Aaayyyy y'all, we got some new judges pending scheduling. Stay tuned this month! c:
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 amusement).)
Prompt
"Try a different one."
Angelique Pacheco
ReplyDeleteWord count: 298
The Proposal
“Try a different one.” I knew Ally always entered the Cracked Flash Fiction competition and I really needed her to read my story today. With a household to run and our two kids wreaking havoc on a daily basis, I was surprised she was sane, never mind a promising writer.
Right now she was glaring at me with suspicion. Of course she would, I had never so much as indicated any interest in her writing before, so why would I care now? As I took a sip of coffee, my hand shook.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked grumpily.
“Nothing,” I shot back nervously. I was so screwed if she didn’t read my story. I wandered around the kitchen table towards the cookie jar that was an important prop in my tale. I gently pushed it towards her and tried to act nonchalant as I asked if she wanted one.
She lost it completely. Grabbing the cookie jar, she flung it across the room. It broke into a thousand pieces. She ranted and raved at me as I stood bewildered with my mouth agape. I wished I knew what the hell was going on. I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to leave. I began crawling towards the door when a sound stopped me. She was on the floor, clutching her sides, heaving from laughter.
I neglected to mention that she is also a promising prankster. I crawled back to her gingerly, still uncertain about her change in mood when I saw it peeking from beneath her blouse, hanging on a chain. It was the diamond ring in the cookie jar that I had written about. “Brat!” She must have woken up early to read it. She gazed at me lovingly, grinning from ear-to ear and breathed,”YES!”
Alva Holland
ReplyDelete@Alva1206
299 words
My Name is Damien
‘Try a different one.’
‘But there are so many. Look!’ Damien dragged his finger down the list until he reached the end of the page.’
‘Well, try this one. It has two sets of initials. You said she is married. You might get lucky.’
‘But what will I say?’
‘Damien, we’ve been through this. Start with, ‘hello, my name is Damien.’
‘What if she puts the phone down?’
‘She’s not going to put the phone down just because you say your name.’
‘I really don’t know about this, Alice.’
‘Ok, leave it so. We’ll chat about it another time. I have to go.’
‘Oh, please don’t go, Alice. If I don’t do this now, I’ll never do it. I’ll lose my nerve.’
‘Are you sure you haven’t lost it already? Sorry, that was a bit catty. But seriously, why not just try that one and if you don’t get anywhere, leave it for another while. Maybe you’re not ready.’
‘Ok, let’s do it. Here goes. I’m dialling. Oh Christ. This is worse than calling you for our first date.’
‘Pleased to hear it, Damien. I didn’t know that was such an ordeal for you.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. I… oh! yes, hello, is that… I mean, hello, my name is Damien. Eh, yes there is a reason. I think, I mean I think I might… I don’t want to upset anything but… oh this is not working. I am sorry for disturbing you. Pardon? Yes, I was wondering if you ever lived at 32 Woodside Grove. I know that sounds like a strange… pardon, you did? Oh, my god, you did. Alice, she did, it’s her.
Sorry, yes, I am still here. Yes, that’s my girlfriend. The thing is, I think you might be my mother.
Hello?’
Survival 101 (294 words)
ReplyDeleteBy Sara Codair
@shatteredsmooth
"Try a different one.” Joe frowned as the wriggling worm fell into the bucket of dirt.
I arched my eyebrows. “A worm is a worm.”
“The fat ones are juicier and slower. Easier to hook, more likely to attract fish.”
I sighed. “I don’t even like fish.”
“Would you rather eat the worm?”
“I’d rather eat nuts berries.” I gazed at the sun glistening on deep blue, vibrant leaves with orange-tinted tips and wispy seeds forming atop grass.
“Those’ll be hard to come by next month.” Joe dug weathered fingers into the bucket, pulling out a short worm barely able to wriggle, and handed it to me. “You want to survive, don’t you?”
“I used to be vegan.” My stomach wriggled like the obese worm, half-heartedly threatening to eject raspberries.
Joe’s laughter shook the remains of his shrunken belly. “Just hook the damned worn.”
Despite its protest, my stomach knew food was hard to come by, and held the berries while I jabbed the rusty, barbed metal into the worm, scrunching it like I was forcing a new curtain onto an old rod.
“That’s the spirit. Plant your feet and cast like I showed you.”
I obeyed. My tortured worm plopped into the shimmery blue. I watched the ripples grow as they approached shore. “What now?”
“Now we wait.” Joe lowered his raisen-like body onto a silvery rock. “We wait and we pray.”
I nodded, but remained standing. Winged-insects flittered across the water close to shore. A water-strider fell victim to a frog blending his body with a rotten log. A dragon fly landed on my nose, its wings tickling a smile out of my face. The last scientist I met said the human population might never recover. Nature, though, was doing just fine.
The Yonder
ReplyDeleteT. O. Davis
@2B_DrDavis
294 Words
Try a different one Margot had told him, but Frank had kept punching that clock like it was her ex-husband all over again. Now Margot lived on the other side of town, and Frank still worked at the Piggly-Wiggly. He was pushing fifty and bagging groceries like he was still some snot-nosed punk who needed his momma to drive him to and from work.
On his day off Frank would sometimes drive by Margot’s house. He’d park behind a set of spice bushes and make a mental list of activities or if there was anything wrong with the house. Last time he was here, he had noticed the roof was missing a few shingles, but now the roof bore the scars of replacement; the new shingles bright against the dusty older ones. Margot didn’t even own a ladder.
“What are you doing?”
Frank jumped in his seat, and then he turned in the direction of Margot’s voice. “Hey, Marge,” Frank said, and smiled. It was dark, and the humidity cast a haze that deepened the growing darkness.
“Don’t hey me, buster.”
“I’m just checking up on my best girl—“
She raised her hand to cut him off. “Those days are over, Frank. Do us both a favor,” she said and looked past his car and past him towards the road as though her salvation, and Frank’s, was somewhere down there.
Frank could not see her face, but somehow in the space between them she had communicated enough. She would not leave the sidewalk until he drove away, and when Frank did she would go back to her house and to the man who fixed her roof and Frank would be some memory; he’d be some lonesome man out yonder swallowed by the dark.
The Eyes Have It
ReplyDelete“Try a different one,” the technician urged. She had an irksome smile, a cross between a desperate hitchhiker on a desolate stretch of coastal highway just as the sun sinks into the sea and a grocery clerk who overcharges you and wasn’t going to walk it back.
I nodded. “What’ve I got to lose?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said, quite sketchily, as if there was a whole lot she didn’t know and was proud of the fact.
“I meant…”
She interrupted my soppy attempt at meaningless clarification with, “Whatever you meant, it don’t matter to me. I don’t need to know. All I need to know, farmer, is that you have the cabbage to pay for my time and the product. The rest is bunk.”
It had taken me a day and half a night to find her. It was a specialized service, totally off the books. She worked for Doc Slocum who moved his practice every couple of months. If any Yobbo needed a specific medical procedure, a suture, a bullet removed, an organ replaced, whatever bit of health folly had befallen them, Slocum was your man. This technician was in his pocket. Or he was in hers. Whatever their relationship, she was one sour woman. I hated to see people not happy in their work. Especially if I was their work.
She plucked the reject orb out of its socket and placed it in the case next to her. Her hands, covered in tight yellow rubber gloves, picked out a new candidate from the same case, held it up to the flicking neon light, moved it back and forth like a drunken Pac Man blip, deemed it worthy.
“Close to your real eye, Farmer.”
“Then plant it, “I said.
She did, I paid and amscrayed back to Frisco
300 slightly revised eyedeas
@billmelaterplea
www.engleson.ca
Idiocy
ReplyDeleteBy Ronel Janse van Vuuren
@miladyronel
ronelthemythmaker.wordpress.com
136 words
‘Try a different one. Come on!’ Maggie urged, trippling in place.
‘I already did! The chimera is just too strong!’ Danielle watched the monster in dismay.
Lava squirted at the two of them from the terrifying creature’s maw, barely missing them as a ricocheting spell zapped the chimera in the eye.
‘I’m too young to die!’ Maggie neighed.
‘Seriously? Pull yourself together, centaur. We’re not dying today.’
Danielle pulled out a bag of berries and cheese, whispered a spell and threw the food at the chimera.
‘Run!’
As the terrifying beast ate their lunch, juice and lava flying everywhere, the centaur and sorceress fled the mountainside.
‘Not. A. Word.’ Danielle said. If any of the others found out that they’d gone to the Lair of Monsters, they’d be ridiculed and then severely punished.
‘Agreed,’ Maggie whinnied.