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 begin your entry with the sentence: What the hell is that?
(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, Glenn Rogers, @glennrogers42 will nominate five finalists.
I’ll put the nominees in a poll, 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 or notepad. 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.
What the hell is that?
My head’s spinning and it’s hard to see. It’s an apple. I think. Or a balloon. My mom?
No, mom’s dead. Dead forty years. Or four. It’s hard to remember.
“Sir, are you all right?”
Who are you? Do I know you? No, the voice isn’t familiar. This isn’t good. Scared. Scared. Where am I?
The whole room is spinning now, spinning and falling and my feet are slipping on something that isn’t even there. My fingers slipping and sliding on silver-slick nothing. I’m afraid! Help me!
“Sir? Sir? Are you all right?”
No. No I don’t think so. No. Never, never again. Now I remember. This isn’t where I’m supposed to be. This isn’t what was supposed to happen.
“Don’t try to sit up, you hit your head pretty hard. The paramedics are on their way.”
No, damnit! It was supposed to work!
“What happened?” I ask.
“Looks like you leaned out too far and slipped. Your secretary came in and saw you. What were you doing leaning out the window like that anyway?”
Trying to die. Isn’t it obvious? Leave me alone. Or better yet, take me back up. Higher this time. Let me get it right for once, for the last time, in my life.
“What the hell is that?”
“No no no. See, it’s just out of the oven,” Jeff said, holding up the writhing concoction. It bubbled and blorped. Bits fell off and scurried across the floor where they landed. Mike had to jump out of the way of one as it made a beeline for his foot. “It’s my own recipe.”
“It’s horrible,” Mike said, backing out of the kitchen slowly. He was certain the thing in Jeff’s hands was looking at him, though it didn’t have any eyes. It was leaning forward in the pan, steaming slightly.
“You’re going to make it upset. I don’t think it likes you at all.” Jeff’s voice was more distant with every sentence. Mike saw that the thing had tendrils that wrapped around his friend’s wrists. No. They weren’t wrapped around, the were dug in. Green lines ran up his arms, disappeared into his sleeves, reappeared at his neck. Oh god.
“Put it down. Just put it down and I’ll get you some help.”
“I’m afraid you’re the one that needs help. That’s why I made this. For you.”
The thing shot out faster than Mike could move. It wrapped around his chest and burrowed into him with a sharp pain that coursed through his body. And then he knew. He knew what it was. It was hell, summoned and made solid. His mind slipped away, no longer his own, and he was left screaming from a little corner of his own brain.
Yes. This was hell. And what kind of fresh hell it was.
@DL_Thurston
“What the hell is that?” she screeched pointing at my face.
I sighed and tried to keep my composure. She was a vapid, blond girl and I shouldn’t let myself be upset by her. I knew people stared, i knew people wondered, but well, I couldn’t change who I was. Doctors had tried to improve it, remove it, disguise it. Nothing worked. I would always have this… thing on my face.
Pushing roughly past the rude girl, I stopped at my locker. My fat sweaty friend, Roger, the only person who didn’t stare at me leaned on the wall next to it, huffing from climbing the stares.
“Dude, that was Jessica,” he said with a stupid grin.
“Like I care. Just another conceited waste of space.”
“Waste of space?!” Roger argued. “Did you look at her? She can take up more space if she wants.”
“She probably does,” I complained. Girls like that usually had an enlarged sense of personal space around guys like us.
“Excuse me?” I turned at the new voice. The tiny redhead looked at me, scanned my affliction and met my eyes again. “Can you tell me how to get to room three-fourteen?” She shifted her bundle of books awkwardly.
“I can show you,” Roger said with a smile.
“Thank you.” Her books fell in a clatter and I bent to help her pick them up. “Thank you,” she said to me in a breathy whisper, taking the last book. “My name is Evelyn.” She batted her eyes once before rising and following Roger.
In the exchange of books she hadn’t looked at my… face again. And… was she hitting on me?
“Roger, wait!” I called running after them.
“What the hell is that?” Janine asked, astounded at the smell coming from the other room.
“I have no idea and I don’t want to know,” replied Gregg.
It wasn’t the smell that got to them though. They knew what it was, but neither of them wanted anything to do with it.
“It’s your problem.” Gregg said walking in the other direction.
“Oh, no it’s not!”
“I will gag if I go in there! I don’t want to see it!” he pleaded with Janine.
“I don’t care! This is as much your problem as it is mine and I’ve taken care of it the last three times!”
“I will puke.”
“I’ll get you a bucket.”
They both turned at the squeel from the other room.
“Gregg, I carried in for nine months and went through seventeen hours of labor. The least you can do is change the shitty ass diaper he just exploded.”
@Kathleen_Doyle
What the hell is that? Carla thought as she passed by David’s cubicle. On his screen was an image that she could have sworn watching her as she passed. Stopping, she peered around the edge of his cubicle wall for another look.
On the screen was a face. At least, it must be a face. She could see two eyes, something resembling a nose, and a hidsous facsimile of a mouth. The mouth was moving, as if the face were speaking.
He must be watching a video. She mused. Though I thought they blocked streaming media here. As she watched the mouth move, she became aware of the voice. However, it seemed disjointed, as if the video and audio tracks were not properly synced.
That’s when she felt it. the presence in her mind. Something was pulling at her subconcious, enticing her to give in to feelings. Feelings that she didn’t actually feel…that is, until the voice she heard spoke of them. fellings of murder and rage. Without even thinking about, her anger over her boyfriend’s infidelity crept unbidden to the fore of her mind.
She stepped fully into the cubicle and stood beside David, her eyes transfixed by the image on the screen. The eyes of the face turned to her, and the mouth smiled as it spoke.
Yes, she would give in to that passion. She would make him pay for cheating on her. She grabbed for the letter-opener on the desk, but her move was thwarted by David’s own hand. Their eyes met.
“You son of a bitch.” She murmured. “You’re going to pay for cheating on me.”
His eyes widened, but not in shock. Rage filled his own vision as he spoke.
“Not before you do…”
“What the hell is that?” I asked the police officer, as I bent over the flattened blob. The thing was about the size of a serving platter and had been ran over by something big.
“I was hoping you would be able to tell me.” Mark said. “You are the animal person, not me.”
“Are you sure it was an animal?” I looked around for a stick to poke at the blob.
“According to the driver that hit the thing, it is a giant mutant frog.”
“A giant mutant frog?” I reached over with a stick I found and gingerly touched it. “Are you sure the driver is sober?” The blob was squishy just like you would expect a frog or lizard to be. I crouch next to it, pushing the stuck under the body to flip it over. Once it was flipped like a pancake, I could make out a face on the blob. It did look like frog of some sort.
“The driver is stone cold sober.” Mark confirmed.
At that moment, the blob moved. Like a balloon it’s body expanded as if filling with air. Once it was round again, it looked me in the eye and let out a growl. Then it looked at Mark and hissed like a cat before taking on giant leap off the road in to the swamp.
“Did I really see that?” Mark asked, astonished.
“Yes, you did.” I responded, still trying to figure out what in the hell that thing was. Hopefully I’ll find out soon.
“What the hell is that?” I asked. I’d regret it but at the time I really wasn’t thinking.
At first she acted as if she hadn’t heard me and kept packing things into boxes. She was moving to the coast and we both knew that the odds of us seeing each other any time soon were slim. She glanced at me and then back to the box’s contents and her head tilted slightly.
“A picture of my unborn son,” she said.
I almost said something else that was stupid but thankfully some semblance of common sense, common decency kicked in. I’d known her for twenty of her twenty one years, longer than I could actually remember. And I knew that she had never had a baby.
We quietly continued packing as the rain outside fell lightly. I love the rain.
@redshirt6
“What the hell is that?” A voice spoke up from the dumpy orange beanbag not five feet away from where Jack sat in the corner, his eyes firmly focused on the homemade rotgut somebody had uncorked earlier in the night. The voice wasn’t filled with alarm, given the amount of ganja smoke leaking from the water pipe in the middle of the room and curling in beckoning coils to the dozen people remaining from the band’s impromptu gig, but something about the tone made Jack look up.
The swirling blue flame embedded in the renter’s gray wall looked like a rave gone wrong. It was so out of touch with the post-hippie vibe of this crowd that every pothead in the place blinked at it with as much alarm as folks that high could manage, which wasn’t much. But Jack recognized it. He’d been fleeing from it for far too long.
A woman danced in the flame, beckoning, begging him to give up this sorry excuse for a life and make the leap. She was desire and damnation and despair all rolled into one beautiful package, and he’d die for a single kiss.
He dropped the moonshine, and didn’t worry about the spill. He ran once again. But this time, he ran toward trouble. He had nothing left to lose but himself.
“What the hell is that?” Kat cried as she stormed across the room.
“It’s a book.” Doug said, looking at Kat sideways and tensing, ready to bolt should her anger boil over to physical abuse.
“It’s a D&D book, isn’t it?” she said, nearly screaming the two letters.
“Uh… yes,” Doug said. “I just bought it today. It’s going to be so awesome when I pull this baby out at the game on Frid…”
“I thought I told you I didn’t want those things in this house?” Now she really was screaming.
“No,” Doug said. “You said you didn’t want the game at the house anymore. And it hasn’t been. We’ve been playing at Andy’s place for the past month.”
“Nononononono!” she yelled.
“Jeezh,” Doug said, taking a few steps back. “What is your problem, Kat?”
“My problem?” she said, her eyes wild. “D&D is for nerds, that’s my problem. And I refuse to date a nerd. Or a geek, or whatever the hell you want to call yourself. You’re a grown man, Doug. You have a job, and you have me, and yet you still want to hang out with your basement dwelling friends every week to play this… crap? I have to tell my friends that you’re out playing poker, do you know that?”
“What the fuck?” Doug said. “Listen, Kat, you knew this about me when we first met. I made no pretense to be anything other than what I am.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said, practically spitting the words. “But I thought I had trained you better than this. I took a little boy and turned him into a man, and I’m pissed that you would still waist your money on this shit.”
“You turned me into a man?” he said, his own voice rising now. “Is that what you think getting me a job at your dad’s company was? You do realize I wasn’t a virgin when we met, right?”
She gasped.
“Listen, Kat,” he said, throwing the book into his backpack, where others of it’s ilk lay. “You’re right about one thing. I am different from when you and I first met a few months ago. And one of those differences is that I have a backbone now. If you can’t take me for who I am, D&D and all, then we can’t be together.”
He shouldered the backpack and looked at he for a moment. She just stared at him, her blue eyes fuming like a volcano ready to erupt.
“Good bye, Kat,” he said, and walked out the door.
@blanchardauthor
“What the hell is that?” wondered Jane as she toed the soil at the base of her courgette plants.
A white crust had formed over a square lump in the soil, crystals sparkled in the sunlight that filtered through the large leaves of the squash plant.
Bending down she dug around the lump with her fingers, the ground was cooler than it should be to her touch.
It became clear the square lump was a box, she dug it out and dusted it off. The damp soil should have clung to it but it brushed off the gleaming surface.
Jane tested the box with all her senses; to her eye it was clean and glistening, to her touch it was cold, to her ear it hummed a soft low resonance, to her nose it smelt sweet and sour like frozen salted butter popcorn and finally she dared to poke out her tongue and touch the tip of it to the smooth surface.
In a moment Jane’s world exploded into white, she felt the history of all things move through her, deepening her into a well of lonely knowledge, she fell and rose at the same moment, expanding through now to past and future at once. She blossomed into crystal and crumbled to white ash.
She was gone and as her memory shimmered above her vegetable patch the residue of her thought
“I still don’t know what the hell that was”
@summerlandc
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s a Kinkachu silly.” My 12 year-old son Tom said as if everyone should know. He got in the car door as I picked him up from middle school.
“Let me try this from another angle.” I took a few deep breaths. “Why do you have it?”
Tom slammed the door shut and began petting its scaly head.
“I’m babysitting it for the weekend!”
“WHAT?” I nearly flipped, but I remembered the breathing exercises from yoga. I’m going to be calm. “I don’t think so!”
“Come on mom!” Tommy began to beg. “Jimmy Erickson is going on vacation and I already told I would do it? I just have to do it. Come on mommy please?”
I looked into his could little blond face and I saw my father’s eyes and remembered the time I asked him for a parakeet for Christmas. My dad tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted. The first ten entries on my Christmas list was, Parakeet! Under the tree that year… there is was.
“Okay!” I said as I pulled the car out and headed out toward home. “What does it eat?”
“Oh yeah,” Tom said, “We need to stop at the pet store and buy some bugs!”
I cringed.
@johnnypromo
– correcting misspelled word…
————————————-
“What the hell is that?” Jane asked, looking up into the sky. The dark clouds massed together into a vortex. The mass covered the noon-time sun, and the wind picked up significantly. The rest of the kids on the playground didn’t seem to notice. Small swirls of dust danced between their legs on the blacktop as they played tag and ring-around-the-rosey.
“Get inside,” Jane heard through the wind whisping around her ears. No one was next to her to say the words. “Now!”
Jane followed the voice and ran into through the school building doors. Once she was inside, a loud crash outside made her turn to look, as well as screams. She turned around, and saw the tree she was standing beside lying on its side. Peeking from under its wide fallen trunk, was her pink plastic lunch box. She’d forgotten it when she ran inside.
@MZMackay
edited for missing word
“What the hell is that?” James wondered, idly, as his sunglasses threatened to slide up off his forehead. He flashed on the television show, ‘Dead Like Me’. “Naw…no way!”
Yet, incredibly, yes way asserted itself in the form of a flying Portable Toilet. From the distance, it looked like a matchbox, with streams of water flowing behind it. All too quickly, however, it resolved itself into a phone-booth sized projectile, heading straight for the lunch time crowd near the LOVE sculpture.
“Hey, y’all! Look out!” James gesticulated wildly, hoping to stir the somnolent mass, chewing fast food like a herd of cattle in a concrete pen. Of course, being Philly, everyone ignored him.
In seconds, the Portable Toilet landed with a sickening thud. Miraculously, no one was injured. Fully awake, the crowd gathered around to gape at the wreckage. One intrepid soul used his foot to open the door. What they saw would haunt them all forever:
A monkey in a NASA spacesuit was strapped to the commodode.
The dude with inquisitive foot muttered, “What the hell is that?”
What the hell was that? I wondered, then turned back around. It was just a flash of light in my periphery. It was an unneeded distraction with timing that could not have been worse. The image on the screen went blindingly bright, then to black. Had this been an Atari game from the previous century it likely would have said “GAME OVER” followed by some sort of wonky digital ‘loser’ jingle.
I had been playing ‘Real War’ for almost 72 hours straight. I needed a break. I peeled myself off of the leather chesterfield, scratched my ass where the sticky seat left a mild burn and went to the fridge. It had been too hot to do anything but sit around in my underwear, drink sweet tea and play video games.
I opened the fridge door and once again something caught in my periphery. “What the hell was that?” This time I asked myself out loud. I had to rub my eyes. For a moment I thought that the television screen had gotten cracked and it was covered with dust and streaks, then I realized that it wasn’t the television I was looking at, it was the window. I recognized the planes that were flying low and the machinery driving by. I had been fighting them all day and all night. It was the Babylonians, but they didn’t exist, how could they exist?
I gave my head another shake. A hundred yards from the house lay the wreckage of an H-27 Mid Range Aerial Destroyer, Forest Green with an angry Ogre Face emblazoned on the front. That was my plane, I made that plane. It sat smoldering, nose first in the Arizona sand. I turned to the television and saw the same scene, only from a different angle.
Final words etched themselves across the screen
The final stand of Earth was lost. As the remaining population attempted to surrender to the other worldly Babylonians they quickly realized that there was no surrender, only death. Earth was quickly wiped of it’s inhabitants and destroyed for it’s precious metals, leaving the Babylonians to move on to their next target.
He didn’t have time to wonder What the hell it was that came through his house.
“GAME OVER”
@DRyanLEask
“What the hell is that?” Latoya asked as she waved her hand in front of her face and snapped her fingers causing her long acrylic nails to click together. “I know dat bitch an’t wit Lenny again! I told a mofo she need to step the hell off!”
Latoya took off one of her gold flip flops and tossed me her giant gold hoop earings. I couldn’t have stopped her if I tried. She was like lightening as she ran across that parking lot, limping on one shoe. She made contact with the back of ‘the bitches’ head with the heel of her flip flop it made a smacking noise as it conected with her face.
Lenny backed up and slowly walked away. He left the girls to hash it out on their own. I took a sip of my coffee and checked my watch. I was going to do the same. Only one more hour until my shift was over so there was no use in arresting them now or I would never get home in time to watch antique roadshow.
I reached into my car and plucked another jelly donut out of the box. I did however have time to enjoy the show.
Latoya straddled ‘the bitch’ and triumphantly held up a fistful of the girls weave.
I love this side of town.
Time’s up! Did you have fun? Mine sucked this week. Ah well.
Come back at 3:00 to see who the finalists are!