Week 27 participating in the very popular #vss365 challenge on Twitter. The aim, to write a daily Very Short Story in less than 280 characters, a single tweet. Yes, that’s characters! Not words.
The prompts themselves are seemingly random single words, the whim of this month’s challenge setter. This months fun is organised by Dunglish (@EdHaiku575). I’ve taken some liberties with formatting simply because WordPress is not Twitter and to make it easier to read.
This weeks image is just Archer watching the flyball at Crufts from the safety of the sofa. He can’t get enough of it. Unfortunately, he’s not really built for it. Regularly decelerating 40kg on a dime will definitely invalidate the warranty on his joints.
Writing progress this week. I’ve been exploring the various markets for publishing short stories. Between anthologies, magazines and podcasts etc there are a surprising number of avenues to pursue. In preparation, I’ve also put some tentative feelers out for an editor as well as looking at a couple of critique group options.
#Bridging the void between worlds was not easy. It took skill, energy and most of all duct tape. Lots of duct tape. Much like piercing a balloon, or in this case, two balloons with the same pin, the skilful application of tape was all that would prevent things going pop.
Joe’s uncanny luck didn’t extend to gambling. Debts in Las Vegas had earned him a shallow grave in the desert. In New Orleans, he’d lunched with gators. Now in #Atlantic City, all he’d won was a boat trip. Washing ashore, he was sure he was the luckiest unlucky man alive.
Everyone knew better than try to cross the lake when the wind howled down the fjord, whipping its glacial waters into treacherous #whitecaps. Fenrir’s teeth the villagers called them and there was not a man alive willing to chance his arm in the beast’s snapping jaws.
He watched a #seagull fly backwards against darkening clouds. On another day it would be a portent of disaster, but not today. Riding the storm front, wild winds at their backs, the enemy armada’s would not know what hit them. Today, even the gods were on their side.
To withhold #tribute was to invite the king’s ire. The banging at the door expected, it crashing open was not.
“You know who I am?” she hollered at the soldiers.
“You’re the king’s who-“
“Exactly and if he wants what’s coming to him he best come get it himself. Get out!”
We all worry about getting older. Fewer of us have lived in terror of turning #seventeen. Sue had, her heptadecaphobia no joke. The thought of blowing out the candles on her birthday cake had made her sick. Far easier was blowing dry the wet ink on her birth certificate.
The dark cobbled streets had been his #patch for twenty years. He knew every nook and cranny, patrolled them every night. In all that time they’d hardly changed. There were always victims and perpetrators. As the police whistles rang out, he slipped back into the shadows.
