Sci-Fi
FlashNano 2025: Day 2
It’s the final year of FlashNano, by Nancy Stohlman, where we write a flash a day in response to a prompt, or just because. This is a quick write, but it was kinda fun. And I just happened to have the right image!
Day 2: “Write a story in which something turns into something else.”
Evie woke up on the edge of the property, a sour taste in her mouth, muscles aching, and her bag of Halloween candy ripped apart, treats smashed and scattered just past where dirt meets curated lawn. Rubbing her face and neck, she came away with blood on her hands and a laceration in her shoulder that stabbed as she twisted to see what had happened to her. There was definitely a mark. Could be a knife slash, or— this thought rustled a shred of memory—a slice from a claw, or maybe even a bite from trying to escape whatever had attacked her.
What had attacked her?
Continue readingRetreat
Many thanks to Jenne Gray and C.E. Ayr for their photo prompt, THE UNICORN CHALLENGE. 02/28/2025). No more than 250 words in length.
He’d become withdrawn since the incident, built a wall, not too fierce, not too tall, but imposing enough to keep most others out. And with Leon the Chameleon guarding the door, he was able to continue life as he now knew it.
Continue readingHyde and Seek
Suzette knocked cautiously on the closed door of Henry’s laboratory over the garage, which before had been her own writer’s space, calling cheerily, “Dr. Jekyl, where are you Hyding?” Continue reading
Study Plan
Jannae leaned back, fingers curved and lingering over the keyboard. There were so many characters in the file open on her laptop, both individual keystrokes and those that expanded in detail to sketch whole persons, places, and things. Continue reading
Gothic Survival Skills
© Ayr/Gray (with some editing to birth the story
Many thanks to Jenne Gray and C.E. Ayr for their photo prompt, THE UNICORN CHALLENGE. 01/03/2025). No more than 250 words in length.
The mansion looked fine from the outside, when the sun labored to reach every shadow and warm every corner of this most recent building that no one, living or not, could remember clearly. Tourists delighted in the brush of icy chill during daylight hours, the moan and rattle from towers firmly padlocked “For safety reasons, you understand.” An outdoor boarded-up well was a sitting place of a weeping woman in a lace gown, hair covering her ivory-white face. All part of the attraction. Continue reading
Haunted or Hunted?
© Ayr/Gray
“I’m telling you, I’m not going to their cottage for the weekend!”
“Whyever not?” Perplexed I was, that once again, he was refusing. “It’s not like we’re going for the fox hunt. Haven’t done that for years!” Continue reading
Valley of the Trolls 