Tag: flash fiction

  • Jake’s Superette

    It’s story time!

    Another prompt from Jolene/Chico’s Mom. I’ve not participated in the last few because I was focused on Vivian Locke’s noir, but I thought I’d give this one a quick stab between my longer efforts.

    Not quite clocking at 1000 words, I followed the prompt on her site which included four elements (and a wild card)

    • Vet
    • Ex-superhero
    • Lottery tickets
    • A door that won’t open
    • Wild card! Tell your story as a romance

    The story was only lightly edited after it was written, so forgive me if there are any flaws.

    Comments are always appreciated.

    Jake’s Superette

    Sad beep. Sigh.

    Sad beep. Sigh.

    Sad beep. S—

    “Nuthin’?” asked the little shit at the register who couldn’t be more than fifteen, judging by the he sparse, fuzzy apology for a moustache boys his age favored.

    (more…)

  • Flash fiction prompt — 17feb26

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I am sharing those daily flash fiction prompts generated by AI that I personally feel are worth pursuing. Readers are welcome to try their hand at writing based on the prompts generated for this exercise, the goals of which are explained in this post.

    Today’s prompt:

    Genre: Noir

    Subgenre/Theme: Occult Detective / Rainy City Cynicism

    Prompt Elements:

    • The Neon Confessional: A low-rent detective agency located directly behind a massive, buzzing neon billboard that flickers in a sequence that inadvertently mimics Morse code.
    • The Lead-Lined Briefcase: An anonymous client leaves behind a case that is impossibly heavy for its size and remains freezing cold to the touch, even in the sweltering city heat.
    • The Silver-Nitrate Source: A cynical morgue photographer who develops crime scene photos using a strange chemical wash that occasionally reveals the last shadow that fell across a victim’s face.
    • The Charged Downpour: A localized, three-block radius where the rain carries a faint, static charge. It doesn’t electrocute, but it raises the hair on the back of the neck, makes the air taste sharply of ozone and copper, and leaves a mild, stinging prickle on any exposed skin.
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  • Flash fiction prompt — 12feb26

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I am sharing flash fiction prompts generated by AI unless I don’t feel they are personally worth pursuing. Readers are welcome to try their hand at writing based on the prompts generated for this exercise, the goals of which are explained in this post.

    Today’s prompt:

    Subgenre: Appalachian Gothic / Cosmic Horror

    Key Elements:

    • A mine shaft that was sealed up fifty years ago but has started breathing.
    • A family bible with names burned out rather than crossed out.
    • The sound of a fiddle playing a song that has no end.
    • A jar of moonshine that doesn’t reflect the light.

    Optional Tone Constraint: The narrator must be unreliable.

    (more…)

  • On Forage

    This piece is based on the flash fiction prompt posted yesterday and follows my personal guidelines as described in this post.

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    Genre: Speculative fiction

    Subgenre: Biopunk / Post-Apocalyptic

    Seattle, South of Pioneer Square Station ruins; 73 years after The Fall

    Kit Keyes could just see the daylight at the end of the tunnel from where she stood on the rusted, flaking remains of light rail tracks. There was not much sun to set the the end of the tunnel alight, as the perpetual twilight of the monsoons filtered out most of it before it even had a chance to get to the ground. It was pervasive gloom that came with the winter months around November and sometimes lasted until as late as May. She half-disbelieved the elders when they said that it had not always been this way; she had known nothing but the winter monsoons for her twenty years of age.

    She watched for shadows in that twilight. Patrols regularly cleared out the tunnels of the dwindling population of raiders and ne’er-do-well types that tested the clan’s defenses on a perennial basis north of The Square, only to discover the defenses had only hardened since their last attempt. A few hundred meter south, on the other hand — that section had never been properly secured. Something about that open mouth bothered her this morning. She could not put her finger on what, something that bothered her more than the empty space itself.

    It just so happened that south of the Square was some of the best fungus forage on the Line.

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  • Stupid exposition…

    Sometimes you have to know when to just give something a rest and a rethink.

    I was merrily pounding on my keyboard a story for the flash fiction prompt I posted earlier, having quickly developed an idea earlier in the day — when I came to a sudden impasse.

    Two things went wrong.

    My imperfect memory of the geography of Seattle was partly to blame. The light rail system did not exist when I lived there and my planned story relied on several elements that were just not the reality of the situation on the ground. When I grew suspicious I checked out a few details and caught that flaw.

    That was a hurdle I probably could have overcome. Just change assumptions to fit the real world geography and modify a few words here and there. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.

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  • Flash fiction prompt — 10feb26

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I am sharing flash fiction prompts generated by AI for my own use unless I don’t think they are worth pursuing. Readers are welcome to try their hand at writing based on the prompts generated for this exercise.

    Notes about modifications made to the AI instructions or this post template are at the end of this post if you are curious about such things.

    Feel free to skip these posts if you feel you are not the target audience. If you choose not to participate, there is no need to let us know about your preferences and opinions about these prompts, or the use of artificial intelligence to generate writing prompts.

    Today’s prompt:

    Genre: Speculative fiction

    Subgenre: Biopunk / Post-Apocalyptic

    Target Length: < 2,000 words

    Key Elements:

    • A genetically modified plant that blooms only in moonlight.
    • A rusted key that opens nothing in the protagonist’s possession.
    • The sound of running water where there should be none.
    • A faded photograph of a skyline that no longer exists.
    (more…)

  • Kasumi-no-Kuni — flash fiction

    This piece is based on the flash fiction prompt posted earlier and follows my personal guidelines as described in this post.

    Subgenre: Silkpunk / Ghost-Tech

    Rin looked out over the Land of Mists from the tower she kept her watch from, a tower built entirely of unmarked rice paper and bamboo where she slept when she needed rest, and where she ate when she was given offerings by visitors coming to pay their respect to the memories of the ancestors — those memories captured in the paper of the lands proper. True to the name, the mists and clouds flowed through the city with only a single living resident, that being Rin. The white fog snaked through the streets inked with the stories of ancestors, often obscuring the memories unless someone were to stand before them.

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  • Flash fiction prompt — 09feb26

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    I thought I’d start sharing those flash fiction prompts generated by AI that I find compelling enough to consider attempting to write about for my own purposes in case any of the folks dropping by here are tempted to try their hand at the prompt as well.

    It would be fun to see how others approach these prompts and contrast/compare the output.

    Feel free to skip these posts if you feel you are not the target audience; if you choose not to participate, there is no need to let us know about your preferences and opinions about these prompts or the use of artificial intelligence to generate writing prompts.

    Today’s prompt:

    Subgenre: Silkpunk / Ghost-Tech

    Plot Elements to Include:

    • The Object: An ornate silk kite that flies without wind, pulling its handler toward “emotional ley lines.”
    • The Setting: A floating city constructed entirely of paper and bamboo, held aloft by the collective memories of its inhabitants.
    • The Conflict: A “Memory-Scribe” discovers a blank spot in the city’s archives—a day in history that has been physically cut out of the paper foundation.

    Target Length: < 2,000 words

    (more…)

  • Dead zone — flash fiction

    See my notes in this post about the prompted flash fiction pieces on this site about personal drivers and rules I use while writing them.

    Plot Elements to Include (all prompts and genre randomly suggested by Gemini AI):

    • The Object: A heavy, brass-bound radio that doesn’t receive signals from this decade.
    • The Setting: A city perpetually covered in coal-dust fog where sound is regulated by the government.
    • The Conflict: The protagonist discovers a “dead zone” where the fog clears, revealing a sky that hasn’t been seen in fifty years.

    Genre: Dieselpunk / Alt History

    “Gimme your ETA for finishing Delta sector baffler maintenance, Zed-Ought-Three-Stroke-Seven-Ex. We’ve got a situation in Epsilon and you’re needed immediately. Dispatch over.”

    Cinder let dispatch stew for a few moments before responding. She’d been done fixing the bafflers ten minutes ago but had quickly learned that being too much of a go-getter in City Maintenance just go-got you more thankless tasks and a fistful of disgruntled coworkers to boot. No one liked a brownnoser, including the bosses because then they had to find more make-work for you and explain to their superiors why that was the case. And if their superiors thought there were inefficiencies in the system, they would reduce the workforce to account for those inefficiencies, keeping only the overachievers, who would then be saddled with more work than they could handle on their own. Let no good deed go unpunished was the unofficial motto of the dome maintenance worker.

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  • A few notes about stories & prompts

    Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

    As I mentioned a few days ago, I am going to try to increase my output of short fiction on the site to stretch out those muscles in that part of my brain which have atrophied somewhat in the past few years.

    I feel that I should provide some disclosures before publishing many more stories and to make clear what my personal rules are, and to set expectations about what you see in the coming days. Rather than post a few disclaimers for every story, I thought I’d point to this post. It is intended to be a living document and I will modify it as needed to clarify or correct its contents.

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