Saturday, May 14, 2016

Cracked Flash: Year 1, Week 41

Heeeey, everybody! Welcome back to a round of CFFC. Little did I know I would be writing this introduction on only 12% battery, so no fancy opening for you, haha. See you (and all your fabulous posts) tomorrow! 

Beware the Rules that Lurk

Judge This Week: Mars

Word Count: 300 max

How: Submit your stories as a comment to this post, along with your name, word count, and title (and Twitter handle or blog if you've got 'em!). One entry per person.

Deadline: Midnight tonight, PDT!

Results announced: Next Wednesday afternoon.

Remember: Your entry must begin with the prompt! The prompt can be mutilated, but not beyond recognition. (Pictures do not need to be incorporated into your stories, they're for inspiration (and sometimes our amusement)).

Prompt

The dragon was too slow.


Toothless is adorable (remember: no fanfiction)

11 comments:

  1. Dragon Flight
    By Ronel Janse van Vuuren
    @miladyronel
    251 words

    The dragon was too slow. The wyvern had already intercepted the flaming pearl and was heading to the goal post. If the blue team won again, he wasn’t going to hear the end of it. Flapping for all he’s worth, he raced after the wyvern.

    Down below, the crowd was roaring and blasting illegal flames toward the players. The phoenix on the dragon’s team took a quick fire-bath to rid himself of parasites. The dragon closed his eyes briefly as the amphithere laughed so hard that he shook from his feathery frill to his sparkling goldish tail. The Asian Lung hadn’t closed its eyes and was momentarily blinded by his teammate’s glitter.

    The dragon swerved. As captain of his team, it seemed that everyone else had it out for him. Especially the fire-crazy crowd. Another fireball barely missed him and crashed into the wyvern; who dropped the flaming pearl. The dragon swooped down, caught it and flew back towards the opposite goal post.

    This was it.

    The crowd cheered and jeered. His team protected him against fireballs and opponents. Dragons crashed to the ground. The flaming pearl was burning his paw.

    And then…

    Score!

    The crowd went wild. The Lung fell out of the air in shock. The phoenix flashed through all the fireballs and caught fire.

    And the dragon finally prevailed. As team captain he won the pearl. And he finally acquired his fire. Now he could be a real dragon: he could have a lair, treasure and terrified humans.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love the idea of dragons playing a quidditch-like sport! This was a fun read.

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    2. Thank you, Sara. I'm glad you enjoyed it :-)

      Delete
  2. The Killers Kollective

    “The Dragon was too slow,” Dickie said, “Slower than a three-legged race in a cemetery. He hasta go.”

    “I know,” I said, “he did some good work for us. Of all the mugs we know, the Dragon, when he was in his prime, he was the best.”

    “Top notch, Al. Not the point. Loyalty is one thing but our guys gotta produce. You send them out on a contract, you give ‘em a timeline, you expect results. Face it, he’s got no prime left. You remember the Kaplan contract?”

    It took me a second but the Kaplan hit took shape for me. It was a doozy. Three members of one Corporation. The consignee couldn’t determine which one of his execs was embezzling. “Take ‘em all out,” he finally said. “I can always hire better.”

    “That was The Dragon’s first for us…what was it…’47? ’48?”

    “1947. Blue Steel Tool and Die. Made a bundle during the war, then had trouble converting to peace time production. One of their suits got greedy.”

    “Yeah. Gawd, that was a beauty. The flamethrower was inspired.”

    Tears were almost welling up in my eyes thinking about Phil Pottle. From that day on, for obvious reasons, we named him The Dragon. Our little joke. Even Phil didn’t know what we had christened him. Given Phil’s total lack of a funny bone that was probably for the best.

    “So, Dickie, how do we retire him? He thinks he’s still the bee’s knees.”

    Dickie raised his furry eyebrows. He hated my wimpy expressions. Me, I enjoyed his discomfort.

    “Well, Al, I gave him another shot. If he pulls it off, then it’s contract by contract.”

    “So, what’s the job?”

    “Why don’t you ask Phil, Al? Phil, show Al what you got!”

    I turned just as the fireball hit me.

    300 exit interviews
    @billmelaterplea

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ride the Dragon
    Benjamin Langley
    Twitter: @b_j_langley
    blog: benjaminlangley.blog.com
    words: 300

    The Dragon was too slow with no loops, no tight bends, and no vertical drop. It didn’t even need an over-the-head restraint, just a stupid lap bar.

    This stupid ride had no right being in Terror Peak alongside Colossus and The Gargantuan. Those were proper rides with sudden drops and loops and lightning speeds. Those were proper rides which Deven was an inch too short for.

    He left the ride in a sulk and thought about grabbing a hotdog. When he reached the kiosk and saw the stack of napkins, he thought it was worth giving the ride another shot. With a little help and a craned neck, he might just make it.

    Deven couldn’t believe it when they let him on. All those nerves in the queue were for nothing! He climbed into the seat, pulled the harness down, and waited. He could hear his heart thudding against his ribcage. He has actually going to ride Colossus.

    The ride shot off and Deven’s head was thrown back into the headrest with a thump. Quickly, the ride flew into its first loop. Deven was screaming, unsure if it was terror, or delight. The ride slowed and began to crawl up towards the vertical drop.

    That’s when his shoe came off.

    “Hey!” came a shout from behind him, followed by giggles as napkins fluttered to the ground.

    Concerned by his lost shoe, Deven was utterly unprepared for the drop. He felt himself slip forward in the seat. What if he really was too small for the restraint? Could he slip right out? The ride went through loop after loop, with Deven’s screaming in terror.

    When it stopped a lifetime later, he could barely breathe. He stumbled from the ride, giddy, and hopped through the exit.

    Maybe The Dragon wasn’t so bad.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Dragon's Bane (77 Words)
    By Sara Codair
    SaraCodair.com

    The dragon was too slow. No matter how hard he ran, he couldn’t outrun the cat. After spending its life preying on small mammals and hoarding gold, he never expected to be taken down by a feline, let alone a house cat. Still, he couldn’t deny it as the cats claws pierced his scaled. The last thing he saw were two glaring yellow eyes. The the fluffy feline ripped his throat out, and he was no more.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The Belly of the Beast
    By T. O. Davis
    241 Words
    @2B_DrDavis

    The Dragon was too slow. However, she decided to ride it anyway. Priscilla was always up to a challenge, a thrill. She worried Gary was going to dump her, which always resulted her in upping the ante. Last week they BASE jumped off the Perrine Bridge in Twin Falls, Idaho, and Priscilla swore each memory arced down her spine and out her shoes as they fell towards the Snake River’s clear, turbulent waters.

    Now they were on a ride called the Dragon, which was supposed to be the thrill-seeker’s thrill ride, but she had seen slugs move faster. Of course, they were merely climbing the track, the car tick-tick-ticking, which got her thinking; she didn’t want to look down, though, at their current elevation, she could see most of the park; its lights twinkling in patches like lightning bugs as the park readied itself for night. “We need to stop,” she said.

    “They can’t stop now,” Gary said and patted her knee. He smiled, but his face was covered by shadow, and Priscilla stared ahead.

    The ticking stopped, and Priscilla thought she felt a cloud pass over the car, but she had only closed her eyes. She looked at a sign posted at the crest that read:

    SMILE, YOU’RE ON CAMERA!

    As the car dropped, Priscilla wondered how she would break it off with Gary. “It won’t be easy,” she yelled, and then they were in the clutches of the Dragon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. By Daisy Warwick
    @WarwickDaisy
    How to Tranquilize a Dragon
    300 Words

    The dragon was too slow and did not commit his crime with the same rage and contempt as he would normally. Initially, he’d wanted to break away from the smoke-filled air to watch the village burn from a higher vantage point, but every flap of his wings required effort – effort that suddenly he did not have.

    A unusual sweet smell interlaced with the thick black smoke from the burning wood huts, and rather than frantically screaming and running around like disordered ants, it seemed that the mountain people were suffering from the same lethargy as Spedro.

    Rather than speeding away from the scene of his malicious crime, the dragon slowly dropped through the air. Suddenly, in that precise moment, he had the urge to sleep after one hundred years of menacing the humans. They no longer made him feel wicked, in fact, as he drifted closer to the burning mess he began to imagine that he quite liked them.

    The heat spread along the dragon’s underbelly and the flames forked towards him with far more effort than anything else that had the power to move in the small mountain pass. A few seconds later and he began to smell his flesh singeing. It was uncomfortable enough that he wanted to stop it, but the urge to sleep was overwhelming.

    Just a few pumps of his wings was all Spedro needed. He willed himself for what felt like an hour, but was in fact only two minutes, to change direction.
    As his belly landed on the cool wet grass of a nearby field, he couldn’t have cared that the flames might catch up with him.

    The village continued to burn quietly as Spedro watched the destruction spreading towards him.

    It was the first time he’d ever torched a cannabis farming settlement.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The last line made me laugh! Well executed!

    ReplyDelete