Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: Revenge Of The Sub-Genre Mash-Up

Last week’s challenge — “Christmas In A Strange Place” — is live and deserving of your eyeballs. So, make with the clicky-clicky.

Someone the other day cited the sub-genre mash-up challenges — where I offer up a short list of weird sub-genres and you must choose two and force them to have sweet sweet story babies that result in the birth of your flash fiction response — and I thought, yes, yes, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

And so here we are, again.

From this list of six sub-genres, choose two. Then mash them together into a single piece of flash fiction, no more than 1000-words long. Here, then, is the list:

Dystopian Sci-Fi!

Cozy Mysteries!

Slasher or Serial Killer!

Lost World!

Spy Fiction!

Bodice Ripper!

Not sure what one or some of these mean?

Demand answers from the Lords of Google.

You have one week. Till Friday, January 6th. 2012, baby.

Go forth, rock it big, and I’ll see you kids next year. Have a killer rest of 2011, penmonkeys.

terribleminds

46 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: Revenge Of The Sub-Genre Mash-Up”

  13. […] Chuck’s flash fiction challenge this was another subgenre mash-up. I really like these, because I get to explore other kinds of writing. This week, we had to choose any two from this list: Dystopian Sci-Fi, Cozy Mysteries, Slasher or Serial Killer, Lost World, Spy Fiction, and Bodice Ripper. So if I tell you the two I chose, from that and other clues I expect you to be able to figure out the identity of the good doctor. I chose Serial Killer and Bodice Ripper. The two really just go hand in hand. To see more catch a horse and buggy and ride on over here: Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction Challenge: Revenge of the Sub-Genre Mash-up […]

    Reply

  14. If I tell you the two I chose, from that and other clues I expect you to be able to figure out the identity of the good doctor. And no, the doctor was not played by Larry Badgely. It better be obvious, or else I’m just bad at this.
    I chose Serial Killer and Bodice Ripper. The two really just go hand in hand.

    eHarmony in the Time of Dysentery

    Reply

  41. Slasher/Serial Killer & Dystopian SF Mashup

    Small Favors by John Wenger

    She was perfect, Jack thought as he watched her leave work. He got out of his vehicle and followed her at a distance. He knew from having watched her all week that she would pick up take-out from the sidewalk soylent cart a block over, and then take the monorail eight stops. From there, she’d walk five blocks along a broken sidewalk to her conapt.

    He’d thought about it all week and had decided on just the spot to intercept her. Another streetlight had gone out just after her monorail stop. He watched her carrying the dinner she’d never eat in a brown paper bag. He knew she was unhappy. Why, he was really just doing her a favor. He patted his overcoat pocket just to feel the blade as he quickened his pace to catch the same train as she. Yes, she was perfect for him. And she would be next.

    #

    He slept in the next morning; just a little treat after working so late. He didn’t have to shower again, as he’d cleaned up before going to bed. She’d been a real bleeder and had ruined everything he’d been wearing last night, even his shoes. Occupational hazard, he guessed. He dressed, brushed his teeth, and then walked down to the coffee shop.

    They were out of coffee again, but had a vile chicory drink that was at least hot. He sat at the counter and downloaded the morning paper. Sure, he could’ve run a search for what he was looking for, but he preferred to browse through the screens and just run across it. He hoped there was a good photo this time. He had sipped most of his drink before he found the story, buried on one of he last pages of local news. What was wrong with people these days? he groused. He remembered a time when a bloody slashing would’ve made the front page.

    Not that he wasn’t still proud of his feat. He selected the story and increased the font size slightly before nudging the man sitting on the stool next to him. “Jeez, what’s the neighborhood coming to?” he asked, waving the tablet about.

    The man looked up from his own cup of chicory, squinted at the story of the brutal slaying, the third in two weeks, and shrugged. “The way things are going,” he said, “somebody probably just did her a favor.”

    “A favor?” Jack sputtered, “I bet you wouldn’t say that if there’d been a picture. This, this here,” he jabbed at the screen, “was a horrendous crime. An atrocity”

    The man sitting next to him looked up again and shrugged again. “Meh,” he said.

    “Doreen,” Jack waved his atrocity at the young woman freshening the chicory from behind the counter. “This girl was just about your age. Aren’t you terrified to walk home after your shift?” Jack knew he was reaching here; Doreen was a good enough waitress, but was heavy and brunette and not at all his “type,” so had nothing to worry about.

    “Sure, I’m terrified to walk home,” she said, “Been terrified ever since the killbots showed up three years ago.” She pointed the chicory pot at his tablet. “They can track you through those things, you know.”

    A middle-aged woman wearing a babushka turned to them from one of the tables. “Don’t get me started about those killbots,” she said, “But ever since the glaciers melted last year and that last polar bear drowned on live tv, I haven’t been able to give a rat’s ass.”

    A weary-looking man with a bristly mustache leaned out of the kitchen. “And it’s been pretty hard just to get out of bed each morning after those killer bee stings made me sterile.”

    “And I survived the months of the dust cloud obscuring the sunlight after that meteor strike, just to get this sunburn at the beach last weekend,” added a man from a table by the door, tugging his collar down to show his red, peeling neck and shoulder.

    Jack slapped his tablet on the counter so hard, chicory sloshed out if the side of his cup. “I honestly don’t know why I come in here and try to share with you whiners,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of end-of-the-world this is where a man can’t be proud of his work and his neighbors don’t appreciate it, anyway.” He looked around him at the blank stares, rolled his eyes and drained his cup. He made a face. “That was awful, just like all of you. I’m gonna go find some real coffee,” he said, slapping a twenty on the counter then headed for the door, “and some real friends!”

    The other diners watched him leave, and then briefly went back to their cups and plates until they heard the crash just outside. Doreen led the way, peering down the sidewalk to see Jack’s body flattened by a huge shard of the city’s dome. They all looked up and saw the hole where the sky had fallen.

    As they filed back into the restaurant, the woman with the babushka pointed out a dejected-looking killbot who must have taken a bead on Jack before the shard fell. The killbot moped off.

    “Huh,” said the man who had sat next to Jack, “That piece of dome just did him a favor,”

    Reply

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