Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Flash Fiction Challenge: 100 Words Only

This week’s challenge is not one of subject, theme, or other detail — the challenge is simply one of length. Because normally? You get 1000 words. Today? You get only 100. (I think this is technically called a “drabble.” You can call it “Bobo” for all I like.)

So:

Go to your online space.

Post 100 words (no more!) of fiction.

Link back here so we can all see it.

Due by next Friday, 3/27.

That’s it.

I double dog dare you to do it.

(edit: I also double dog my friend, Erin Lynn Jeffreys Hodges, to try it, too.)

terribleminds

395 responses to “Flash Fiction Challenge: 100 Words Only”

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  3. Here’s mine:
    RINGS
    The boy pulled his finger through the fine dust.
    ‘So many rings. Like Mum’s fingers.’
    ‘Every ring represents a year,’ the man smiled.
    ‘I always got seasick. I hated it.’
    ‘The rings are part of the tree’s history. This mast is part of yours.’
    ‘I don’t wanna be part of that history.’ He blew away the sawdust. ‘So the middle, is where the tree began?’
    ‘Yes.’
    The boy lay head to head with the trunk’s dark centre and squeezed his eyelids shut. His history was only had two rings; before and after. ‘Send me back,’ he whispered.

    Reply

    • Whoops posted wrong version!!! Should be this:

      RINGS
      The boy pulled his finger through the fine dust.
      ‘So many rings. Like Mum’s fingers.’
      ‘Every ring represents a year,’ the man smiled.
      ‘I always got seasick. I hated it.’
      ‘The rings are part of the tree’s history. This mast is part of yours.’
      ‘I don’t wanna be part of that history.’ He blew away the sawdust. ‘So the middle is where the tree began?’
      ‘Yes.’
      The boy lay head to head with the trunk’s dark centre and squeezed his eyelids shut. His history only had two rings; before and after. ‘Send me back,’ he whispered.

      Reply

  11. I tried to be brave. I tried to be strong.

    I knew it would hurt but, still, I gathered myself to face this ordeal.
    It wasn’t the first time and, sadly, I’m sure it won’t be the last.

    Some told me, laughing: “Get rid of this one, you’ll find more! Tenfold !”
    Some other, gently said that it was a pain quickly passed and forgotten.

    And the more I prepared myself, the more I braced against it, teeth clenched, ignoring my wailing heart, the more I cried in the end.

    Bloody butt hair…

    Reply

  19. Alas, I am just a “tad” late to the party, it already being Friday, March 27. Not to mention, I don’t really have much in the way of an “online space” to write yet.

    I wait with baited breath for the next challenge.

    Reply

    • Amazing how weird a neighborhood can seem in the broad daylight, much less in the pre-coffee fog of morning or the darkness of evening. But I think every neighborhood has people who enhance the effect. The trick is just to BE that person, and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

      Reply

    • Takes me back to similar scenarios from childhood. I wonder if we just get fucked up by these things, or if they (blah blah) deepen our character and give us a better grasp on mortality. Can it be both?

      Reply

  31. I know i’m late but i heard 100 words only and one of my favorite WIP characters creapt into my head. Hope you like it:-

    It may seem like a strange request and it still gives me goose bumps when they ask. But to me it is ever so exciting.

    I have been waiting for this for years, the opportunity to practice my true craft. Sure I have other professions; surgeon, artist, undertaker, but this is where I excel.

    And sometimes I do it for free, other times payment is required. It all depends on who’s asking.
    So when a young woman asks me to make a deal how can I resist asking.
    “Why do you want to live forever?”

    Reply
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