So, we had a huge snowstorm on Sunday, which is appropriate for March, right? In like a lion, out like a lamb and all that... We're expecting freezing rain when this goes live through most of the morning. I'll probably be home wrangling kiddos - assuming it actually happens. YOU should go check out the prompt and write a story. Have at it!
If you haven't read the full version of the rules, go here. Otherwise, here's the short version:
Rules:
1. Start with the given first sentence. (Allowable alterations listed below)
2. Up to 500 words
3. Keep it clean (nothing rated R or above)
4. Optional Special Challenge
5. Stories submitted must be your own work, using characters and worlds that you have created. Sorry, no fanfiction.
6. Include: Twitter/email, word count, Special Challenge accepted
7. The challenge is open for 24 hours on Tuesday EST
Oh, and feel free to change pronouns, punctuation, tense, and anything in brackets to fit the story/pov/tone. I'm not going to be TOO picky... Our judge however...
Our Judge today is Nancy Chenier, also known as @rowdy_phantom. Check out her blog here. Read her winning tale from last week here! Nancy stumbled into flash fiction when the squidlet was born, as writing time has to be carved out of sporadic nap times and sane bedtimes. When not writing, she's probably doing something outdoors. She's eternally grateful for contests like FTT and the incredible flash community (shout out to #flashdogs) for providing such a supportive venue for writers.
Your first sentence for FINISH THAT THOUGHT #2-35 is (a loose paraphrase from Leonard Nemoy's later memoir):
[I] get a lot of attention from [strangers] due to a connection [I] have with a certain extra-terrestrial.
Your SPECIAL CHALLENGE from the judge is:
Include at least THREE (but NOT Spock or Star Trek): a tribble, pointy ears, red shirt, teleporter, tricorder, stoicism, whales, a bridge, an android, phaser, a resurrection, vulcanism
AAAAAAAND WE'RE OFF!!!
Title: Letter from Home
ReplyDeleteWords: 489
@RTayaket
I get a lot of attention from strangers due to a connection I have with a certain extra-terrestrial. His name is Percival. And when he drowns himself in the tub he will resurrect as a she, named Penelope. And then Penelope will do the same to let Percival back into the world. They alternate about every two weeks, taking turns on who exists and who lies dormant. That is how twins function on planet Tribble. They literally share one form with two separate consciousnesses. Percival and Penelope look similar, there is no mistaking, but when Percival drowns and Penelope takes over the height is shortened as well as a few anatomical aspects of Percival disappear. And then vice versa with Penelope drowns and Percival awakens.
Penelope knocked on my door six months ago. She was wearing a bright red shirt that clashed horribly with her purple skin. She came up to my waist in height and stared at me with her beady black eyes.
“Home,” she said brushing past me and immediately curled up on the dog bed crumpled on the kitchen floor and immediately started snoring. I stared at the creature with the door still open and Holly, my mom’s poodle ran screeching and barking out of the house. I shut the door behind her and stared at the purple lump that had taken her place. I sat at the kitchen table and watched the thing breathe.
Mom came home a couple hours later with tears in her eyes. She looked at me and said, “Dear,” she stopped to sniff and wipe her tears, “poor little Holly was run over and WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?!” she screamed realizing that Holly’s bed was in fact occupied. The purple blob stood and wiped its eyes on its red shirt. Mom and I stared.
“I. Penelope,” she said, sounding like a Muppet. “And…” she said crawling up onto the kitchen counter and starting the water in the sink. She sat down in it and let the water go over her mouth and nose. Mom and I watched until the air bubbles stopped. I took a step closer and Mom fell over when the alien emerged violently from the kitchen sink spraying water everywhere. “…I Percival. Penelope sister. Home. Ours,” he said, opening a drawer below his feet and toweling all the remaining moisture off his body.
I held Percival’s three fingered hand. Strangers crossed the street to be on the opposite side when they saw me coming with my extra-terrestrial. Mom told me either the alien stays or she stays. I haven’t seen her in a while. We crossed the bridge back to our house.
With my extra terrestrial companion – Percival or Penelope – I realize I didn't have to talk to any humans again and that made me feel at ease. I hate humans. I always knew I was more like one of them instead of one of you.
Foy
ReplyDelete@db_foy
WC: 450
Returning to the Stream
“I get a lot of attention from Out there due to a connection I have with a certain extra-terrestrial.” She said, and he had never seen so much conviction in a patient’s eyes.
“Is that so?” His lips and eyebrows jutted out like glaciers. He scribbled notes on unlined paper and his letters looked like tiny spines with vines entwining them. “And you believe it was because once you ‘had’ what you wanted, you didn’t want it anymore? You wanted him again?”
“Yes…” Her eyes drifted to the wall and the tips of her pointy ears rose, her face contorting in unfamiliar pain.
“And you are aware that there is no more logic behind those words than lie beneath the tears you now waste?” He slashed one of the spines through with a double strike before looking up at her form languishing on the low couch.
She nodded, her stoicism melting under the liquid-emotion leaking from her tear ducts.
“Tell me about this attention,” he shifted, dropping one of his legs and reaching for his glass of water. He sipped, and then returned it to its solitary station on the table. “What do you mean by it?”
“I can hear him,” her words trembled before falling from full lips in a hush. “Feel him. I wake up and he’s there calling to me, though I am alone.”
“Without physical contact, you ‘hear’ him?”
“Yes.” The tears dribbled faster now.
He exhaled forcefully, ascending to his feet before strolling to a glass cage that floated near the bay window. Valleys slope far below them only to grow high above again in stalagmites.
“Here,” he said, scooping a brownish red ball of fur from its cage, and marching back to the couch and chair. “Hold the tribble and calm yourself.”
She took it and began stroking the rounded back absently. It trilled beneath her fingers.
“You, of course, realize that telepathy is impossible with the absence of physical contact. Is there any other way you can describe your symptoms?”
“Not in our terms. It’s like…there’s a bridge that connects us.” She cooed back at the tribble and the flow of her tears at last ceased. “I don’t know how to explain it, Sir. But I hear him and everyday his presence is stronger around me.”
“This is all highly unusual and I’m not sure–”
Suddenly, T’Pring sprang up and her face glowed bronze. It was like her soul had passed into a resurrection.
“What is it?” He asked, startled by her passion.
“I know why the connection has been growing stronger!” She cried. “Don’t you see it? He’s passed from their world; he’s spirit will return to us. He’s coming home!”
Honali
ReplyDelete“I get a lot of attention from the community due to a connection I have with a certain extra-terrestrial.” He would be stoic, even tonight.
“So you think this… this ‘extra-terrestrial’ is the reason for all the attention?”
He had the grace to sound mildly guilty. “The main reason.”
The points of my ears reddened despite myself. “What about the king’s jewels? The diamonds?” My stolen heart?
A stream of razorlike smoke snaked through the bars of the window. “Careful; you dance very close to accusation.”
I skittered back a few feet where I pretended to adjust my blouse. The silk’s usually brilliant scarlet glowered like blood in the prison’s shadows. “Accusation? Never. We’ve been friends far too long.” You swore we would be friends until death, and dragons are immortal.
The smoke curled lazily now. “Friends? Interesting word: so many nuances, don’t you think? But… yes. Perhaps.”
“Thank you,” I said stiffly. “I’d rather thought that was settled, especially given the time or two I saved you from pirates.” Forty-three times I begged for your life, pledging mine in its place.
“You saved me?” The walls trembled at the roar of his laughter. “Not quite how I remember it, little elf.”
“You were too busy scratching out letters to notice,” I said. You would not even have eaten, had I not fed you.
“Letter, not letters,” he said, his voice suddenly tinged with a growl. “I only ever wrote one.”
“A hundred copies.” My lungs still ache from the smoke of your rage.
“Not my fault. What sort of numbskull gives cheap sealing wax and flammable string to a mighty dragon?”
“I did,” I said. I spent all I had to supply you. Because you asked.
“Fool.” His voice was warm, not mocking. “Regardless, it no longer matters. The letter never reached its destination, and tomorrow, I die. It will be one for the record books, no? A dragon’s execution.”
“You are resigned, then? You will not attempt escape?” Will you rise in flames to fight them, for my sake?
“What is the point? Their magic has me chained, and she is gone. In death lies my only escape.”
Walk away. Do not tell him what you sacrificed to send the letter. Do not let him know what they—
“She is not gone,” I said.
His smoke stilled.
“I found her,” I said, my words tumbling over themselves, “and she sent you this thing called a transporter. Push the button, and she will use her science magic to save you.” Don’t leave me.
One breath.
What do extra-terrestrials know about loving dragons?
Another.
“Here.” I shoved the device between the bars. Stay.
He did not move. “Thank you.”
“Be very happy, my--friend.” Don’t forget me.
Silence.
Say my name!!!
And then—could it be??--I heard what sounded like stonefall as he ground the device into the floor.
“Jackie.”
PUFF!
The explosion of flame in the cell, in my heart, was like the glow of a thousand suns.
499 words
@postupak
Judge's challenge: yes