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 lost in a blizzard.
(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,Tony Noland, @TonyNoland, 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.
The wind had finally died down. Sandy wasn’t sure what she’d have done if it kept up. Frozen to death, probably, or begun to lose skin and extremities to frostbite. Certainly she’d lost herself, but in the midst of downtown Rochester, how far could she have wandered?
There were no cars on the street, not even a plow. The storm had come up suddenly – a light snowfall, the sort appropriate for Christmas Eve, had been picturesquely falling as she stepped out of the library to walk home. By the time she crossed Court by the Blue Cross building, the wind had picked up; by the time she reached Monroe, she couldn’t see a foot in front of her.
She’d kept walking forward, figuring that holding still was risking being turned into a Popsicle. And now the wind had died down, and she could see…
…nothing. Nothing but trees, and snow, and a lamp-post flickering its gaslight.
She was SO going to be late for dinner.
Daniel wrapped the cloak tighter around himself and considered giving up. He was dead tired. It felt like all he’d ever done was fight this wind and snow; as if it was all he’d ever do again.
Blinded by the stinging gale and washout of color swirling around him, he stumbled into a tree and against its solidity, he slid down to the ground on his knees.
It was as good an end as any.
His mind felt frozen. Surely there was a magical way out of his predicament by he couldn’t think of anything but the cold, and the despair, and the loneliness. How long since he’d last seen her?
She’d left him behind deliberately, that was what hurt the most. She’d disabled the guards, she’d…killed Lord Siller. (He shivered somehow more violently at the memory of the man’s body, head half-cut from his neck. She had done that.)
He shouldn’t be longing for her now. He had a duty to bring her back, that was true, to face the King’s justice. But he knew that wasn’t why he wanted to find her.
There was a sound above the howling of the wind. Something sharp and mechanical. Something man-made. He lifted his head for a moment, his first impulse to stand, to try to attract the attention of what could be his rescuers, to get out of here. To live.
But he couldn’t summon the desire to do it, and he sank down to the ground and let the snow begin to cover him.
Bjarni Olafson stood with his back to the burning building, wind and snow lashed his face as the blizzard grew in strength. He watched the expression on the man’s face in front of him, as it changed from shock to horror and then outrage. Dark smoke from the flaming thatch hung in the air. With a grunt, Bjarni hauled his sword out with both hands gripping the leather covered hilt, the blade rasped free of its sheath.
He watched the other mans eyes dart about the scene, taking in the three youths lying face down in the thick carpet of snow. Two boys and one girl, their throats slit, then to the woman, lying with her skirts hitched up over her hips, exposing white legs and fleshy buttocks. His eyes widened when he saw the tiny form of a babe lying at the foot of a tree, a bloody trail of pulp and bone leading from the trunk.
“Your woman squealed your name when I humped her, Lars,” Bjarni taunted. With a roar the man charged, even though he was weaponless. It was easy work for Bjarni, he swept the sword up in a wide arc, and with a spray of blood and hair flying the other man’s head flew through the air. Bjarni spat once on the decapitated husk.
He was not proud of the evil work he had done this day, nor was he ashamed. Ten years previously Lars Henrikson had led a band of hard men into Bjarni’s village. Under cover of darkness they crept into the settlement and locked the doors of the feasting hall before setting it alight. Anybody who tried to escape by breaking down the walls or cutting through the thatch were shot at with arrows or hacked with great Dane axes. Everybody inside had died. Bjarni had not been there that night, he had returned the following day to find his home a blackened, charred mess and all his family dead.
It had taken him ten years to hunt them all down. Now the ghosts of the dead could rest in peace.
The mountain road snaked back and forth, moving through the trees and in and out of vision as the wind tore at the Wagoneer and swirled the snow around. Nikisha whined worriedly from behind my seat and I twisted, reaching to soothe her.
“This isn’t good,” Lex murmured, slowing still further, the lack of forward momentum allowing the storm to gain purchase on the bulk of the vehicle and rock it with rough insistence. “We should have hit the turnout by now.” I looked behind, then forward, seeing nothing but a wall of white.
“Have you seen anything noticeable?”
She brought us to a stop and slid the transmission into park. “No, and the storm’s worsening. I think we’re going to have to ride it out.” Our eyes met and my stomach flipped.
“At least we’ve food, blankets, and so forth, right?” I said. I looked out the windows again as the wind shook us, seeming to grow angrier that it couldn’t reach us inside our metal shelter.
“Yep. Guess we’ve plenty of time to talk now, too, hmm?” The tone in Lex’s voice twisted my stomach into knots and I met her eyes, taking a deep breath.
“I’d say so,” I whispered, and she reached out to touch my cheek.
“We’ll find our way out of this,” she said, and I wondered if she meant out of our quandry or out of the mess our relationship had become.
@AislingWeaver
“There’s white crap everywhere.”
Alex rubbed her forehead, wishing the persistent headache she’d come to call Titivillus would stop throbbing long enough for her to form a coherent thought. “You’re so observant.”
“Then allow me to make another observation: we aren’t going anywhere.” He leaned into the window, hot breath fogging the glass as he exhaled.
Her teeth came together and ground, a habit she’d formed since his arrival. By the time he vanished back to Hell, or wherever demons called home, she would need dentures. And one hell of a psychologist.
“The wheels are stuck.” Alex slammed her hand against the steering wheel and stared out the windshield.
All around them there was nothing but white, like someone upended a huge bucket of paint on the landscape before their arrival. The storm she’d seen on the news came a day early, carried on the back of the wind shaking the small rental car. Why did she think showing the demon the snow was a good idea? They could have easily stayed home and watched Christmas movies. At least at home she wasn’t in danger of frostbite making one of her nipples fall off.
“How are we-”
“I don’t fucking know, Titivillus!” She turned and glared at the menace. “Can’t you just poof us out of here?”
Titivillus gave her a strange look and shook his head. “I can’t transport you unless absolutely necessary. When you start to freeze to death, then I can move us.”
Alex rubbed her forehead again. By the time a tow truck crawled up the mountain pass, that may very well happen. “Shit. Hand me the phone.”
What was the point of having a demon around if he was forbidden from doing something to actually help her?
@RCMurphy
Kenshin dragged his unconscious apprentice through the rapidly deepening snow. He knew he’d spotted a hut nearby. If they were still anywhere near the path it should be visible an minute, even in the white out of the blizzard.
When the dark shape of the shelter loomed in front of him the samurai breathed a sigh of relief. Heavy snow was nearly unheard of in this part of the country. They lacked the provisions to survive out in the open.
Kenshin kicked open the door and dragged Hiroshi over the threshold, dumping him on the rough pallet against the far wall. ‘First things first,’ he decided. ‘We need to get warm and dry or we won’t last long.’
He quickly stripped the still unconscious form of his clothes and wrapped him in the ragged blanket he’d found. ‘Too bad there’s only one blanket. I don’t think we have anything dry left to wrap myself in.’
He briefly considered joining Hiroshi, eyes shutting briefly as he imagined how warm the younger man would surely be, and how soft he suspected his skin was. Kenshin’s hand reached out to touch . . . but jerked back at the last moment as he, once again, pushed down the feelings the sight of his apprentice aroused.
He finally squatted uncomfortably on the far side of the room, suffering the bitter cold in silence while his mind avidly explored all the possibilities he refused to succumb to.
@SesshaBatto
-God so cold, can’t even feel
-Dante was right about hell, although he never said
-This is death, isn’t it? O god o god it hurts, mom please where is my mom
Eva tucked her chin down to her neck, covering the bare, goosebumped skin. She tried to close her mind to the other’s thoughts, concentrating on the physical pain she felt herself . The cold had numbed the throb on her jaw where one of them had pistol whipped her in the heat of his anger, overtaken by how it felt to have control over someone.
They were silent, pushing along together. They took it one step at a time through the white, daggers of snow tearing them to pieces.
When the snow had first started to drop down, the thought of going back was strong. There was warmth, and food, and roaring fires and pure comfort. Was what they were asking for really so bad?
Eva wondered whether Cassie would survive. A gunshot wound like that usually meant death, but they could always hope. Hope that someone would appear, airlift them to safety. Empty hope.
-Cassie won’t last long, and then that’s another one of us, another one gone
-Maybe it’ll be me next, maybe my eyes will freeze shut and I’ll fall and the snow can just cover me
-hurts so bad
Eva wondered when the next of them would fall.
@Skyfall
“Daciana!” My voice barely rose above the howling wind, and I could barely see Daci’s fur-clad form three paces ahead of me in the gloom.
I was freezing, despite my own many layers.
As well I should be. I was born near the equator, and hadn’t seen snow until I left home, many decades later. It didn’t matter that in the intervening centuries, I’d traveled the world and seen all kinds of climates. No matter who’s blood I drank, mine would always be on the thin side.
Daci stopped and turned toward me.
“It’s not much farther, Alak, I promise!” She called back.
“It had better be! I can’t tell up from down here!”
I staggered up to her and she took my gloved hand in hers.
“Don’t worry. Nearly there, and then we can rest safe – all winter.”
Even in the blizzard her voice soothed.
“I’m sorry we had to run. I’m sorry I slipped. Again. Chuluun…”
“It’s Ok, Alak. We both knew it would take a long time to escape his demons.”
His demons, she said. Not mine. She never called them mine.
“Once we reach the village, we rest there for the long night. And we’ll go somewhere new come spring. I’m thinking the Dutch colonies in South Africa.”
Chasing winter again. Always chasing the darkness and running from the light. This is not what I had imagined those centuries ago.
At least I had Daci with me now. She was almost as good as the sun to guide me.
Ahead in the distance, faint flickers of lanterns – the Kvenlander village of our destination.
@_Monocle_
There I go again. Getting too caught up in reading to notice the time.
This week was tough for me. I wasn’t sure anything was going to end up in the little box, honestly. Well, anything more than drivel. I’ve been in a Mourn the Sun place for the last couple of weeks and my NaNoWriMo novel has paid the price. I spent several minutes before the contest just trying to remember who my main characters were. 😉
All in all, not too bad, and I needed the mental kick in the ass.
Great stuff, everyone! Come back at 3:00 to vote for the winner!