Flash Fiction

Weekly Prompts — Photo Challenge — Line-up

Fandango7 Comments

The weekend’s photo challenge here on Weekly Prompts is “Line-up.” The challenge notes that there are lots of possibilities here: line em up and shoot em… photographs that is!

I was unsure of what to do for this prompt, as I am not a photographer and have no photographs of things lined up. I was feeling quite depressed about having nothing to use for this prompt. I decided that what I needed to overcome my profound depression was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream ice cream. That always makes me feel better.

So I walked to my local Safeway to pick up the ice cream. But guess what happened when I got there! It was very crowded with customers and there were very few cashiers. As a result…

drumroll please…

…people were lined up at the checkout lines.

And I took a picture…2BEDFB76-ECC1-4707-B2F7-C6A13E7BDC0F…of all the people lined up to pay for their groceries.

Booyah!

Sunday Photo Fiction — The Catastrophe

Fandango7 Comments

9C22FBEE-4567-460D-B33E-76F8813222F4“Your desire to indiscriminately cut costs and to stay under budget is what led to this catastrophe,” the mayor said. “The time to talk is over. We must take action in order to ensure that nothing like this happens again in the future.

“We’ve has this conversation before,” objected a city council member from the other party. “No one could possibly have anticipated that the scaffolding, which had been erected for additional seating at the music festival, would collapse when that sudden, violent thunderstorm blew through the fairgrounds.”

“Nonsense!” the mayor shouted. “Your council awarded the contract to the low bidder. You knew they had to cut corners in order to get the contract. Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no middle ground here. You need to take responsibility for this totally avoidable disaster.”

The mayor picked up a large blowup of a photograph that had been mounted on poster board and set it on a tripod. “Look at this devastation,” he said. “It’s a miracle that no one was killed from the collapse. Our role, as the city’s leaders, is to deal with this and I suggest that if you can’t stand the heat, you need to get out of the kitchen.”

(199 words)

Written for today’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt from Donna McNicol. Photo credit: Pixabay. Also for these daily prompts: Ragtag Daily Prompt (talk), Your Daily Word Prompt (future), The Daily Spur (conversation), Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (middle), and Daily Addictions (kitchen). Sorry Word of the Day Challenge, but I couldn’t fit “sensual” into this post and still keep it to no more than 200 words.

Weekend Writing Prompt — Delicate

Fandango3 Comments

72924BC3-E99A-4333-9F93-FF7BBAD1E46E“I can’t help it that I’m high strung. What can I say? I’m an emotional and caring person,” Charlotte said.

“First, Charlotte, you don’t have to be defensive about being a caring person,” Alice said. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to take care of your yard.”

“To me, the simplicity of yard work is very fulfilling,” Charlotte said. “Listening to the radio, tending to the flowers, the bushes, and the lemon and orange trees brings me so much pleasure. And it’s not something just anyone can do, you know. It’s delicate work. It take a special skill, a green thumb.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” Alice said.

(106 words)

B495597C-AB51-420C-A191-7ECE6044F5D0Written for Sammi Cox’s Weekend Writing Prompt, where we are challenged to write a poem or piece of prose using the word “delicate” in exactly 106 words. Because Sammi was generous with the word count for this prompt, I’ve included these daily prompts from yesterday: Word of the Day Challenge (emotional), Daily Addictions (caring), Ragtag Daily Prompt (simplicity), The Daily Spur (radio), and Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (anyone).

Also written for yesterday’s inaugural edition of Di’s Three Things Challenge, where the words were “first,” “orange, and “yard.”

The Elevator

Fandango17 Comments

6B56D84C-DDC8-45B8-95F2-3201829C0842The elevator stopped on the thirteenth floor with a lurch. The three passengers, a young man, maybe in his early twenties dressed in jeans and carrying an envelope, a middle-aged man dressed in a suit and tie, and an older woman in an unflattering, matronly outfit, looked at one another other.

The middle-aged man immediately took charge and pressed the button to take him to his office on the 20th floor, but nothing happened when he hit it. He looked to see what floor the elevator had stopped at and saw the sign above the elevator door, which displayed the number 13. “That’s not possible,” he said.

The old woman looked worried and asked what the problem was. The man looked at her, then at the young man, and back up to the number displayed. “This building does not have a thirteenth floor,” he said. “It goes from the twelfth to the fourteenth floor.”

“You baby boomers and your stupid superstitions,” the younger man said. “Thirteen is just a number, like every other number.”

“Today is Friday the thirteenth,” the old woman said. “I knew I should have stayed home today.”

The young man chuckled. The older man pressed the emergency call button, but no sound was heard.

The old lady began to sob. The young man shook his head, and the older man attempted to pull the elevator doors apart with his hands. “A little help here,” he said to the younger man.

Suddenly the doors opened and a cold, eerie mist filled the elevator. The last sound that was heard was that of the younger man’s voice saying, “What the fuck?”

A moment later the mist cleared and a lone man was standing outside the elevator doors. He began to speak. “Three strangers enter an elevator in a high rise building on Friday the thirteenth. One a business executive, one a bicycle messenger boy, and one a kindly grandmother. What none of them knew when they boarded the elevator on that auspicious day, was that the elevator made only one stop. It stopped atD59D2BF3-CBBE-4395-8904-20CDCE959FC7Written for this week’s First Line Friday prompt from Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie. The first line is, “The elevator stopped on the thirteenth floor with a lurch.”