A High Stakes Game of Noughts and Crosses

Lily tugged Steven’s sleeve as he entered the control room. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

Steven wished people would stop asking that. A glance at his battered jacket and hair that hadn’t been brushed since the first attack should have told anybody that he didn’t and would welcome any suggestions.

But in the absence of any such suggestions, it was his terrible ideas or nothing.

“Are you ready?” the Other asked, smiling with all five mouths.

“I win the game, you leave?” he said. “Back to your own dimension?”

The Other hissed. “Yes.”

“Right, then.” He looked down at the stage they’d set: a vast flattened square of dust and earth divided into nine squares by towering mountain ranges. “I’ll be Crosses.”

As his first move was carved into the earth, he wondered if the Others would agree to best two out of three.

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Word Count: 147

This is for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and Yarnspinnerr for providing the photo prompt!

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The American Dream

The portal first opened on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday afternoon. By six that evening, it was all over the news. A door to an unspoiled landscape of craggy mountains and vast seas under a maroon sky.

An important meeting was called the moment the President was done playing golf. He glared at his advisors the way he usually did right before a lot of people lost their jobs.

“A flag,” he said. “We need a flag there.”

“Why?” the Secretary of State asked.

The Secretary of State cleared out his desk while the task force got ready.

Their objective was clear: claim this strange new world for the American government before anybody else got any clever ideas.

The flag was up within the hour. The portal snapped shut within two.

Over the desolate, alien world the flag fluttered, unnoticed by anybody else in the universe.

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Word Count: 145

This is for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and Yinglan for providing the prompt photo!

A Cold Eternity

During the long cold nights, she liked to remember summer: the warmth of the sun on her skin, the lake a wavering war of light and darkness, leaves green on the reaching branches of the young trees, birdsong in the air.

In the ice, there were no lake, no leaves, no branches, no birdsong, and no warmth. There was only the cold. The cold forever.

When it first descended on her, wrapping her in fingers of blue, her skin stung and her bones shivered. Now it was nothing. All-consuming numbness.

Did I deserve this? 

It was a question she asked herself every day, every hour, every minute, as she stood, statue-still, encased in her ice tomb.

She would give anything just to feel the sun’s warmth again.

But the spell had frozen her until the mountains ground to dust, until the seas turned dry.

Until the sun turned cold.

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Word Count: 149

This is for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and Enisa for providing the prompt photo!

Lost in Clouds

When he felt lost, he always went to the museum and looked up at the plane. So bright. So bold. So proud. It knew what it was. It knew where it should be.

He didn’t. Not anymore. The world beneath his feet felt insubstantial and uncertain as cloud. Wherever he looked, there was nothing but the haze of mist.

They had taken everything from him when they had told him he couldn’t fly. They had torn off his wings and sent him hurtling in the world, a broken thing. He didn’t know how to put himself back together.

That plane didn’t fly either. Not now. But it didn’t seem lost, didn’t seem broken.

And if it could find its place, so could he.

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Word Count: 123

This is for FFfAW. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and Yinglan for providing the prompt photo!

Set Your Clock

Each day he stands by the window and watches, his eye upon the hands of the watch. The lamps flicker, casting shadows across the street. Footsteps echo on the cobbles. A spider scuttles across the cobweb, long legs dancing on thin threads.

Each day, the times are the same. Everything in this world happens on a schedule, regular as ticking clockwork.

And this means that none of it is real: not the cobblestone streets, not the sky overhead, not even the spider on the windowsill. All of this is a trap, a lie, designed to keep him placid.

“It won’t work,” he whispers. “I’ll escape.”

Far away, They watch him on the monitor. One of Them sighs and taps at the black-and-white screen.

“This unit’s gone wrong.”

“We’ll have to reset,” his supervisor says. “Again. That one breaks down so often you could set your clock by it.”

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Word Count: 148

This is for FFfAW. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and Enisa for providing the prompt photo!

The Future is Green

A breeze whistled between the branches.

No. Not a breeze. Just the whirring of the fan overhead.

He had to remind himself of that. It all seemed so very real.

The Garden spread out before him, rows of green, trees lined up like soldiers heading off to war. He found it hard not to think of Eden. And not to think of serpents.

There were no windows in the Garden, just layers of corrugated metal. And beyond that – cold black void, dotted with stars, stretching out over the pale desert of moonstone.

He preferred not to have windows. He didn’t want to have to see the Earthrise and Earthset, to see the fires still burning and the dark clouds roiling.

The world was over. Every person, every beast, every seedling turned to radioactive ash.

It was up to him to keep what was left alive.

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Word Count: 145

This is for Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and Yarnspinner for providing the prompt photo!

Magic and Murmurs

On a farm in the high mountains, a wizard lived alone. He’d had enough of people, enough of their wars and their squabbling. He made a house from stone and wood and set about taming the land with his magic.

The fields were plowed by sharpened boulders, drifting gently through the dirt. The fences opened and closed of their own accord.

Those who had been brave enough – or foolhardy enough – to catch a glimpse of his strange estates, said that the sheep are herded by men and women of hay and sticks, who tend to the lands while the master watched from far above.

But when their master looked away, the herders whispered amongst themselves, speaking in the languages of groaning branch and cracking twig, the song of old willows in the winds.

The wizard did not fear them, for they were his creatures.

Or so he believed.

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Word Count: 148

This is for FFfAW. Thanks to Priceless Joy for running the challenge and Ellespeth for providing the prompt photo!