Saturday, April 27, 2013

Flash Friday Week Five Entry




I posted a story to the Shenandoah Valley Writers' Weekly Flash Fiction Contest on week five.  The  story had to be around 150 words and end with "Quietly, she began to sing."


She had made it four weeks, hours shy of a month.  Like a skilled predator, the shadowy organization had swiped her from her life and locked her away.  That life had been rather mundane, office work mostly.  But, secrets did pass over her desk.  She hadn’t even realized that her desk, in her particular department had acted as a nexus point for so many sensitive transactions.  The group, known only as the 20/20, had bided their time and chosen her carefully.  She was the one who would know the most, yet would have the least resistance.  Even so, she had made it four weeks.  Now, she wished only to return to the superficially mundane world these people had stolen. Just shy of a month, the abuse reached a threshold.  Their patience paid off and she could not hold the secrets back any longer.  Quietly she began to sing.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Flash Friday Week One Entry

In December, I started participating in Shenandoah Valley Writers' Weekly Flash Fiction Contest.

The first round was a 100 word story that started with "On Friday, everything changed".
This was my entry:


On Friday, everything changed.  Its no exaggeration when you are referring to the emotions of an interplanetary civilization with 150 billion inhabitants.  On Thursday (Sol standard date), those 150 billion had unparallelled hope.  The Institute had given them a promise. They claimed all tests indicated it would work.  A new era, poised to begin. 

On Friday, the test vessel failed.  It wasn’t the first time a colony had undergone explosive decompression.  Previous orbital colony failures had resulted in more casualties.  It wasn’t the failure of the colony.  It was the vessel.  Humanity  now had to accept faster-than-light travel was impossible.