Welcome to the new and improved flash fiction writing prompt series – #SwiftFicFriday!
I’ve changed the rules, so if you didn’t see my tweet, check them out!
The gist:
- You have THREE DAYS (AM Friday-PM Sunday on the east coast) to submit your entry.
- Include social media links/handles/anything you want to promote (Twitter, FB, etc) & word count in the comment with your submission.
- Submission must be between 150-300 words.
- All stories are property of the authors.
- Winner will be determined via reader votes on Mondays.
Ready, set, write!
Prompt: This week, we get a scenario. Give us a tale where your main character causes trouble! What kind is up to you.
Happy writing!
FictionTrials 
A Reunion of Sorts: 270 words, by Joseph P. Garland @JPGarlandAuthor
He didn’t remember me. Why should he? He, the scion in the family that owned half of some God-forsaken town in the Florida panhandle, and me, well, not.
One of my colleagues mentioned a week or so earlier that he, this guy, was having a lavish, destination wedding in New Orleans which is, as it happens, where I live and work. Work consists of performing engineering studies of prospective oil patches in the Gulf, and it was in that capacity that I met him. I wasn’t drunk, and it was largely my fault, our little liaison in his room on the night of the last day of the conference, with him traveling back home in the morning.
It was spontaneous and I have to admit wonderful. One of those just-what-the-doctor-ordered things that helped me through a long, dry spell. Till he finished with me and got up when his phone rang in the interregnum between his satisfaction and mine and he took it in the bathroom and I heard him say “sweetheart” as he waved me away and closed the bathroom door.
I didn’t know his name until I read it on the nametag pinned to his jacket as I left—him still in the bathroom and me still unsatisfied—and when this scion’s fancy wedding came up I wasn’t sure if I’d see him again.
But the fancy wedding did come up. I stood with a small crowd awaiting the bride’s limo. When she was halfway between it and the church, I pushed through. “Sweetheart,” I said, “tell the groom he’s going to be a father.” And I left.
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LOATHario
Don’t get me wrong. I’d been pals with Jimmy Copper for years…grade school, lived one street over even before our real education began. Guess most of us started learning thing right out of the pop can, eh!
Knew him when he was coming together as a human. Gracie too. We all knew each other. She was always part of our gang. Buds. True blue buds. Kept it like that for years. One for all and all for the rest of whatever the saying is.
When did it go wonky? When does life usually throw you for its first loop?
We turned thirteen.
One after the other.
Like a twenty-one-gun salute, our hormones started exploding.
Subtle thing at first. Who was paying attention? Not me. Not right away. Then things started getting a little out of control.
We used to go swimming down the river. Great little pool. Deep. Rocks where you could climb and dive. Five or six of us usually. It was there that I started to notice not only that Gracie was…you know…developing. That was fine. I was fine with it. She wasn’t the only girl we palled with. Marge was always there. She and Gracie were tight. I understood that girls need girls more than boys…I’m not saying that right. Anyways, it was about then that Jimmy started getting all handsy…and Gracie started drawing a line.
First time I heard her say no…it was a soft almost whimper.
He sloughed it off. Cracked wise.
The second no was NO! Loud like backfire.
That was it.
Jimmy was out of the gang.
Gracie was our lynchpin, Jimmy…a loose screw.
Lost track of him after that.
He got mean.
A bully.
A loner.
Stalked Gracie before our wedding.
He’ll do a couple of years.
Life, eh!
Weird!
299 words with title
@billmelaterplea
http://www.engleson.ca
LikeLiked by 1 person
slight edit…
LOATHario
Don’t get me wrong. I’d been pals with Jimmy Copper for years…grade school, lived one street over even before our real education began. Guess most of us started learning things right out of the pop can, eh!
Knew him when he was coming together as a human. Gracie too. We all knew each other. She was always part of our gang. Buds. True blue buds. Kept it like that for years. One for all and all for the rest of whatever the saying is.
When did it go wonky? When does life usually throw you for its first loop?
We turned thirteen.
One after the other.
Like a twenty-one-gun salute, our hormones started exploding.
Subtle thing at first. Who was paying attention? Not me. Not right away. Then things started getting a little out of control.
We used to go swimming down the river. Great little pool. Deep. Rocks where you could climb and dive. Five or six of us usually. It was there that I started to notice not only that Gracie was…you know…developing. That was fine. I was fine with it. She wasn’t the only girl we palled with. Marge was always there. She and Gracie were tight. I understood that girls need girls more than boys…I’m not saying that right. Anyways, it was about then that Jimmy started getting all handsy…and Gracie started drawing a line.
First time I heard her say no…it was a soft almost whimper.
He sloughed it off. Cracked wise.
The second no was NO! Loud like backfire.
That was it.
Jimmy was out of the gang.
Gracie was our lynchpin, Jimmy…a loose screw.
Lost track of him after that.
He got mean.
A bully.
A loner.
Stalked Gracie before our wedding.
He’ll do a couple of years.
Life, eh!
Weird!
299 words with title
@billmelaterplea
http://www.engleson.ca
LikeLiked by 1 person
Butch Slade groaned awake. He felt like he had taken a fully loaded freight train to the face. He couldn’t lift his hands. He couldn’t even sit up. Licking grease paint from around his lips, his bug eyes spied his colorful polka dot pants and top. Was it still Friday?
“Gwrargh! Whurahmy?”
As his head cleared, relatively, Butch found himself shackled and chained in a reinforced metal container. Road noise and a sense of movement. The container was on a truck. Butch strained against his chains. They didn’t budge, break, or even stretch. He began throwing his weight as much as he could and eventually was rewarded with rocking the truck roughly off its left wheels for an instant.
“Hey! Knock it off back there!”
A staticky voice from a high corner of the container drew Butch’s ire. Made his blood boil.
“Lemmegho yastards!!!”
Taking a breath that drained the container of much of its air, Butch thrashed about with wild abandon. Smoky gas began flooding the container from the front end. Lungs ready to burst, Butch rocked the container until he flipped it to slide on its side across three lanes of traffic. Some break in the container proved enough to admit a spark from the metal grinding over asphalt.
An explosion from within caused the container to jump one final time before stopping next to its toppled truck. Stunned onlookers emerged from their vehicles. Butch Slade kicked the doors from the container and emerged dragging his chains in the smoldering remnants of his clown costume. The enraged giant’s roar shook the earth.
A man and a boy in body armor crawled from the cab of their fallen truck. Butch turned his wild eyes and considerable bulk on the pair, hefting a container door like an executioner’s axe.
“Revenge!!!”
300 Fantasy Fighter words
@DavidALudwig
LikeLiked by 1 person