This, in case you somehow missed the title of the post, is 5MinuteFiction. You have been assimilated.
And welcome to 5MinuteFiction. That means we write fiction. In five minutes. Shocker, I know.
NEW for NOVEMBER: In honor of National Novel Writing Month, since most of us have lost our minds– I mean, are writers attempting NaNoWriMo–we’re going to add a NaNoWriMo twist to #5MinuteFiction. If you’re lucky, you might get to include your entries among the 50,000 word goal for your NaNovel.
The prompts for the month of November will focus on the main character of your WIP, and will be more specific than our normal one-word prompts. It ought to be interesting to see how some of these adapt to the more fantastical worlds some of us run with.
Now, if you’re one of those who has a brain and uses it, otherwise known as isn’t crazy enough to do NaNoWriMo, feel free to participate.
The Rules
* You get five minutes to write a piece of prose in any style or genre
* You must directly reference today’s prompt: Your Main Character is poisoned.
(Note: The prompt is the word. The picture is for decoration/inspiration.)
* Post your entry as a comment to this post.
I’ll close the contest at 1:45. That gives you five minutes to write and ten to accommodate the vagaries of relative time, technology, and the fickle internets. If you are confused or just want to whine, feel free to email me.
At the close of the contest, this week’s guest judge, Sessha Battos, @SesshaBatto, will nominate five finalists. I’ll put the nominees in the poll on the side of the page, and at 9:30 PM EDT I’ll close the poll and declare the winner.
For updates, you can subscribe to my RSS Feed, or follow me on twitter.
What’s the prize? Well, nothing, obviously. But we’ll all agree to tweet and/or blog about the winner of today’s contest so their fame and fortune will be assured.
A Few Notes:
* In the interest of time and formatting, it’s best to type straight into the comment box. It’s also smart to do a quick highlight and copy before you hit “post” just in case the internets decide to eat your entry. If your entry doesn’t appear right away, email me sometimes comments go into the suspected spam folder and I have to dig them out.
* I reserve the right to remove hate speech or similar but I’m not too picky about the other stuff.
* This is all for fun and self-promotion. So be sure to put your twitter handle at the end of your post and a link to your blog if you have one.
Sara stared at the splotch of black liquid spreading over her hand, dripping soundlessly onto the floor. There was an odd sense of disconnection, of quieting of mind and body. The room and the people in it were slowly sliding away.
“No!” She knew Daniel had screamed from the look on his face, the way it contorted, the way his whole body propelled the word. But it came to her only as a faint whisper in her ear and a trembling against her skin.
He snatched up her hand, which she saw but didn’t feel, as if the hand didn’t belong to her at all.
She looked back up at Daniel’s face. He was focused intensely on her hand, and on the way his hand fluttered over it, forming spells in rapid succession that Sara perceived but didn’t see.
“Daniel,” she said, hearing her own voice as an echo.
“It’s alright,” he said, still focused on his work. “It’s alright. I’ve got you.”
“I know,” she said, sinking into unconsciousness. “You always have. Thank you.”
“You’re going to be fine,” he said, the words blurring in her head. “Don’t worry.”
The words wouldn’t come to her lips and she couldn’t answer him to say that she was neither fine nor worried before she slipped into the blackness.
Aries and Amanda looked at each other across the table. Aries smiled. He couldn’t help it, he’d been smiling since the ceremony. He wondered if the two of them looked like the newlyweds they were. He realized then that he hoped they did. She smiled back. He looked around the room briefly, just to pull himself away from her deep blue eyes and his desire to just hold and kiss her. The Lunar Lounge was a hot spot for vacationers, and Aries could see why. It was only his second time off Mars, and the Moon was far more like he was used to than Earth was. Still, this place offered an unparallel view. The whole roof was open to the dome, and thus everyone in the restaurant could get a view of Earth. It truly was beautiful, blue and green. From here, Aries could almost think it was innocent.
Aries took a few bites of his food. The pasta was made from a locally grown wheat, and a light flavor that he enjoyed. Amanda ate a chicken breast covered in a tomato sauce of some kind that looked amazing. He looked in her eyes again and started feeling dizzy. He smiled, but the look on her face was concerned.
“What’s the matter?” he said, but the words came out in a slur. “What’s going on?” came out as more slurs.
He tried to stand, but the dizziness was worse. His stomach lurched. He fell to his knees, grasping the table. Amanda was smelling his plate and hunched over him. He couldn’t get a solid look at her, but he could hear her.
“Aries,” she said. “Aries, can you hear me? We need to get you to a hospital. I think you’ve been poisoned.”
@blanchardauthor
I lay on my back panting, arms outstretched as if I had been crucified to the floor. She stood above me, one foot on my chest, pinning me down. My gaze crawled up the length of her nylons, her skirt split either side of her leg, revealing a tantalising glimpse of caramel-cream flesh at the top of her stocking. I yearned to reach out and touch the soft skin of her thigh, to explore her secret places, feel comfort and exhilaration from the warm moistness. But I daren’t move.
My eyes wandered up over the curve of her hip, across her heavy breasts that threatened to spill from her low cut top, to the dark curls cascading over her shoulder, her full red lips parted in a sneer, into her round, brown eyes, so full of contempt. How I hated her… how I loved her.
No, not love, how could I love someone who despised me so. Lust. I wanted to fuck her, I wanted to rip her clothes from her, to push her naked body over a table and hear her scream my name as I rammed her from behind, I wanted to be the dominant one. To hear her beg. Beg for what? For me to stop? For me not to stop?
I realised then she had a gun gripped tightly in both hands, how had I not noticed that before? Because I was like a fly trapped in a spider web, already intoxicated by her venom, poisoned by my passion.
‘Don’t,’ I pleaded. I didn’t want to die, I couldn’t die, not before I had sampled the forbidden fruit. I imagined her skin would taste of butterscotch, that would melt on my tongue. She pulled the hammer back with her right thumb. I squeezed my eyes shut. I flinched when she pulled the trigger, I counted, one second… two seconds… three seconds, nothing, no boom, no excruciating agony. I opened my eyes and she was laughing.
She spat once, I watched it fall, felt it land on my face, could feel the wetness dribble down my cheek. She turned her back on me then, the ultimate sign of contempt. She knew even if or when I came at her again she would put me down, beat me into submission one more time. Maybe it was love after all.
God help me.
The juice tasted funny. Vyvyan hoisted the glass into the air, looking at the color of the orange juice. Had it gone bad? She couldn’t see one of the kitchen staff sending up spoiled juice. Maybe they switched to a different type of oranges.
Something swirled in the bottom of the small glass. With a frown, she lifted the glass higher. A small pill fizzled away in the sea of orange.
“William!”
Her body guard was in the room within nanoseconds. He was never far off. Never. Thank God for that.
“What is it?” He loomed, a whole lot of pissed off marring his handsome features.
“I think I’ve been poisoned.” Shaking hands held out the glass.
Vyvyan went to work analyzing her body’s reactions while William glared up at the base of the cup. Her heartbeat, normally sluggish when she hadn’t fed on blood, was elevated. Breaths came in short gasps. Sweat broke out on her brow. But those were all normal signs of distress. What if the poison killed her without symptoms? Was that possible?
A laugh cut off the litany in her head. Green eyes snapped to William. “This isn’t a laughing matter. I’m going to die!”
“Its a vitamin, Vyv. Your father ordered everyone on them last week. The new batch of donor blood isn’t up to his usual standards.” He handed the glass back to her.
Of course. Her father always pulled crap like this without telling her, as though she were not allowed to make decisions about her own body.
“You can go now.” She needed a moment to sit with her shame.
@RCMurphy
“Welcome to California,” he thought. Fucking Berkeley. Wow. WwwwwoW. November 16 was a day to be remembered, he hoped he could remember. Faces distorted, colors sheared, blurred, bloomed. Blossomed.
He giggled, hot and cold bouncing through his body like the old yellow gobbler and his ghosts. Fear hit him–what if it ate his chakras, the power pellets of the body? Where were they, again? If he couldn’t remember, what if they were already gone? But he’d never paid much attention. That was a better explanation.
His fingers were trembling with anticipation, mind on overdrive. What was that show? No, wait. Was everyone looking at him? What was he doing? Goosebumps pricked up through his skin and he shivered, wishing he had on something heavier. Didn’t he come here with a jacket? Maybe he’d taken it off.
Breathe. Deep breaths. In…out…in…out. Oh, that felt good. That felt so good, that…he should stop. Stop breathing? He laughed, a sharp bark that rebounded off the walls and punctured his ears knocking him to the ground. Liberation. He had to focus on that–his first night in Berkeley, he was shedding his past. Not like those angel dust freaks that ate their faces off. Fear gripped him again, and he curled into a tight ball, crying.
@kaolinfire
The goblet fell to the floor with a terrible crash. The court all looked to the king who was slumped over his table unmoving. Panic ripped through the court and accusations were made against every minister by every minister before order was restored by the sergeant at arms. The court was dismissed and an investigation was quickly made.
Poison was the report the court received, a certain type common to the Duchy of Azural. The crown prince vowed that such a deed would not go unanswered, and a call to arms was imminent.
“The king is dead!” The cry was raised by the heralds, and echoed throughout the town. “Long live the king!”
A smile crossed the face of a peasant, making his way out of the city. He was headed for a home far away on the other side of the mountains, where he would never be waited on again.
@briefconceits
http://briefconceits.com
I stared in the mirror, holding my own gaze for the first time in years. When had the last time been, honestly, that I’d done so? I couldn’t remember. I’d developed, by virtue of self-preservation, the ability to comb my hair, brush my teeth, and other such necessary activities without actually looking into the portals to my own mind.
Until now.
I left him six weeks and four days ago. Broken and battered to a point where I’d given up, only to remember there was one, tiny little soul reliant on my survival. And I couldn’t abandon her to him. So I packed everything up and took Niki and my poisoned mind away.
Now I needed to put myself together. How do you do that when you’ve not only been broken but shattered then ground into dust?
You start by looking in the mirror.
And finding something familiar. A glimmer. A flicker. Some shadowed reflection of something you once were before his words slid into your heart and mind and soul like arsenic and turned you into some faded, withered thing.
My eyes were the same color.
Lashes still long and thick.
The tiny scar over my left brow still there, though pale white.
And a smear of color, vibrant purple, marred my cheekbone.
Paint.
Not a bruise.
Paint.
Just oil and pigment.
Just . . . proof.
@aislingweaver
“Get out.”
“Um…”
“I mean it, Rosie. Get out.”
“Justin? I this Justin?”
“What, you don’t recognize my voice?”
“You’ve never called me Justin. You rarely talked to me last summer. Why would I recognize—”
“Right. Fine. Just shut up and get out of there.”
“You don’t even know where I am!”
“Do so. And you need to leave. There’s something bad. There’s something—I don’t know what it is, but you need to get out of there.”
“Justin. I am at my school’s cafeteria. Of COURSE I’m surrounded by bad stuff.”
“School food won’t kill you—”
“—it could—”
“—it wont. What I’m talking about WILL. Who have you pissed off lately.”
“Leave it to you, Jus, to start off a conversation making the loveliest assumptions.”
“Are you walking yet?”
“YES. I am. I’m not stupid.”
“Says you.”
“When a member of the psychic squad calls and tells you to move it, you’re an idiot not to.”
“You said it—”
“—Funny man.”
He was quiet now. I didn’t know if I’d pissed him off or what.
“You feel it yet?” His voice had lost it’s snarky edge. But then so had mine.”
“I think so,” I whispered. “What is it?”
“I don’t know, Rosie, but you need to get to the hospital. Is Lindy there?”
“She’s still in class.” I leaned my face against a bank of cool, metal lockers. I could tell my forehead was damp.
“Can you get her?”
“I don’t think,” I whispered, “I’m going to have time to do that…”
Kenshin hissed, glaring at the all-too-innocent appearing woman attempting to capture his arm.
“What did you do to me?” he slurred, staggering slightly as the world seemed to surge around him.
“There was poison on his blade,” Mai tried to explain. “I need to get it out of your system if you want to survive. Now, may I continue?”
“Please let Mai help you,” his lover whispered. “I don’t want to lose you.”
‘Of course, anything for you,’ Kenshin thought although he could no longer command his body and the sentiment remained unvoiced. He watched the figures hovering over him as if looking up through deep water and idly wondered if this would be his last look at them.
He tried, again, to speak, suddenly sure he should urge them to find solace in each other. ‘That would be the best for everyone,’ he decided. ‘Maybe even if I recover.’
A surge of pain rippled up his spine and he forced himself to concentrate on breathing, letting his eyes fall shut and leaving his welfare in the hands of his beloved apprentice . . . and the woman who was his greatest rival.
‘Karma is a bitch.’
They say bitterness is like a poison, filtering through your veins, crippling you emotionally. They say it shuts you down, rendering your heart useless. My mother told me to release my anger, to let it out. She said if I held it inside, bottling it up, that one day it would get the best of me, and, like a snake coiling around my legs, it would squeeze the life from me.
When I was four, I went in search of good, but only found the pornography my father kept under his bed.
The poison of jadedness staunches the flow of happiness. Cynics the world over know exactly what I’m talking about. And the defeatists hold their noses in the air and say, “I’m a realist.” The misanthropes move past, harbouring their disdain for human kind, and snuffing out the good intentions they once possessed.
And last week I realized, there is nothing humane about humans.
They say resentment will freeze your growth. That it’s like cyanide shutting down your vital organs, slaughtering your reasons for living. And the animosity blooms in your chest like the blood red flower of hate, consuming everything you thought you were, until when you look in the mirror you don’t recognize the reflection fazing back at you. I cannot confirm whether this is fact or fiction.
The facts are far bleaker than the fiction anyhow.
What I can confirm is the pain shredding my dignity into tiny pieces. Doubled over on the bathroom floor, I shove my fingers down my throat, trying to discharge the tiny pellets from my stomach. I said I wouldn’t cry. I promised the person I used to be that no matter how hard it is to breathe I wouldn’t beg the Grim not to take me.
This morning when I awoke, I realized I’ve always been sad.
Do you know how rat poison works? It’s a blood thinner. It thins the blood and they bleed to death. It works the same for humans, you just need a bigger dosage.
I thought…
I don’t know what I thought. But as the pain ebbs and a numbing void takes it place, I feel…
Nothing.
Alex lifted her up from the floor of the lab, gently smoothing her hair back from her face. Her wide, staring eyes registered nothing in between their slow blinks.
“Kate… my God, Kate, what have you done?” He placed his hand on her cheek, his palm warm against her cool skin. With the tips of his fingers, he touched her lightly on the neck.
Temperature low, pulse about 50 beats a minute and fluttering. He leaned into her face and stared into her eyes.
“Kate! Kate, answer me!” Nothing, not even an interruption in the blinking. He looked around the lab, his gaze darting among the electronics and analytical equipment. It must be here, she must have hidden it from me, he thought, hidden it from all of us.
There! On the shelf behind the laser interferometer, he saw the adhesive leads. Gently, oh so gently, he eased Kate’s body back down onto the floor. He leapt to the lab bench and cleared away the beakers and containers, revealing the compact superconducting quantum interference dipole array. The knobs were still at their last setting, all of them turned to maximum.
Maximum. My God, he thought.
His eyes closed. There was almost no hope that he could contact her now, but he had to try. Alex lifted the contact box down from the shelf and placed the scanning pads onto her, one on each temple, one on her neck and one above her left breast. As he reached into her blouse to place the electrode, he whispered an apology. It was not meant to be like this, he thought.
Then, desperately, he put the second set of electrodes on himself, attached them to the SQUID-A and reset the dials to 5%. He took a deep breath and turned the machine on.
Far away, across the mists of crackling light and echoing memories, he heard her, crying in a lost and desperate voice.
“Alex,” she cried, “Alex, please… help me… please…”
////////
@TonyNoland
It was a celebratory drink.
Penelope Price had traveled to 1941 Hawaii. She was sitting on her private balcony overlooking the harbor.
Warships gently rocked at berth.
She’d always wanted to see the attack at Pearl Harbor personally. And with a little time manipulation here, and some cash deposited in the right bank account over there, she’d arranged for the entire Pacific Fleet to be in port.
Not just the battleships, as had been originally docked on that day of infamy.
It was late evening, December sixth.
With a little higher end technology sold to the Japanese back in 1938, they should rule the Pacific until at least 1948.
That’s what her computer model had projected anyway.
She took a sip of Dom Perignon1928—the first year she’d traveled back in time to.
Penelope laughed.
With the Japanese free to run all over Asia, China will never be the superpower they’d become sixty years from now.
She stood to toast the brave men who’d die in a few hours.
“Here’s to you boys!”
She finished her drink in one go…then stumbled.
“Wha…” was all she was able to croak out before collapsing, dead before her body stopped twitching.
Sam walked onto the balcony moments later.
Opening up a 22nd century mobile, he connected to the land-lines of the day and dialed.
“Yes sir,” he said. “It’s done. Tell the President he can attack the Japanese fleet at his convenience.”
@rbwood
http://www.rbwood.com
Ava spun around in circles, the fiddle’s bow lifted her arms and stretched them to the sky while the strings of the bass plucked her legs from the ground and moved them across the dance floor. She danced wildly with no concept of space or time. All that mattered was the music and the burning eyes of her partner Ciaran.
When the music stopped, she collapsed on a chair on the side of the dance floor. Her head continued to spin even though the music subsided. She clutched her head and moaned. She looked for Ciaran in the now-empty room and found him standing beside the bar.
“Ciaran, can I have some water?” she croaked.
When a glass landed on the table in front of her, Ava drank it down quickly before realizing the sweet taste of the drink was not water. She looked up into the eyes of a stranger, blurry shapes that should be two but appeared to be eight. She dropped the glass and slumped to the table, unable to keep her head held aloft.
The stranger picked up her limp body and carried her out the back door of the bar. Ciaran was waiting there with a cigarette in one hand and a gun in the other.
“Put her in the back of the van.”
Ava tumbled onto the floor of the van and tried to scream before the doors were closed, but she the only sounds she made remained enclosed in her own head.
Aengus had been right all along. Leprechauns were not to be trusted.
@saraheolson
“Hey, Adrian,” Tony placed a plate before him. “Try this risotto and tell us if it’s missing anything.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Adrian grabbed a fork and was prepared to take a bite. Before he could, however, Celeste walked up to him and grabbed a seat. “Hey Adrian. How’s the risotto?”
“Not so sure yet,” he spread his hands before him. “I’ve got quite a bit of food to try out.”
“New menu items. Yeah, I heard,” Celeste leaned over the table and spoke softly. “Listen, you’re doing an excellent job with the restaurant. Mr. Attanasio would have been so proud of you.”
These words made Adrian blush a little. “Thanks. I do appreciate it.”
She shrugged, her brown hair brushing her shoulders. “Well, you are. While he was an amazing boss, and one of the best chefs I’ve ever known, he lacked vision. You’ve brought so much to this place that he hadn’t thought of.”
Adrian shrugged, taking a bite of the grilled beef tips and angel hair smothered in a white wine sauce. “It’s not all me, you know. The whole lot of us. We’ve done so much in the past few months that will put us on the map, you know?”
“Yeah. You’re right,” she placed a hand on his free one, and ignored when he tensed up. “But, we needed a new leader. And you stepped in. Thanks for that.”
Adrian took a taste of the wines that were being served for the evening after polishing off the rest of the risotto. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”
She nodded, and smiled. Then Celeste stood, and walked off.
Adrian sighed, looking down at the dishes and writing notes to give to the chefs. The risotto was amazing. Beef tips seemed to be missing something, and wasn’t as tender as he would like. Pasta was cooked to perfection. And the wine selections were-
Ooohhh….his stomach. Something…was…wrong…
He threw up on his plate, gaging, unable to stop wretching. The disgusting sounds of that delicious food coming back up the pipe.
Tony came around the corner. “What on earth…Adrian!”
He rushed over to him, placing his hands on Adrian’s face, trying to see his eyes. “Hey, You alright?”
“Do I look like I’m alright?” he sounded hoarse. “Who cooked this? Who-”
Adrian couldn’t help but vomit again.
One of the terrible things about food service…had to be food poisoning.
Oh that was fun! My first thought was that there was no way that would fit with my wip, but I’m starting to get an idea… I love this NaNoWriMo edition. Hope it worked for you too!
So see you at 3:00 with the finalists.