked with as much innocence as I could muster.

“An Annoyatron? Really?”

“Huh, how did that get there?” I asked.

Arjun leaned closer. “I may be millions of miles away from you, but I still have plenty of friends on Earth. You will pay.”

I grinned. “Come on, you have to admit, that’s funny.”

“It’s not.” His stern expression didn’t crack.

“We just thought you might like something to break up the monotony.”

“How many more are there?”

I shrugged with my hands.

His eyes narrowed.

Captain Jones floated past behind Arjun. She gave me a smile and a thumbs up.

“Should I tell engineering that the problem has been solved?” I asked.

Arjun flipped me off and cut the transmission.

I brought up the list on my phone and clicked off the first item.

“Well?” Mike asked.

“One down, eight to go. The next one will sound like a cat.” I glanced at where the engineering team was leaving the conference room. They were laughing.

Lindon rolled his eyes at me, but said nothing. Mike held out his fist. I bumped it with mine.


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1-Jan-2021

I’ve written a limerick for the end of 2020.

Don’t judge too harshly, I wrote it in five minutes.

*clears throat*

This year should have been a good year
Instead it did fill us with fear
The whole thing was glum
Pandemics are dumb
Can’t wait for 2-1 to premier

The End


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24-Dec-2020

Welcome to the last Flash Fiction Friday of the year!

Apparently I have the apocalypse on my mind. Gosh, I don’t know why. It’s not like this year has been that crazy…right?

The Ride of Christmas’s Past

Today’s Flash Fiction Friday is brought to you by:
Driving Around Looking at Lights
A Rabid Snowman
and
Gluten-Free Gingerbread

Narrator 1: Welcome to the Ride of Christmas’s past. Please take a seat in your twentieth century vehicle and we will get started.

Narrator 2: Do up those seat belts, it might be a bumpy ride. Especially after the year 2020.

Narrator 1: A wise precaution. Back before the turn of the century, and even for some time afterward, it was customary to decorate the outside of your living abode with lights during the Christmas season. Many would drive their cars around to look at said lights, partaking the beauty with joy.

Narrator 2: Or stealing ideas for next year’s light display.

Narrator 1: During the late 1900s, the production of strings of Christmas lights became more affordable, giving a greater swath of the populace a chance to use them in displays.

Narrator 2: As soon as they figured out how to make it so when one light went out they didn’t all went out things got much better. Way less acts of violence due to decorating.

Narrator 1: The technology continued to advance, giving the people of that time more options to choose from.

Narrator 2: Which wasn’t always the best thing. The lights on your right were perhaps the most trendy of styles—the icicle lights.

Narrator 1: And let’s not forget the infamous twinkling lights.

Narrator 2: You mean the seizure inducers?

Narrator 1: Indeed.

Narrator 2: Then the dumpster fire of 2020 hit.

Narrator 1: The Christmas of 2020 was impacted by many factors, but it was the next year in which, as they say, everything changed.

Narrator 2: Don’t worry, kids, those are not real snowmen.

Narrator 1: The likeness is uncanny, is it not? It was early in the winter season of 2021 when the snowmen began coming to life. At first it seemed a wonderful thing.

Narrator 2: Then it hit the fan hard.

Narrator 1: The tale of Frosty the Snowman had warned humans that snowmen could be inhabited by magical being. Alas, the cautionary story had turned into a children’s fable many years before, leaving the human race unprepared for the Snowman Apocalypse of 2021.

Narrator 2: Maybe if the humans hadn’t made so many snowmen, brought them to life, then left them alone to melt in the sun—a horrible way to go according to the snowmen—things would have been different.

Narrator 1: Here we have a scrolling memorial wall of all those killed that winter by the snowmen. People described them as rabid dogs, going after anyone they could sink their icicle teeth into. Men, women, and children.

Narrator 2: Even dogs. After all, no one likes getting peed on. Yellow snow is a thing, and the smell…

Narrator 1: It took society a few years to deal with the snowmen.

Narrator 2: You call banning the creation of snowmen on penalty of death dealing with them?

Narrator 1: Even now there are always a few people who dabble into the lore of the snowmen. They usually do not survive.

Narrator 2: And now that all police and most households are armed with UV flood lights the snowmen don’t survive long either.

Narrator 1: Just as the snowmen problem abated, a new issue arose.

Narrator 2: Did you just try to make a pun?

Narrator 1: Did I?

Narrator 2: I’m not sure you could say gingerbread really rises.

Narrator 1: By this point the world had realized there was more magic in it than they had thought. The snowmen had, in a small part, prepared them for this. However, no one was prepared for the gluten-free gingerbread men to come to life.

Narrator 2: Turns out gluten is a magic salve of sorts, and without it, any magic that goes into food is corrupted. And when I say corrupted, I mean they forge themselves weapons out of candy used to decorate gingerbread houses, grow two ten times their size, and go on rampages that make Godzilla look like a little child.

Narrator 1: Here we have footage shot of the destruction of New York. This man and his family were hewn down by a hundred foot tall candy cane just before they got over the bridge and out of the city.

Narrator 2: Gingerbread wasn’t the only gluten-free food to rise up—yes I did make that pun—in rebellion. Bread, cookies, crackers…the worst was probably the breakfast cereals. They would expand and fill an entire town, and could only be vanquished with a flood of water, which left a soggy mess.

Narrator 1: It took the world three years to get rid of all the artificially gluten-free food. Scientists worked feverishly to cure any gluten intolerances and allergies in people.

Narrator 2: They do say that necessity is the mother of all invention.

Narrator 1: That brings us to a modern Christmas celebration, which looks much like the mid 1900s. Simple yet elegant. There are some places that do not allow Christmas decorations. Those parts of the world are hoping to be set free from this oppression soon.

Narrator 2: What do you think could be next? Reindeer uprising? Trees that impale people? Maybe it’s better we skip Christmas.

Narrator 1: Or you could live on the dangerous side.

Narrator 2: And get dead.

Narrator 1: There is that.

Holiday Flash Fiction Categories!

Tradition:

  1. Decorating cookies
  2. Picking out a Christmas Tree
  3. Driving around looking at lights
  4. Staying up until midnight to hear the church bells ring
  5. Going into the woods to cut down your own tree
  6. Watching favorite holiday films
  7. Taking one of the men playing around with the deep fryer (while trying to cook an additional “better” turkey) to the ER for 2nd and 3rd degree burn
  8. PJ pictures on or near the stairs of all the kids Christmas morning
  9. The family sleeping around the Christmas tree the Friday before Christmas
  10. Christmas stockings made by grandma

Object:

  1. A Rabid Snowman
  2. Reindeer
  3. An old nutcracker
  4. Grandma’s crotched snowflakes
  5. Advent Calendar
  6. Krampus’ switch
  7. The heirloom tatted ornament that has been dunked in sugar water, starched, , and modge podged so many times it’s hard to tell what it originally was…(resembles an oblong Easter egg that’s been scrambled) but it’s been out for every Christmas since the oldest family member remembers, it’s tradition
  8. Wooden Christmas signs bought at Ensign
  9. Christmas village on the fireplace
  10. Death Star tree-topper

Food:

  1. Gluten Free Gingerbread
  2. Fruitcake
  3. Cranberry Jell-o Salad
  4. Homemade divinity
  5. Christmas crack chocolate
  6. Christmas Kibble (a cookie that looks like kibble)
  7. Aspic Salad
  8. Wild Rice
  9. Raspberry cream cheese desert
  10. Christmas sugar cookies

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