After many long days and as many late nights, the scientists and engineers could sense that they were close.
Their excitement was palpable, the anticipation overwhelming.
It was time to test their latest formula and the entire team gathered around the stainless steel table as the refined compound was poured from the beaker.
At long last, liquid sunshine was a reality.
Written for Greg’s Four Line Fiction prompt. Photo credit: Christopher Payne from his book “Made In America.”
The despots or the generals who decide to make war
Are not the ones who pay the price for that decision
It’s the innocents who are the casualties who pay the price
It’s the innocents who lose the battle no matter who wins the war.
Written for Greg’s Four Line Fiction prompt. Photo credit: Ali Jadallah / Anadolu / Getty Images.
The whale and I were eye to eye, alone just he and I
He was at home beneath the sea, I was the intruder
He opened his huge mouth, water rushed in and pulled me in with it
Was it just a big yawn because I bored him, or did he think I looked tasty?
Written for Greg’s Four Line Fiction prompt. Photo credit: Rafael Fernandez Caballero / UPY2024.
“Why would you think I‘d be averse to a new establisment opening up in town? It would be a nice place for a diverse group of people to meet and converse about all manner of things,” Roger said. “And maybe it will help to reverse the trend of retail shops and restaurants closing up shop. New blood is just what this town needs.
“Wow, Roger, I underestimated you,” Gretchen said. “I was sure when you learned that it was a minority-owned business called ‘Give a Little Happiness’ to be run by two gay black women, that you’d be strongly opposed to it.”
“Wait, what?” Roger said. “You’re not talking about the Gentlemen’s club that’s opening next to the local office of the Junior Chamber of Commerce?”
“Oh my, Roger,” Gretchen said, “how quickly you transversed that maze when you realized how you were trapped. I guess the café I was talking about is not the kind of new blood you were hoping the town would attract.”
Written for Sadje’s What Do You See prompt. Photo credit: Angeliki Mikropoulou @ Unsplash.
And for Greg’s Five Word Weekly Challenge, where the words are averse, converse, diverse, reverse, and transverse.
I should have known better when he told me he was incognito and that, for his protection as well as my own, it was better that I didn’t know his real name. I found that kind of curious, but at the same time, intriguing.
My mother always said I was attracted to bad boys, and she was right. I always preferred the allure of an air of mystery to the open book, tell-all type of guy.
One day, after we’d been dating for about six months, I got up the nerve to ask him if he would tell me about whatever indiscretion he’d been involved in that necessitated his use of a pseudonym. He shot me a look that kind of scared me. In fact, for an instant, he looked like some sort of lunatic. But it passed quickly.
“So you want to know my real name and why I go incognito?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “We’ve been together for six months. I would think by now you’d feel close enough to open up to me.”
He had a broad smile on his face, but the look in his eyes belied his smile. “You know,” he said, “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”
“Not if I kill you first,” I said, pulling a gun out of the back of the waistband of my pants and shooting him in the upper left thigh.
He fell to one knee and looked up at me with a bewildered expression. “Yes, Nicco, I shot you because you were a hitman for the Vegas mob and ratted out your bosses in exchange for immunity from your crimes and going into Witness Protection,” I explained.
“But one of those you ratted on was my Uncle Vito. He said if I could ever find and take care the rat, I’d get a cool million for my troubles. I may be in a slump when it comes to my dating choices, but I’m very good at getting information. All I had to do was find a really nice, open-book type of guy who worked for the WITSEC program, get him drunk, and intimate the possibility of sex. And, well, you know what they say about loose lips, don’t you Nicco?”
Nicco groaned. “If you knew who I was and what I did, why did you ask me just before?”
“To tell you the truth, Nicco, I was undecided. I was curious if, after six months together, you loved me enough to tell me the truth. But apparently, you didn’t. You even threatened to shoot me. But now it’s my turn to shoot you and to collect my bounty promised to me by my favorite uncle. Goodbye, Nicco.” I aimed and shot Nicco right between the eyes.
Written for Greg’s Five Word Weekly Challenge, where the words are found, incognito, indiscretion, lunatic, and slump. Image credit: Wonder AI.
This, That, and the Other 