Week 14 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 has been organised by @iam_nirupama I’ve taken some liberties with formatting simply because WordPress is not Twitter and to make it easier to read.
Well, it’s a welcome return to the weekly vss365 prompts after NaNoWriMo, talk about the other end of the spectrum. This week’s photo is an early morning outing with the pup, the first real hard frost, a couple of weeks back.
What #omen?
I will not heed the deathwatch beetle that ticks and tocks in the broken grandfather clock.
Rather, I’ll tip-toe around the black cat, shun the crows in yonder cedar tree.
Blind to portent, earthly and astronomic, none shall foreshadow my fate. Not today!
“I don’t care how hard you think he is,” she berated.
“You cannot just cut loose on him. I swear if there’s a scratch!”
He shrugged and stared down at his little brother.
Her eyes glinted angrily. “Am I clear?”
“Yes, Mom. #Crystal clear,” said Blue.
Tough love indeed.
“Get lost, you gutter rat,” the rice seller yelled.
“Please,” she pleaded. “We’re starving.”
“No coin, no #rice!”
She threw herself at him. He split her lip, threw her to the ground.
She limped away.
“Did you get it?”
He held out a fist of rice; his were the bigger hands.
Wednesday 4th December – Fickle
Felis catus domesticus.
Is there a more #fickle creature in the whole of nature?
Stuck between its feral desert past and its lush future as mankind’s overlords.
Pity the fool who’d ignore the whipping of its tail, to chance a rub of an offered belly.
“They say you’re a #guru.”
“Do they,” said the guru, sipping his tea. “What else do they say?”
“That you can bring back the dead. Can you?”
The guru nodded. “Sometimes, but there’s always a terrible price.”
“I’m willing to pay it!”
“Great, it’s $200 for a new screen.”
“Don’t be blue.”
“It’s always the same. It’s getting me down.”
“No, I mean literally don’t be blue!”
“But they’ll notice.”
“Who? No one’s watching.”
“You think?”
The billboard looped again.
Nobody saw the riot of colour from one happy #pixel, until his friends joined in.
The traffic lights turned #amber, then red.
Not that he cared. There was no way he was stopping.
Not this rain-soaked morning. Not with his job was on the line.
He gunned the gas to a chorus of angry horns and screeching tyres.
The truck didn’t stop, he did, permanently.
