FLASH FIC FRIDAY IS HERE
PLEASE JOIN US EACH FRIDAY TO SEE WHO'S FLASHING US
Each Friday a new prompt will be posted along with the previous week's winners.
What exactly is a Flash-Fic? It's pretty much a spur of the moment, tiny story, prompted by words, images or silliness. Not sure if you've ever been on twitter when this has happened, but it's pretty awesome when it does. It also happens often in threads, with a combination of people contributing.
How does it work? Each Friday one admin of TLS posts a picture prompt here to the blog. Using this image, entries are created by commenting on this post. Submissions must be 100-300 words ONLY. No more, no less. The entries are then judged and we post the winners here, each Friday, to share with all of you.
THIS WEEK'S NEW PROMPT
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.You will have until next Wednesday at 9 p.m. EST to submit your entry.
Picture prompt and judge the week of 5/3 - 5/8 is by Surething302.
Please leave your submission in the comment section at the bottom of the post using this format:
Your name (use your Twitter, Facebook or FFN name)
Your link to your FFN profile if you choose to share it
Submissions will be judged on Thursdays and on Friday the winning entry will be posted here, on the TLS blog.
This feature is open to everyone, so come one, come all!
LAST WEEK'S PROMPT AND WINNERS
FIRST PLACE WINNER
SPARROWNOTES24
SPARROWNOTES24
@sparrownotes24
Word Count: 300
Mondays: We steal warm, sleepy minutes from the new day to hold onto the weekend.
Tuesdays: We sneak long lunches. "Pickles? I'd rather lick the pavement." I don't test you; your smile tells me you’d really do it.
Wednesdays: You always buy me flowers.
Thursdays: Poker night. The bed dips, and your warmth surrounds me as you whisper your winning hands in my ear. "Full house, Queen of my heart."
Fridays: Date night, always ending in a tangle of sweat-drenched bodies and thumping hearts.
Saturdays: Hikes in the mountains. With a smile crinkling your eyes, you tease you'll leave me behind. You never do.
Sundays: Coffee and crumbs in bed with the crossword. You're so impatient. I can tell you’re holding your tongue on my turn. You tickle and kiss ‘til I give in.
Spring: In our garden. I watch the muscles in your back as you turn the earth. On Wednesdays, you buy me lilacs.
Summer: On our porch swing. Iced tea, fireflies, the spark of barbecues scenting the air. On Wednesdays, you buy me roses.
Autumn: Kneeling on fallen leaves. Lit by the flickering jack-o-lantern, you slide the jelly-ring on my finger. "Be my everything?" On Wednesdays, you buy me lisianthus.
Winter: Stranded in white lace. You dig us out, so handsome in your tuxedo. I become yours. You become mine. On Wednesdays, you buy me violets.
.
.
"What day is it today?" I ask, as snow falls from the silver sky.
"Wednesday."
I nod, with a heart so heavy with memories, I think it might stop.
Pushing my nose into the purple petals, their sweet scent flares you back to life for a second.
I lay my flowers on the cold marble. Two dates failing to tell your story.
You would have brought me violets today.
SECOND PLACE
THEFICCHICK
TheFicChick
Word Count: 251
“I can’t remember anything without you,” I almost-whisper, and he reaches out to tuck my hair behind my ear. The gesture makes my heart hurt.
“Me either,” he says softly, his voice rough. “Maybe that’s always been our problem.”
High school sweethearts, each other’s firsts, college sweethearts, post-college sweethearts, betrothed couple, husband and wife. It’s true: he’s in every single one of my memories since I was fifteen.
At fifteen, he made me fly.
At eighteen, he was soaring right alongside me.
At twenty, we were flying in formation.
At twenty-four, I felt like my wings were being clipped.
At twenty-seven, we crash-landed.
He steps back, blends in with the scenery: autumn in New England, variegated hues of copper and green. The only scar on the landscape is the U-Haul at the curb, packed to the gills with everything that’s his but not mine. Not ours.
“Take care of yourself, Bella,” he murmurs against my forehead, and I watch as he swings himself into the cab of the truck, late fall sunlight glinting off the silver band on his finger as he slams it shut.
Starts the engine.
Pulls away.
Leaves me behind.
I can’t remember anything without you.
I thought I wanted to fly again. To soar, unencumbered and untethered. Be reckless, free, uninhibited.
Without you.
It isn’t until the brake lights illuminate in front of the stop sign at the top of our street that the realization hits.
He’s still wearing his ring.
I take off at a run.
THIRD PLACE
BOOM-BOOM JONES
Boom-Boom Jones
Word Count: 290
You’re his friend. You’re the one who’s quiet and compliant. You bring an extra six-pack when no one asks. Or maybe someone has and I’ve never noticed because I’ve barely noticed you.
You wear threadbare shirts and you don’t always comb your hair and sometimes when you’re staring down at the ground you get this look on your face and I think you’re keeping a secret and sometimes I want to know what it is.
He makes jokes and I laugh, but you don’t always laugh. His sense of humor is just okay but I feel like I should laugh anyway. You don’t, though. Not always. When you don’t I’m embarrassed that I did. It’s silly.
You’re the last out the door. You hold it open for me and then lock it up for me. I wonder why you don’t have a girlfriend.
When his arm hangs on my shoulder you walk ahead. I watch the way you walk, the way your jeans slouch down a little. They’re really too big for you, but you probably like them that way.
He’s not here, and I tell you but you say you want to come in anyway. I ask you to sit down and offer you a drink. It’s ten in the morning and you ask if I have any beer.
“Sure, yeah. Here you go.”
You don’t even open it. It sits on the coffee table and sweats. There’s going to be a ring on the wood but I don’t say anything because you seem nervous. I ask what’s wrong and then you speak this song that makes me swallow hard and my stomach flutter. You contradict what I’ve always thought I wanted and I wish I noticed you before.
FOURTH PLACE
PERRY MAXWELL
Perry Maxwell on FFN, perrymaxed on Twitter
Word Count: 300
Title: Wishing and Hoping
The moments are few and far between. Though, when they arrive, they’re worth it.
It was simple really. Yesterday you made coffee just the way I like it: black with two sugars. You set the cup before me and sat down across the table. I watched your eyes, looking for telltale signs of lucidity, but just as quickly as it came, it was gone.
Today we sit on the couch. My focus is on you; yours is on the television. Sometimes I wonder if you’ll ever realize you’ve watched this episode every day for the past six years. I can quote it word for word, intonating every nuance of the characters’ voices. But that’s only because my brain works; yours doesn’t. Not like it should anyway.
Since the car accident, you’ve had to learn how to live again. So have I.
I lost you that rainy night, but my heart gets ripped apart just a bit more each time you forget. Or should I say fail to remember?
Where we once we shared smiles over inside jokes, we now share disingenuous expressions of reassurance.
I’m no longer your wife, not really. Instead I’m the woman who reminds you of those items your brain can’t recall.
I do it because I love you, because I made a vow.
We make love sometimes. I pretend it’s still you in there behind those eyes. It’s not. Your questions the next morning are proof.
Still, I’m here, waiting and hoping you’ll return. If not for me, for our son.
I guess there’s a certain irony in life. He arrived the day you disappeared.
His birthday party was yesterday. For the second year in a row, he made the same wish: for Daddy to wake up, for Daddy to remember.
I wish for that too.
FIFTH PLACE
HONEYBEE MEADOWS
Honeybee Meadows
Word Count: 297
It’s been 271 days. I’ve counted them all.
42 days in a coma. 56 with my skull bound to keep everything inside. 68 before I could stand up to take a piss on my own. 94 before they took all of the needles out of me. 109 before they let her bring me home.
77 stitches. 51 bruises. 26 staples. 4 skull fractures. 2 blood transfusions.
She cried they day they released me and she’s cried every day since. 161 days of tears and trying to adjust to the strange new-ness of everything. My skin. Her smell. Shoelaces and forks. Alphabets and family photos. Conversation and cut-off kisses, which are what makes her cry the hardest.
When I look in the mirror, I count my eyelashes because I can barely recognize my face.
When I look at her, I count her freckles because I can’t remember her at all.
Every morning is the same. I wake up and look to the mirror, her handwritten scrawl of pale pink lipstick across the glass to remind me of my name. Edward. Of hers. Bella.
That she loves me.
That I loved her.
Day 271 is different.
Something snaps deep inside my head, painful and blinding. My brain burning as the single most important synapse of all melts back together and - bam - I just know. I lie there in bed and say her name over and over and over, savoring the way it feels in my mouth. Heavy and soft like a pearl I’ve been keeping under my tongue.
I give it to her the moment she comes through the door.
“Bella.”
“You’re back,” she says and her smile . . . I leap off the couch and take it for my own.
I can’t remember anything, but I remember her.
.
.
.
The Lemonade Stand would like to thank all of the participants. We thoroughly enjoyed ALL of the entries!
See you next week!
XOXO
DH78 on FFN, DH__78 on Twitter, Diamond Hart on FB
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fanfiction.net/~dh78
Word Count: 297
Eighteen years.
It took us eighteen years to get here.
I remember it like it was yesterday.
You were ten and I was eight. Our parents took us to see it.
We were obsessed and you swore you were Buzz.
“To infinity and beyond!” We’d shout.
A sort of affirmation of being best friends.
I loved you then. You didn’t. I’m certain of it. But I didn’t mind.
Best friends. To infinity and beyond.
Years later, you took her to prom. Not me. But it didn’t matter because at the end of the night, it was you and me, drunker than drunk off your big brother’s stash, at the tattoo parlor.
It was so stupid... but so, so perfect.
To infinity and beyond. You said it was the right way to end this era and move on to our new lives miles apart.
I was losing you. I loved you then. You didn’t. I know it.
We moved on.
Emails, texts, phone calls. At once so frequent, then not.
Years went by without a word from you.
All the others were mere poor imitations of you.
Then...
Your brother’s wedding. I’m invited. I wonder if I’ll see you, if you’ll be different.
If this love is just an exaggeration of my memories.
But then, it’s so not.
You see me, I see you... from across the room. Like magnets.
You’ve changed, but you’re the same.
Words, apologies, and electricity. That’s what we are.
“I love you then,” you say. And I’m floored.
“I love you still,” you say, much later when we’re skin to skin.
Your fingers trace the words on my skin, trailing delicious fire, and I trace your words.
The branding of our skin echoing what’s been branded in our souls.
To infinity and beyond.
Love this :0)
DeleteTwitter: @k8ln713
ReplyDeleteFFn: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/2528887/
Entry #1
Word count: 142
To infinity and beyond...
That's what you started to say to me a long time ago.
It's something you constantly say now to me.
When we first met and you asked me out, I never really pictured the future we're living out now.
I never thought that the words you spoke to me all those years ago would hold so true to my heart.
When you first said those four words, it was when we both said we loved each other.
"How much do you love me?" I asked.
"To infinity and beyond, Bella," you replied.
"How long will you love me?"
"To infinity and beyond."
Even now, after you would say you loved me back, you would always add in, "To infinity and beyond, baby."
I will never get enough of it.
I will always love you.
To infinity and beyond...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@bebeginja
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fanfiction.net/~bebeginja
You stopped by and said hi to me today.
Caught my eye in the mirror like you always do.
Still making me smile. Still surprising me.
I’m still missing you. More than just the physical things. I miss how attentive you used to be. I miss being sought out by you. And by sought out I mean in the simplest ways – like scooting over to my side of the bed instead of pulling me over to yours, or finding opportunities to touch at different times throughout the day, or removing the book from my hands as I read on the couch just to give me a kiss.
I still crave your attention. How you used to not care if anyone saw us, or what time it was, or whether you were “bothering” me or not.
You are my religion now. In my quiet times devoted to you, I close my eyes and reminisce. I meditate on us, on our goodness. I let it fill me and fuel me to get through those days when your voice is too loud in my head. To get me through another week, another year.
You were big on that. Lingering on the positive. Big on remembering. On having something real enough to last beyond infinity. You were always so hopeful, so sentimental.
Your love made me strong enough to grieve your loss, and confident enough to know it’s never the end.
I wear our secret on my side, where you’ve always been.
I watch my reflection as my fingers trace the promise we made on my skin, remembering how your thumb used to wander there.
It was supposed to be forever.
This way, it always will be.
I’ll see you later, babe.
I’ll see you when beyond infinity begins.
These are all really lovely!
ReplyDeletehallejaymes
ReplyDeletewww.fanfiction.net/~hallejaymes
Word count: 227
Finding relief under the warm spray, my fingers find the words.
To infinity.
My half of the promise.
The promise of us.
And I’ve come to learn, we are infinite.
Never ending.
~
And beyond.
Beyond.
The words you took with you.
They couldn’t be any truer. And now, they’re all I have to hold on to.
I know you’re still here.
Some nights I wake to the feel of fingers.
Gentle.
A whisper on my skin where the other half of us lies marked.
The way my skin responds, I know.
At times I think I’m dreaming. So I lie there, oh, so still. Desperate to stay in an alternate reality.
A reality I yearn to have back.
Last night I woke to the sensation of my hair being smoothed over.
The softest touch.
The most calming.
And I know.
I know what I have to do.
~
My last hope sits before me on the bed.
The beyond that took me a long time to come to terms with.
It had to be here.
This is where we knew each other best.
Where we learned everything there was to know about one another.
Inside and out.
Shaking, I place my fingers on the planchette, ready.
With a heart that’s about to beat out of my chest, I take a chance.
“Edward.”
I absolutely ADORE this entry. Thanks for participating!
DeleteBoom-Boom Jones
ReplyDeletewww.fanfiction.net/~boomboomjones
Word Count: 300
She’s been in remission for a year now. Her thinner hair touches her shoulders and her skin finally resembles what it was before. She can breathe and sleep and eat. At twenty-six, her bones are healthy as they can ever be, and it is a gift.
She’s promised herself she won’t ever be afraid.
The plane ascends, jostling passengers as it breaks through a layer of clouds. Her ears pop. She plugs them with her fingers, widens her jaw in a way that is unattractively excessive. The man across the aisle throws a crooked grin her way then offers up a stick of gum.
A flight attendant solicits snacks, and the man hands over ten dollars for two rum and Cokes.
Pretzels, too, please.
He moves to the empty seat next to her.
A child’s movie plays on the screen – something about a cowboy and a spaceman. She’s not really sure. Neither is he.
They talk about little somethings. Her ribs cage in acrobatic butterflies. He wonders where she’s staying, if she’s meeting anyone there.
Five hours later they awaken to the announcement that the weather at Heathrow is a perfect thirteen degrees Celsius. They’ll be landing shortly. She slides open the shade, peers through the window.
He cranes his neck, searching for proof they truly are over part of Europe. He’s not disappointed when he catches a glimpse of the Thames. It’s his first time, too.
“I am in love,” she says, staring out at the rapidly approaching city.
“How many times do you plan to fall?”
The question doesn’t catch her off guard.
She turns to him. “So many.”
He slides his hand over hers.
She’s been in remission for nearly two years. He slips her shirt over her head, traces the words scripted over her butterfly cage.
@sparrownotes24
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fanfiction.net/~sparrownotes24
Word Count: 299
Last time I lay here, your fingers laced with mine, we were consumed in overwhelming, unbreakable love.
It was inconceivable you’d ever let go.
Now, every stab of the needle into my soft flesh reminds me our infinity was finite.
Each sting and scrape, as the ink seeps into my skin, is no match for the invisible wounds you inflicted.
The brightest burn is next to the words already etched on my ribs, where featherlight traces of your fingertips used to be a fiery meteor, trailing goose bumps in its wake.
That fire has turned to ash. What we were is nothing but dust blown away by a thoughtless wind, scattering smiles, kisses, and trust in every direction.
The relaxing hum of electricity diminishes the gut-wrenching memories.
Like a silent movie of the moment you slashed my heart with each and every word until all that remained were tatters of blood-red love.
Does she question your half of our puzzle? Its meaning incomplete without its match.
Do you make her sugar-paper promises, their worth dissolving the second the words touch your tongue?
This pain on the outside is nothing compared to the hurt I carry within, crushing my chest, churning my stomach, squeezing my lungs.
Steady hands and understanding, glacier-blue eyes working quickly, transforming this scar of ours.
Etching hope that there is a beyond.
Beyond this. Beyond us. Beyond you.
A mirror reflects my dull brown eyes and ashen skin. The effects of your lies have rippled from the inside out. I twist my tired, wrung out body and see the fresh black swirls and their older neighbours.
"And beyond stormy skies, waits a beautiful day."
The words help my mind remember what my heart won't believe.
It can't. Not yet. But it will.
Beyond you, is me.
@primarycolors1
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fanfiction.net/~primarycolors
Word Count: 300
He was seventeen when she met him, all loose limbs and sweat and red dirt, a faded Cubbies shirt, baseball cap spun backwards while the pitching machine hummed. His jaw edged so dark she could almost feel the sandpaper rasp on her fingers, hair damp and curled up the sides of his hat, the pink of his tongue wet as he tensed for the next pitch.
She stood shy behind the bleachers. Breathless.
"Come here," he called softly, watching her too.
He made a show of twirling the bat before solemnly pointing it into the sunset. "For you," he said, winking, when a tremendous crack echoed around the field and then the ball was soaring, soaring into infinity and she bet no one ever found it.
They were lying on his bed when she asked why he always did that, what it meant to point his bat toward the heavens.
“To infinity and beyond,” he’d answered, green eyes playful. A Sharpie cap bobbed from the corner of his mouth as he drew a tiny baseball on her stomach. “It’s my thing... like a promise. I aim, then I hit a home run." He'd shrugged and nibbled his artwork.
Two years later she watches TV as she packs away her childhood. Youngest player ever to be signed, ESPN says. 9.9 million for five years.
She already knew.
Swallowing hard, she wonders how much of him she'll be able to keep.
“They called me Roy Hobbs,” he says, shining, bursting through the doorway. “The best that ever was.”
“Cuter than Robert Redford,” she adds with a watery smile, loving him too much. “To infinity.”
He sobers, his gaze holding a promise so rich her heart twists, almost afraid to hope.
“Beyond,” he whispers, pulling her in, kissing, pressing a ring into her palm.
Love, Love, Love this. The Sharpie baseball on her tummy is precious.
DeleteHoneybeemeadows
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fanfiction.net/u/3889311/Honeybeemeadows
Word Count: 262
I shoot myself up with heroin and fuck a girl who looks just like you.
Her brand tastes like shit.
Her pussy smacks of low grade trash someone cooked in a bathtub. Her mouth is a big black hole. Her tits are lopsided and her hair isn’t long enough, but she has your eyes and a ring through her clit and I just can’t fucking help myself.
You always accused me of being an addict. I never told you that you were better than any drug.
I dig my fingers into her, bite her, treat her worse than I ever treated you but only because she’s asking me for it. Begging. Relishing every painful mark I leave behind. I slap her hard enough to leave a bruise and think about the one you left on my face, just before you vanished.
Since you’ve been gone, I’ve replaced all my blood with chemicals. All my love with lust. All my decency with this strung-out version of me and I can’t even bring myself to give a shit.
If I squint, I can pretend that she is you.
If I bury my face deep enough, I don’t have to squint at all.
Nothing relieves the ache. Nothing compares to your poison. Even when she cums on my face, it’s your taste. Even when she moans my name, it’s your voice. Over and over and over and I’m shooting for infinity. Shooting for beyond. Shooting for a million more moans. I don’t want to hear anything else, ever again.
Her words. Your voice.
BellaBellaBellaBella.
I'ma need more of this guy here, Honeybee. Jsjsjsjs.
DeleteWait wait wait wait! This is BPOV or is it? HAHAHA that damn Honeybee!
DeleteOh, bb, what would you expect from me? *This is my evil, smirking face*
DeleteThanks for writing in this weeks Flash-Fic. I loved them all. Winners will post on Friday at 9 a.m. along with new prompt.
ReplyDelete