Showing posts with label Flash fiction challenge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flash fiction challenge. Show all posts

09 October 2011

Flash Fiction Challenge for TerribleMinds.com - The Nature of Dust


The quite frankly hilarious Chuck Wendig has asked everyone to invent a new monster over here, and give it life through a flash fiction piece of 1,000 words or less.
Mine only took 242. Let's hope the thing they say about quality being better than quantity is true...
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 The Nature of Dust

Tap. 

Tap. 

Tap.

Caroline was ready for it to be over. She knew it was coming.

They all did.

Her colleagues, her husband, her children. 

Palm to palm they’d pressed their hands together, separated only by the triple-thick pane of glass that kept the inside in and the outside out.

Unfortunately, she was on the inside.

Tap.

 No one had believed her when she’d shown them the cuts on her fingers, the deep pocks like pricks of a pin.

“Wounded by dust? You’re joking. Bits of dead skin and dirt - How can that hurt you?”

It didn’t matter how – the fact that it did was enough.

She looked at her bandaged hands with cloudy, unfocussed eyes. The white cotton was marred by green-tinged stains. The wounds were weeping, they itched and stung. It would be hell when it reached the thin skin of her face.

Tap.

Tap.

The beaker was rocking, knocking on the table top.

How much more proof did they need that whatever was in there was alive?

On unsteady legs, she got to her feet and pressed her lips to the glass. One by one her family kissed her goodbye.

She couldn’t hear the sobs, but she could see their tears.

Tap.

It was gaining momentum.

Tap.

She sunk to the floor, legs curled underneath her body and her arms wrapped round her waist.

Tap.

It nearly made it.

A silent prayer.

Tap.

She closed her eyes.

Smash.

-

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