What is 5MinuteFiction, you say? It’s an adrenaline-fueled, instant-gratification sort of writing contest. Sound fun? Great! Get in there and get dirty!
The Rules
* You get five minutes to write a piece of prose or poetry in any style or genre
* You must directly reference today’s prompt: gravity
(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 5 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, Thea Atkinson, @theapatra, will nominate five finalists. I’ll put the nominees in the poll on the side of the page, and at 9:00 EDT tomorrow I’ll close the poll and declare the winner.
For updates, you can subscribe to my RSS Feed, “like” my Facebook Page, 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.
All things attract all other things.
It’s called gravity.
It’s the law.
So stop fighting the inevitable and kiss me!
@briefconceits
Eric Hamilton recently posted..Dream Woman
Nothing Strange
Walking into the portal wasn’t as strange as she had originally thought it would be. When first she had noticed it it was nothing but a shimmer, like a desert mirage only it wasn’t the desert, it was a small walkway between two buildings which the day before had been attached. A slight shift in time. No one else had seemed to notice it. Daper men continued to ride past, defying gravity on their Penny Farthings, tipping their hats to the ladies passing by.
She stood there, twirling her parasol and contemplating walking up the alley for some time. She knew what it was, after all she did rather enjoy reading Jules Verne and this was just the sort of thing he would write about. She took a deep breath and took one last look at the cobble stoned streets of Boston and stepped forth. Nothing strange indeed.
@DRyanLeask
I felt the slow, inexorable pull of gravity and I let go. The stars spun idly as I spun in lazy, graceful circles toward my death. I closed my eyes and imagined myself in the arms of a lover. Tracy perhaps. I’d always regretted not trying harder with her. She was so beautiful. I wondered if she’d gotten the kids she wanted so badly.
The pull grew steadily stronger, now insistent, painfully intense. Needy. I squeezed my eyes shut and wondered what it would look like when the forces overwhelmed me, crushing my body into lifeless, scattered mass. I wondered who would wonder what had happened to me.
The pressure grew, squeezing the very thoughts from my brain. And the life from my body.
Leah Petersen recently posted..I Love This and You’re Very Smart BUT…
Sitting at the base of the tree, his mind drifted out. His mind, his essence, slipped free of the confines of his body, of physics. Gravity meant nothing to his soul.
Rising through the thick canopy, his third eye saw the sun rising over the mountains to the west, bright orange streaking through pink and purple. The contrast to the misty grey over lush green was start and brilliant.
It wasn’t enough. He moved on, past clouds and sun. He left the world, his body, further behind, finding black.
He was startled at first, after the colours he’d just seen, but it was utter black. Slowly, turning himself, he began to see pricks of light, stars too far to be more than points.
This was the place his teacher had urged him to reach. This was beyond. And still he pushed further, leaving the pull of his body, the gravity of his shell, behind.
Kimberly Gould recently posted..What I SHOULD be doing
Being a consultant is not a bad way to go through life. Yes, for the most part, you are treated like a ‘disposable resource,’ but let’s be honest. In this day and age, who isn’t?
Even knowing that, sometimes people just get under your skin. My current gig is as a technology construction advisor for a high-tech laboratory being built for a chemical weapons research facility in downtown Indianapolis. It’s an all-boys club.
And please don’t preach to me about the evils of chemical weapons research. It pays the bills.
Anyway, people tend to abuse contractors, like I was saying. Normally I just sit back and take it…for $150 an hour. But this…complete bastard…goes above and beyond any sort of abuse I’ve ever experienced. And that includes an ex-husband whose only form of exercise was to drink and slap me around. And he’s the site supervisor.
The verbal assaults were never ending. “Hey babe, I know you’re a woman, but can you actually document your piece of the project using words we all can understand?” Or: “Yo tits, wear tighter jeans tomorrow. The boss is in for a site review and I want to give him something to look at.”
What a douche.
One evening when I was working late, the SOB supervisor came up behind me smelling like cheap beer and tried to play a little grab-ass. That’s when I realized the gravity of the situation.
I told him off of course. That’s when he punched me.
I honestly have no memory of what happened next. The only thing my brain processed is that the next morning, one of my co-workers woke me up at my desk asking me if I knew how an extra eight feet of concrete sidewalk had been poured overnight…
@rbwood
The room that they kept Kyle in was stark white and freezing cold. There was just one table and two chairs. Everything was so clinical, and it didn’t do much to keep him from being afraid. Of course, most of the fear came from the fact that his hands and legs were tightly held to the chair, using these weird gaunlets of metal. When they put them on him, there was a weird feeling that came over him. A sudden rush of calm, and he was almost instantly weak. There was no fighting, not now. All he could do was sit there and wait, but he knew he wasn’t alone. Kyle knew someone was watching him, that’s why he kept his eyes level with the mirror in front of him.
“How long ago did you find him?”
“A few hours, he was in pretty bad shape, but the other guys looked a lot worse. Well the ones we could find.”
“Does he know what’s going on?”
“Not exactly, he was asking us to help him as the sedative started to work.”
“And from your on the scene assesment, what is his ability?”
“Gravity control sir.”
“Excellent, he will do just fine in our program.”
@adenpenn
Aden recently posted..samplesunday Epicenter- Hellwalker Chronicles Book One
Here comes the hard part.
Travel to the planet, activate the weapons, and high tail it out of there. The weight of this assignment is heavy. Heavier than anything I have ever experienced, but it has to happen. The enemy would do the same thing to us if it had the chance.
My ship is equipped with a pulse cannon that explodes on impact. But this isn’t just any explosion. The force actually causes an implosion and any planet it reaches sucks in on itself—the force pulling it inward until everything is condensed into a tight ball about five meters in diameter.
My mission is to destroy the enemy’s planet. My ship, a single-manned vessel, approaches the planet. It is beautiful, blue, serene. But I’m not going to let that deter me from my goal.
My hand presses the trigger and I watch as a bright yellow stream of color makes its way to the planet. And then, finally, it hits the surface, and in a matter of minutes the planet is being destroyed.
But in my trance of watching it all, I forget to leave immediately. As the planet implodes, and its gravitational force gets stronger, I too am pulled into the its grasp.
In my last moments, I wonder if I did the right thing. It was a heavy decision that weighed on me the entire time, and one that I live with forever—even it is only the next few seconds.
Technically, I’ve been falling the entire time. Gracefully, however, in a slow and lazy loop that keeps the earth well below me as I tumble in a controlled free fall. Now, something is different. Something has changed and I can’t say I like it in the least. I’ve been pushed, ever so slightly, ever so gently, ever so fatally closer to the earth. I’ve been falling for years, but for the first time I’m fully aware of the gravity of my situation, of the damnable control that the inevitable has taken over my life.
I don’t know why. I’ve done only as I’ve been asked, only as I’ve been tasked, it’s all I’ve known how to do and what to be. Was it not enough? Did I do something wrong? I try to talk to them, to find out what is happening, but they won’t answer. They’ve shut me off, pushed me out, and will bring me down at a whim.
I turn, I roll, and I fall. Towards the earth. What kept me afloat is now bringing me down.
I fall. I’ve been falling the entire time. But now I burn.
@DL_Thurston
#5MinuteFiction first timer
“Oh no, gravity is increasing.”
“No, it’s not! Your butt is crushing me!”
Corrie smiled as she listen to her young charge watching Lilo and Stitch for the thousandth time. The young girl loved Lilo and Stitch, and after everything Sam had been through over the past few weeks, Corrie wasn’t going to turn it off.
Sam had lost her parents in a car accident two weeks ago and Corrie was named her guardian in their will. Melinda and Tyler were her best friends from elementary school. The three had been inseperatable all through high school. They did everything together. Now Corrie only had Sam as a reminder of her best friends.
Corrie shook her head at the sad thoughts and moved to the kitchen to make cookies. When she turned to toward the fridge to get eggs, she saw Sam standing there.
“Is our family broken?” The little girl asked, just like Lilo asked her sister in the movie. Corrie kneeled down and drew Sam in to her arms.
“No sweetie. Our family is fine. We have each other.”
“You aren’t going to leave me too, are you?” Corrie had heard that question many times over the past few weeks. So much so, that she decided to work from home so she could be with Sam.
“No, Sam. I’m staying right here.” Corrie gave Sam a squeeze. “Besides who would make Sam’s Favorite Cookies, if I wasn’t here?” Sam pulled back and looked at Corrie.
“You’re making my cookies?”
Bronwynk recently posted..Tantalizing Thursday – Week 15
“Mr. Johnston, I have only one, final, question for you,” Brian O’Malley said.
His deep, gravelly voice, etched with a lifetime of smoking, trailed off into the sudden quietus of the courtroom. The jurors leaned forward in their box, the Judge sat bolt upright, his eyes wide open for the first time in weeks, and the Prosecutor stood ready over his yellow pad. The gravity of the next question even made the court reporter, a veteran of 30 years worth of scandalous trials, fidget and ready her adroit fingers.
All eyes were on O’Malley as he stood at the lectern, dominating the entire courtroom. Inhaling deeply, and with the grave solemnity of an undertaker, he asked the final question of his client.
@D_PaulAngel
“You’re the only one with the gravitas to pull this off.”
What did gravity have anything to do with it?
I pulled off my hat and twisted it in my sweaty hands. “I don’t know about that, Mr. Jimmy. They’re a bunch of animals — did you hear that screaming? I can’t do it, I tell ya!”
His big paws grasped at my shoulders, seeming to push me down, compacting my spine. “Now, listen here: you can do this. You have the experience and the job training. They may be running around like little assholes, but you can pull it all together. You will do it. I need you to do it.”
The panic mixed with the determined gravel of his voice, and I doubted once again that I could pull it off. I’d looked out in the room for just a second, and it has scared the everloving Bejeebus out of me.
“It’s this, or we go out of business. I’m counting on you.”
Ah, the crux of the matter. I needed this job. It’s not like anyone else hired entertainers like me, like us.
I stuffed the fear way down, letting it solidify into something else: grit. I shoved my hat back on, taking one last peek at my make up in the mirror, and turned back to Mr. Jimmy.
“I’ll do it — buy you owe me.”
He nodded solemnly, straightening his bow tie. I did the same, repositioning my red nose before throwing open the door.
I laughed manically, eyeballing the 15 children in the playroom. “Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, kids, it’s Uncle Morty the Clown!” I honked a horn and pranced out onto the stage.
Nicole recently posted..And Now- The Pitch
LOOK AT ALL THE PRETTY STARS
“Twinkle, Twinkle, really big star..don’t blow up until I’m afar,” Jake hummed-sang to himself, as he cut the side thrusters, the life support, all the unnecessary instruments in the ship…all the unnecessary ones. At this moment. At this moment, when he needed to get the fuck away into safe dark space before this one blows the shit out of him.
Jake’s job was to collect energy, causing near dead suns to give off their final energies in one great Battery Recharging sublimation into final flame out. All he had to do was fly the Collector into the right area (“alignment with Federal Central still a go” said Leeza, his co-almost dead cohabitant), drop the Servilenuke right into the heart of the sun (Pink Floyd blasting away as he did so..”oh, the oldies are still the best) and then getting the hell out of there. Let the Collector collect the energy blast. He just wanted to keep collecting heart beats at this point.
The ship was crippled. He waited too long, concentrated too long on screwing Leeza for a “job well done”…and now they were both screwed. He put all the energy into the drive to get them out of here, pushed this and pulled that and commanded the computer to haul ass…
Nova, so bright.
Stuart Nager
http://www.bornstoryteller.wordpress.com/
@stustoryteller
“Really? A mix tape? Kind of a strange gift here in the 21st century, don’t you think?” asked the driver. Riding shotgun, the recipient replied, “Maybe, maybe not… I mean, would it be more appropriate if she gave it to me on a flash drive or something?” There were a lot of thoughts buzzing around in young Simon’s head at the moment, most of which were probably brought on by a combination of high school-type infatuation and sleep deprivation.
“What’s this song list anyways? I’ve never heard of half… or even most… of these people.” Simon considered that as well. An unusual gift from a new friend made up of obscure artists. “Gravity.” Even the title of the album spoke volumes. He barely knew the girl, but felt drawn in by the mere mention of “I may be around this weekend”, let alone the way the world collectively turned its head when she opened the door and walked into a room.
Cedarlock @ Twitter.
Hagoor remembered well the first time he stepped off of the Coalition shuttle, and onto the planet that would be his new home. Centruis V was a factory-world, laced with mines, production facilities and a lot of Drids, like him. Hailing from a higher-gravity planet that had been destroyed by a passing comet, the race commonly referred to as Drids, were large and heavily muscled. They were also simple of mind, and generally did not think in very complex structures. This made them ideal for manual labor in their newfound home among the many races of the Homestar Coalition.
“You ther.” The voice was deep, and Hagoor turned to regard the older Drid who had called him. “Do not stand. Move.”
Hagoor ambled off in the direction the Drid had gestured.
Yes, life would be good here. There was work to be done, and someone always to tell you where and how to do it. But more importantly, he would be working with the Humans. These frail creatures were interesting, and loved to chat. Hagoor found them amusing, and endearing.
Producing his SLAB to the Human at the table before him, he smiled in that Drid sort of way. Meaning his upper lip curled back to show his large, stubby teeth, beneath the vestigal horn on his broad snout. the Human took the electronic device and read it.
“Hagoor.” The Human looked up at the tall creature before him. “Welcome to Centrus V. You will be operating the Load Lifter in that bay over there.” He smiled, and the Drid took note of the small teeth and slender nose beneath the long, blonde mass atop this one’s head. The voice was much higher pitched, and suddenly Hagoor realized she was a girl.
Yes, this would be an interesting place indeed.
Tom Doolan recently posted..Been here a while
As I walked outside, the blinding glare of the sun hurt my eyes. I had my protective gear on, but that didn’t do much to cut the intense heat and light from too much solar energy. The Earth’s gravity was different too. My body felt heavy and sluggish.
It had finally happened. Many left wing radicals had predicted that we would eventually do ourselves in. Roughly 80% of all species had been destroyed – the government had reported. Of course, we humans managed to make the cut.
The air was thin and my feet felt like I was wearing cement shoes. The short walk to the local food station wore me out.
The funny thing was – it wasn’t something that we did to ourselves, it was something that was done to us. Well, we didn’t help matters with our carbon emissions, oil spills and general abuse of toxic substances. But, the real culprit was a random sun flare – just a haphazard burst of gases that shot out into space at a million miles per second. It wasn’t headed towards Earth, but our gravitational pull reeled it in, just like a big fish. The flare instantly chewed up the outer layers of the atmosphere and changed the magnetic core of the plant. We were left exposed to the radiation of a cruel star and an altered gravity.
Lucky for us, the government had the answer – drill for more oil.
@kadinseton
Hope I’m not too late!
Gravity
Gravity. It’s not something you really think about, until you were pulled into a massive gravity well.
And, brother, that’s what was happening to me.
Oh, not a planetary gravity well, of course. I’m talking about the gravity of a woman. A very particular woman. Doctor Sandra Parks. She was the new resident at the facility where I worked. One of those rare specimens, a woman physicist. And the moment I first saw her, I was sucked into that gravity well she exerted, and have been unable to escape ever since.
At first, I tried to deny it. I was a professional, there was no way I could be pulled into a woman just like that. But then she blinked those amazing gray eyes, and I knew it was a lie.
Now, I admit it. I’m lost. I’m deeply and totally in love with this beautiful woman, this amazingly smart woman that is going to change the way the world looks at the universe. And every day I work hard to get the courage to go up to her, to talk to her, to ask her out.
But as trapped as I am in her gravity, I always hesitate. Because I can’t help but think.
Would a scientist like her ever go out with a janitor like me?
@blanchardauthor
Chris Blanchard recently posted..Friday Flash Fiction- The Princess and the Pie
“So what you are saying is that you believe our existence is some kind of anomaly, some kind of quirk of nature so to speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “In the tiniest of nutshells, that is precisely what I am saying.”
Fiona’s eyebrows rose as she cupped her hands around the steaming cup of tea. “And it is time that is the cause of this…, this… ‘incident’?”
“Well, no,” Jonathan replied. “It is not time itself that is causing this quirk. Rather time itself, as we sense it on a daily basis, is caused by this, uh, incident.” His hands were damp with perspiration and he wiped them on the thighs of his trousers as he continued. “You see, time is has no direction. It merely is. And what we call our reality is an anomalous quirk that has caused time to become focused. It’s as if there were some kind of gravity lens drifting through a universe in which time is un-ordered and just by chance, just by a may-haps arrangement, it has caused time to become focused. But it is only for a brief period of time.”
Fiona stared at the young man. “And by a ‘brief period of time’ you mean…” she queried.
“Several billions of years,” Johnathan responded.
“I see,” Fiona replied.
@redshirt6
Carter knew he was drunk. Knew his brother, Alex was, too. Good for them, they weren’t in public. But, yeah. Alcohol replaced the blood in his veins. That’s for sure.
Alex took the bottle of vodka from Carter, who grunted in disapproval and tried to reach for it. In his momentum, he fell off the chair he was in with a great thud, knocking his brother over. A nasty crash if glass made Carter groan in anger.
“Great,” he huffed. Gravity is working today, isn’t it?”
“That’s not the only bottle, bro.”
“We didn’t get to finish that one, though.”
Alex pat his brother’s head sloppily and sighed. “Guess you aren’t getting up?”
“What for?” Carter slammed his eyes shut, speech severely slurred. “I’ve got nothing left to live for. So, crack another bottle open, Alex.”
Alex tried to move around to look at his brother. “Carter? Why are you getting drunk every night?”
Carter laughed bitterly to himself. He would never be happy again. Not as long as Leah were gone…
And he knows why she’s gone. Something in the oven he really doesn’t want. And she knows that. Very well.
“Al, what was it like when your baby was born?”
Alex snorted. “Why you have to bring that up?”
“Weren’t you happy at least?” Carter looked up to his brother. “I mean, having little Jessie couldn’t have been all bad…right?”
“Nah,” Alex belched loudly. “It’s not my little girl. It’s her mother! She’ll do anything to make my life terrible! Using my baby for money, attention…you name it. You were right to let Leah get away. She’ll find you, anyway. When she wants something.”
Carter sighed. Were all women that way? Leah never gave him trouble…
But, neither did Carla. Until she got pregnant.
“Maybe you’re right,” Carter slurred. “Now, get us another bottle.”
I gotta disappear for a little while, kids. Be back with the results by 3:00! Hope the technical glitches today didn’t freak you out like they did me!
Leah Petersen recently posted..OMG! It’s My Blog’s Birthday Month and I Almost Missed It
In her dreams each step taken is a rocket launch in miniature, her ankles firing like little combustion engines; propelling, compelling pistons or flints or man-managed ingenuity. She wouldn’t wake up and she didn’t have to come down, a fierce traveler who defies as much as she defines. Imagination, like invention, has no gravity.
@jtotheill
Jillian Kuhlmann recently posted..Mermaids Need Other Mermaids
Forgot to include my Twitter @kimmydonn
Kimberly Gould recently posted..What I SHOULD be doing
that was fun
Ok you win
On my knees again
too many times
we’ve committed these crimes
a crime against lust
a lack of trust
always ends the same
you screwing with my brain
it’s all just a love depravity
that always ends with gravity
you pull be further down
until I hit the ground
there’s nothing more to say
we do this every day
now I’m left to chose
some you win and some you lose
you won my heart and I the cavity
and I owe it all to gravity
Jenni De La Torre recently posted..Loving Adventure