#3forThursday is a three part prompt with various variations
This flash fiction challenge consists of three different challenges at once. First, a prompt is given each hour on the hour for 11:00 AM, 12 noon, and 1:00 PM EST. The prompts are often different styles of prompts. Pictures, phrases, words, etc. Participants may then enter in three different ways.
Speed Challenge - Each hour they can do a 100 word entry based on the prompt given for that hour. Each of these stories is stand alone.
Blind Challenge - Then they can do a 'blind challenge' which involves submitting an entry each hour based on the prompt with all three entries being part of the same story.
Classic Challenge - And finally, you can wait to get all three prompts and then submit a single story of up to 300 words by 8:00 PM.
Week 2 - Parts 1, 2, and 3
Mausoleum
He might be breaking the law, but he didn’t care. Anthony Fallon knew what he had seen. Over a period of weeks he had watched a group of people on several occasions enter the mausoleum late at night. The first time it had seemed odd. When it happened again, he knew something was going on.
Why would a group of people want to enter such a place late at night? Once he started thinking about it, his mind wouldn’t let it go. He had to know.
He stood, flashlight in hand, with his back against the mausoleum wall, listening.
Sting
Silence. He reached around to the gate of the mausoleum to see if it was locked. It swung out without a sound.
Well used, he thought.
He stepped inside the gate to the door. He had no idea if such a door was meant to be opened or sealed. He pulled on the handle and it opened. Inside, the air seemed stale.
Just then he felt something prick his neck. He flinched and turned. Suddenly he was face to face with a beautiful brunette woman. He froze in shock.
He saw her smile as he fell to the ground.
Forgotten
“Once he wakes,” she began, “he will have forgotten everything.” She shifted her gaze from the sleeping form of Anthony Fallon to that of the man to whom she spoke. “But that is beside the point, isn’t it Charles?”
Charles Daumier visibly winced. “Yes, that is beside the point.”
She continued to stare at him until she decided that he had taken her point seriously.
“Return him to the mausoleum above and seal the hidden entrance securely.”
“It shall be done,” Charles replied.
When she disappeared from the chamber, Charles felt a distinct chill.
“Witch,” he muttered. Quietly.
He might be breaking the law, but he didn’t care. Anthony Fallon knew what he had seen. Over a period of weeks he had watched a group of people on several occasions enter the mausoleum late at night. The first time it had seemed odd. When it happened again, he knew something was going on.
Why would a group of people want to enter such a place late at night? Once he started thinking about it, his mind wouldn’t let it go. He had to know.
He stood, flashlight in hand, with his back against the mausoleum wall, listening.
Sting
Silence. He reached around to the gate of the mausoleum to see if it was locked. It swung out without a sound.
Well used, he thought.
He stepped inside the gate to the door. He had no idea if such a door was meant to be opened or sealed. He pulled on the handle and it opened. Inside, the air seemed stale.
Just then he felt something prick his neck. He flinched and turned. Suddenly he was face to face with a beautiful brunette woman. He froze in shock.
He saw her smile as he fell to the ground.
Forgotten
“Once he wakes,” she began, “he will have forgotten everything.” She shifted her gaze from the sleeping form of Anthony Fallon to that of the man to whom she spoke. “But that is beside the point, isn’t it Charles?”
Charles Daumier visibly winced. “Yes, that is beside the point.”
She continued to stare at him until she decided that he had taken her point seriously.
“Return him to the mausoleum above and seal the hidden entrance securely.”
“It shall be done,” Charles replied.
When she disappeared from the chamber, Charles felt a distinct chill.
“Witch,” he muttered. Quietly.
Week 3, Prompt 2
The day the Paris dome fell, ruptured by a derelict satellite falling, it seemed as if the whole world came crashing down. The poor who had been forced underground for the better part of the last century were suddenly in control. Those living above ground, once exposed, had only one place to go: underground. But the underground was full. It was a simple matter of blocking access from above. No one had ever dreamed that the wealthy would desperately want to get into the underground.
As word spread around the globe, other cities fell, and the world was changed forever.
As word spread around the globe, other cities fell, and the world was changed forever.
Week 6, Prompt 1 (stylistic prompt: a last letter)
The Letter
My Dearest Wife,
I will be brief. If you are reading this then my life has ended under suspicious circumstances.
I discovered the plot you and your lover had concocted. It was truly inspirational! I would not have lived much longer anyway, but I guess you couldn’t wait. Youth, always in such a rush.
By now your fingers are surely burning as a result of the contact poison in which this paper was soaked. Fear not! The antidote is available to you.
It is in the same location as the murder weapon you buried.
My regards to Sheriff Wimbsley please.
My Dearest Wife,
I will be brief. If you are reading this then my life has ended under suspicious circumstances.
I discovered the plot you and your lover had concocted. It was truly inspirational! I would not have lived much longer anyway, but I guess you couldn’t wait. Youth, always in such a rush.
By now your fingers are surely burning as a result of the contact poison in which this paper was soaked. Fear not! The antidote is available to you.
It is in the same location as the murder weapon you buried.
My regards to Sheriff Wimbsley please.
Week 7 Parts 1, 2, and 3
“'Malolactic',” he said again as he had been all morning. “'Mal-o-lactic'. Malo-lac-tic'.”
“What is your fucking problem, Haygood?” Sergeant Delane asked. At five feet tall with jet black shorter than his, she turned him on but good.
“It just sounds so, I dunno', sexy,” Haygood replied. “Heard it on a vid.”
Sergeant Delane glanced at him, slung her M16 over her shoulder and, in passing, grabbed Haygood's crotch.
“Just so long as you're thinking of me when you say it.”
“Wilco that, Sergeant,” he replied. “Wilco that.”
She smiled and kissed him.
Whenever he stared into her eyes time seemed to stand still.
It had been three months since he’d come south to Atlanta but the fighting was still going on. Private Haygood hadn’t planned on falling in love, but hey. Plans.
They’d met in a bar brawl in a shanty set up in Piedmont Park. Everyone was drunk and he could tell the attraction was mutual. He bent over and kissed her, catching her off guard. That’s what started it. She’d kicked his ass but good.
She’d straddled him on the ground, boot knife at his throat, and kissed him back.
He was only private and she was an NCO, part of the chain of command. So technically they weren't supposed to be fraternizing. But this army, noble as its goals may be, is really just a travesty of a real army.
"So Sergeant," he asked as she released his crotch, "what are you going to do when the fighting is over?" He hoped but didn't allow his mind to actually formulate what.
Sergeant Delane looked away for a moment and then looked back at him.
"That's just it, see," she said. "I don't think the fighting will ever be over."
Week 8 Blind Challenge - Parts 1, 2, and 3
Part 1
Arthur stumbled, his head suddenly swimming with disorientation. As the pigeon took to the air, reality seemed to blur and shift.
The bird transformed, its wings becoming fibrous and long as it took the shape of a dragon.
Arthur’s arms trembled with fatigue as he drew back the great sword preparing to strike. The movement felt natural and practiced. His calloused hands matched perfectly to the leather of the sword’s handle, worn familiar from long and constant use.
And then it was just a pigeon flying overhead.
Arthur paused, bewildered. On his hands was a scent. Leather.
Part 2
Arthur leaned against the brick wall as he struggled to comprehend what had just happened. The hair on his arms stood on end and his hands shook. Strangely, the muscles in his back and shoulders ached as if from some strenuous activity.
“Damn,” he swore quietly. “I haven’t even been drinking!”
Pushing off the wall he started down the sidewalk, the vision still vibrant and visceral in his mind. The sun was low in the sky as the end of the day approached.
Passing by an alley, he heard a sound. From the shadows lurked a small girl.
She wore chainmail.
Part 3
As Arthur approached her, she stepped out from the shadows.
“Halt!” she said in a commanding voice, her hand raised over her right shoulder and grasping the pommel of what appeared to be a sword as tall as she was.
Arthur froze in his tracks, raising his hands in a surrendering fashion. And then his heart skipped.
In the late afternoon sun he could see that he had been mistaken. She was no child. She was obviously a woman full grown. And beautiful.
“Are you the one called Arthur?” she demanded.
“I am.”
“Then you must come with me, now.”
Week 8 - Speed Challenge - Entry 1
Afternoon Break
The dragon soared into the air, the infant prince clutched in its talons and Kronan the All Conquering knew he had only one chance. Should he injure the child or cause the dragon to harm the child in any way, it would cost Kronan his life.
Without hesitation he drew back the great two-handed sword, and heaved the glorious blade skyward as the terrible beast’s wings beat the air, climbing.
Sunlight glinted off the blade…
The shift bell sounded interrupting Raymond’s daydream. With a sigh he shuffled back into the plant with his co-workers as the pigeons reclaimed the sidewalk.
Week 8 - Speed Challenge - Entry 2
As she finished the spell, she listened intently in the night. The only thing she noticed was her own beating heart as it pounded.
“Damn it,” she said out loud. “That should have worked.”
She sat for a few more minutes, waiting. Finally she decided to call it a night. As she moved to stand up, an odor invaded her room. It reeked of sulfur and rot.
The hairs on her arms stood up and her pulse quickened.
A voice like bones scraping from the shadows lurked and shuffled.
“I am here,” it said as it moved into the light.
Week 8 - Speed Challenge - Entry 3
Pommel
Leigh al Boros grasped the pommel of her saddle with both hands, straining as the drake raced down the valley, rolling and twisting with joy.
Leigh laughed out loud, encouraging the dragon.
“On Tarron, on!”
He was one of the smaller ones but his speed rivaled even the largest war beast. Leigh’s raven hair whipped across her face, stinging, and in the cool autumn air, her teeth began to chatter.
Suddenly she was in shadow. Turning to see the cause, her breath caught.
War dragons, their giant wings blocking the sun as they made their return to the castle.