Week 44 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 @kara_goughnour in June and @Ayve in July. I’ve taken some liberties with formatting simply because WordPress is not Twitter and to make it easier to read.
This week’s photo is of a newt I found hiding under one of the storage bins. He’s now found a new home in a damper environment. Surprised to see him so far from water, possibly he was just on holiday. This weekend many of the lockdown restrictions were raised in England leading to the predictable scenes of the minority of people (as always) flouting the rules. The head of the Police Federation felt the need to point out “It is crystal clear that drunk people are unable to socially distance.” Really? I’d never have guessed. In my local area, the R rate is between 0.7 and 1.0, that’s crept up from 0.9 before this weekends antics. Let’s see where that is in a month. We were already on a shortlist of 36 town/cities that we’re in danger of requiring local measures.
Not much of update on writing this week. I’ve taken a few days out to recharge the batteries having finished the first draft of a cyberpunk-themed story for an upcoming collaborative anthology. I’m doing a lot of reading of that anthology next week. I’ve started on another sci-fi short story for a different anthology that I’m aiming to have finished in the week.
Bored with your daily routine? Need some adventure in your life? Tired of listening to other people’s exciting lives. Here at #Escapade Inc we’re here to help. Order one of our ravenous tigers today and regale your friends and coworkers with tales of peril and adventure.
The wind had dropped hours ago, turning the usually turbulent ocean into a flat mirror. Under an unforgiving sun, with nothing to catch the sail of our small raft, we waited. Slowly dying in that terrible tranquillity. Until, at dusk, we started to #scull for our lives.
“What operating system is this?” asked the intern.
“Nix 2.1” said the admin.
“You mean Unix?”
“Once maybe, before the security team hardened it. Now it’s just #nix”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, it’s more secure.”
“How?”
“It’s pretty much just /dev/null.”
#Chaos followed Harley around like a curse. She only had to touch something and it’d disintegrate or disappear or worse. While the other kids built lego castles, Harley wrecked them. As entropy challenged as she was, she never gave up on her dream of working demolition.
“Who the hell are you and what the hell is that?” cried Carl, staring at the eviscerated demon that even now thrashed to reach him.
With a slash of her sword, the stranger severed the beast’s arm. “I’m your guardian #angel and that, well, that’s why you need guarding.”
“Look out, it’s a #Demogorgon!” cried Susan, as the monstrous beast inched towards them. Tom put down his book. “A what?”
“A Demogorgon, look!”
Tom laughed. “That’s a typo!”
“Eh?”
“A mistranslation. It ain’t real. Shoo you! Go on!”
The beast sighed before slinking away.
I died a hero in some forgotten foreign field. Casualty of a war no one remembers, true #patriot of a country that never existed. With pride, I’d pledged to die for Queen and country. A pledge I kept to the bitter end, even after they beheaded her and all hope was lost.