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: Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
(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, Tim Queeney, @timqueeney 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.
Ben Stared at the scene horrified! He looked around at the smoking wreckage of the huge 747 jet. Bodies and debrie where everywhere.
Although he thought the whole world should have heard the crash, Ben raced to the phone and dialed 911. “911, what is your emergency?” the operator answered. “My name is Ben, I am at 1101 ridegeway drive, a jet has crashed in my front yard, theres bodies everywhere, Help! I need help, Now!” Ben said.
Within minutes, the mountain valley which moments before had been peaceful was filled with rescue workers.
The End
Twitter: @13minus12
Scott Bergman recently posted..I’d Expect More From Firefighters
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. They kept coming, kept flinging their writing bodies against the thin metal mesh. He’d never seen so many butterflies at once.
Individually they were beautiful. Delicate wings that beat against the air, decorated with the finest of filigree, sniffing at the air with each writing proboscis. Now he knew they wanted more. They wanted blood.
His blood.
Each had a voice, distinct and horrible, saying things to him in a language that he and they shared. Their voices were tinny, their cries were tiny, but their intentions were murderous. He took a step back, never taking his eye off the screen door.
Blood dripped down, blood from their last victim, it coated the screen, it dampened the floor of his kitchen. He slammed the thick wood door as the mesh gave way at the corners. They were in the plenum now, flailing at the door’s tiny windows, battering against them with their tiny bodies. One would fly towards the glass faster than any butterfly he’d seen, then crumble, broken, out of sight.
But where it fell there was another. And another. He was certain he heard the glass cracking. He’d tried 911, but no one there would help him. He couldn’t leave, they’d just smell him out and track him down. There had to be something, anything that would save him from the onslaught.
He turned. And he screamed.
How had he not heard the glass break in the front window?
@DL_Thurston
DL Thurston recently posted..Death of a Giant
Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
Fuck. He’d been doing it wrong all this time. How was he supposed to know?
His teachers hadn’t told him, nor had his parents. Not that he’d wanted either of those groups to talk to him about sex. But they had! They’d talked to him about sex and about diseases (horrible, disgusting diseases that gave him limp dick for months) and condoms and pregnancy. But no one mentioned this.
And then his girlfriend. The first one, he’d liked her. They had fumbled around in the backseat of his car. He thought he’d felt it all: boobs (nipples? check), ass (hole? avoid), and then down there, of course. The slick hole.
The second one. Well, it had only been one night. She’d left in the morning and hadn’t returned his calls. But she’d seemed to have all the same parts as the first girl.
But now he found out there was something else. A clitoris. A fucking clitoris. What a weird word. It looked weird, too. But no matter, he’d find it and he’d figure the sucker out. Things were going to be different now.
Still, the question remained – what the hell had people done before the internet?
@a_skye
Amber Skye recently posted..A Bad Student
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. The trojan horse did not do what he’d programmed. Helplessly, he watched as circles, lists, sparks and pokes merged into a tangled mess of broken links. The worst part was his IP address, blinking accusingly.
Ben did the only thing he could do: he shut down his mom’s computer and went downstairs for a bowl of Cap’n Crunch.
@Anklebuster
Mitchell Allen recently posted..Spellcasters
Ben stared at the screen horrified. It was gone. Vanished. He hit a few buttons on the keyboard and looked up hopefully only to be met with the same black screen and blinking cursor. He rummaged through the drawer and pulled out the thumb drive with a sigh of relief. He had backed it up only last night.
It didn’t take long to get to Jake’s apartment but no matter how hard he pounded on the door it remained firmly closed. “Desperate times” He muttered to himself and stepping left on the balcony thrust his elbow through the window. Reaching in, ignoring the glass shards scraping against his skin he unlocked the door. The apartment was a mess, it was easy to tell Jake had had a fun night last night. His last. Ben clutched his tshirt over his nose and stepped over Jake’s body to the computer.
If only it still worked. If only he could get this formula sent before the virus killed him too. Maybe somebody would survive
spbowers recently posted..Pet Phrases
Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
“What’s happening?” he said aloud.
In the air, a mouse pointer floated in front of him and landed on his nose.
Tap, tap. It kind of hurt. Then his nose started running.
The mouse pointer moved over to his one hand, pressed on it, and lifted his hand. Hit held on tight and pulled his hand over to the tissue box. After another tap, his hand grabbed a tissue. The pointer released from his hand and floated back to his nose.
Tap, tap. After feeling the first one, this one didn’t bother him. His hand with the tissue approached his nose until they met.
Tap, tap.
Uncontrollably, he blew air from his nose, and all the mucus went into the tissue.
Then, he watched the pointer move to his upper left.
Tap.
The next thing he remembers is staring at the screen, horrified, and the mouse pointer floated towards his nose.
Twitter: @byoung210
B.C. Young recently posted..Colorful
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. The live sex show had just started, the burro was brought in by a fat lady wearing nothing but tassels and assless leather chaps. A ‘little person’ was naked on the bed tightening the retraints of a man who looked way to pleased to be tied up.
Ben started to sweat. This was not what he was into, this was not what he thought he clicked on. Where were the blonde girls with the big boobs? But like a horrible car accident happening in from of him, he couldn’t look away.
An older woman lying on the bed was blindfolded and masked as each of the people, creatures, and devices took turns with her. When it was all over they zoomed the camera in on her backside, a small tattoo above her left butt cheek caught Ben’s attention. It was a tattoo of newborn baby feet. Ben had seen it before.
Those were his feet.
“Oh my God MOM!!!” Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. “Are you sure this is correct, Becky?”
“I checked it four times. The results are the same.” Becky sat back in her chair and watched Ben.
“Wow.” Ben scrubbed his hands over his face. He looked at the screen again, unable to believe the results. “I don’t think we should share these results.”
“Are you kidding?” Becky stared at him in surprise. “This could make our career. Why would we not share this information?”
“And just how do we prove were we got the specimen?” Ben asked, looking over at her. “We would be locked up if we were to publish this.”
“But it’s just a sword.” Becky protested.
“A sword that is common to 1700 CE but is coming back dated to 1700 BCE.” Ben reminded her. “How would we prove that the machine nor the sword wasn’t contaminated?? Then there is other implications we don’t want to even consider.”
Becky sighed and dropped her head in to her hands. “This is just going to be filed with that Norse Ax that we found that was created in the ancient traditions but dates to now?”
“Unfortunately.” Ben looked around to make sure no one had come in to the room. “But, we can do our own investigation. There has to be a reason these weapons are traveling through time.”
Bronwynk recently posted..I Owe My Mother….
Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
“Captain! You’re going to need to see this!”
“Yes Ben, another ‘anomaly?'” Captain Crenshaw answered, chuckling and nudging the First mate.
“Sir, this is not an anomaly.”
The green line traced around the black screen, sweeping every second. Each time it circled blips already there were highlighted with a faint glow. Each time the line hit the blips doubled. The screen was filling with them, and they were closing at incredible speed.
“What in the Hell…” was as far as the Captain got before looking up from the screen to a mass off the ships port bow that he realized wasn’t a squall after all.
“Sir?” Ben asked the suddenly quiet bridge.
@D_PaulAngel
“Ben stared at the screen, horrified,” I read, pushing the syllables past my lips with intensity, waving the hand not clutching the book in melodramatic floofery. I paused and glanced around; the kids ranged from bored and sleepy to utterly enthralled.
“What then, Ms. Gerhardt?” The question came from Aquanetta, the little redheaded girl in the back. I wanted to smack her mother in the head with a volume of Encyclopedia Brittanica. Who named their kid after hairspray?
I grinned at her and turned back to the book. “His entire life was laid out before him — credit card numbers, personal photos . . . even the list of what he bought on his last shopping trip. And he bought,” I widened my eyes for effect, “a steak!”
The kids who gave a crap gasped. “He ate a cow?” Tommy McNeil shrieked. “That’s illegal!”
“Worse that that,” Gina Adams said, solemnly shaking her head. “That bad old Ben is dead now.”
“Shut up,” Aquanetta yelled. “He is not.”
“Is too.” Gina fluted her lips into a pout. “Daddy says only bad people eat cows or talk about credit cards.” She eyeballed me, glaring. “I’m gonna tell him when I get home.”
“Better go eat a steak while you can.” Ms. Shook, the other librarian, held up the phone from behind the counter in the kids’ reading room. “I just called the police.”
I gulped, set the book gently on the floor, and straightened my legs to stand. “Uh, if you’ll excuse me.”
@nicolewolverton
Nicole recently posted..To The Victor Go The Spoils
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. That was Kyle. That was Kyle, right there, sitting calm beside the other man in orange. Cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed. He was smiling.
“We do not agree,” said the other man. His eyes were open. He was speaking to the journalist with the microphone, or the audience of activists standing wary on the other side of the line, or maybe he was speaking to all of them. “This is a protest, as much as we can make it. We do not agree.”
Then Kyle opened his eyes, and looked straight into the camera lens. He said nothing. He couldn’t know — he couldn’t possibly know — that somewhere, miles away, Ben was watching. And still, he smiled.
“We do not agree,” the other man said, his voice calm. He spoke as though the stars themselves were dancing in his mouth. “But we have hope for you, even still.”
Then Kyle closed his eyes again, and suddenly the men erupted into fire. People screaming. The camera shook, and moved away, then back again. Ben screamed, or did scream.
They burned slowly. Or they burned fast. He can’t remember now. When he finally turned off the TV, he went to the phone and dialed Kyle’s number, and when no one answered he stood there, in the kitchen, and wondered what had happened to the world.
@AmandaLeduc
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. The flickering image projected on to the side of the barn out on ol’ Grumpy’s place should have been, “Killer Ants from Outer Space, Part 2,” but instead the projector was spitting out a very very different movie.
There should have been shouts of anger, screams of fright, bellows of consternation. This was a no dancing, no drinking, no singing kind of town. Ben didn’t quite know how B-movie scifi got past the militant censors of taste, but he was paid to transport the project from hick town to hick town and play the thing, not be the critic.
But, if no one was going to protest him playing an ancient version of Singing in the Rain, he wasn’t about to stop the town from enjoying itself. He set down to enjoy himself and hummed along, hoping that no one was going to try and shoot at him like they dun shot at him for once trying to play the Wizard of Oz. For some reason, dancing munchkins were just to much for this particular Kansas town, but fake rain and umbrella, that was fine. Closest thing to a good rain these folks had seen in an age.
Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
“No,” he whispered, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow, his hands, slick and trembling.
There was movement behind him and he cast a furtive glance over his shoulder, but he couldn’t tell who had been watching. Too many people. Spies, enemies.
He moved, trying to block the view of his screen from as many angles as possible, but it wasn’t enough, it was never enough. This was a disaster, a nightmare. This time, this time it would be the end and they were all chatting blithely in the cubicles around him, blissfully unaware. He punched keys in frantic, random combinations now. Something had to work! Something so small to be the end of all things. But the screen was frozen and no matter what he did, no matter how loud the blood pounded in his ears and his heart raced, nothing, nothing could stop this. They were coming.
“Ben?”
Ben vaulted out of his seat and whirled to face them.
“It’s not what it looks like!” he screeched.
“What?” Tommy, the Vice President of Purchasing said, peering around Ben at the image on the screen. His expression hardened, his face turned a slow, smoldering red and he fixed eyes sparkling with anger on his assistant VP.
“Not again?” he said.
“I’m sorry!” Ben wailed.
“I’m sorry too,” Tommy said. “But this was your last chance, Ben. Pack your things.”
Ben’s shoulders slumped and he turned, morosely, to face the image on the screen, and the beautiful bare breasts and sensuous thighs of the woman who fired his dreams, his loins, and had led to his demise at last.
Leah Petersen recently posted..Review of In Leah’s Wake
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. They had already lost communications with Tokyo and Beijing, and now the line to Moscow flickered red, then went out. Sydney was next, with a brief scream of static followed by a deep, almost tangible silence.
“Get me some answers, we’ve lost comms with half the planet!” he screamed to no one in particular, but nobody answered. Everywhere around him was in turmoil, with techs and mystics both scrambling to understand what was going on, trying to determine if it was a technical glitch or something… worse.
“We’ve got the Cambridge lab.” shouted a young tech over the noise of the room. “They’re saying… Oh god, they’re saying that as soon as the system was brought online…”
“What? What happened? What’s going on out there?”
“The line’s dead, we just lost communications…” the nameless tech said, staring at the flickering screen.
“What the hell happened?” Ben yelled, his palms sweating, his heart hammering in his chest. This wasn’t supposed to happen, it was just a test run, they weren’t supposed to bring it up to full power, not for the test run…
“They just said that something… something came through…” the tech said, shaking visibly. He looked like he was going to throw up.
“What was it? What came through?!” Ben demanded, watching the screens around him flicker and die.
The tech just shook his head. He was crying.
Chad Anctil recently posted..Blue Star Fallen
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. This couldn’t possibly be happening. It just couldn’t be real. But there it was, in black and white, on his television. And when did TV lie? Not in the two years since he’d bought his from down the street. He’d had lots of good times watching that little screen, too. Elvis Presley was the latest, showing up on the Ed Sullivan show just last week.
But this now…
It was too horrible, too wild. It was like something out of the science fiction magazines he liked to read on the bus to work. He turned the knob to see what was happening on other channels, but the image was there too.
Hovering above the White House were hundreds of saucer shaped… things. Ships, he supposed. The images flashed to other capitals across the planet with the same scene. Downing Street in England, Paris, France, Rome, Germany, even in the USSR. All told, there had to be thousands of the ships, each about half a mile wide. They covered the skies of Earth’s capitals.
He flinched as the images flipped back to Washington, and the saucers opened up and fire sprung from their bellies. The attack had begun, and there wasn’t even a declaration. No attempt at communication, no response to our attempts, nothing. Just a gathering of forces and then, boom. The White House was gone. Hell, all of Washington, DC was gone.
Thankfully, Ben knew what to do. He reached to the shotgun sitting at the side of his chair, grabbed the portable radio, and headed towards the bomb shelter he had built in case the Russians decided to attack.
The Russians, he thought, were now in the same boat. He just hoped there were enough of his neighbors with these kinds of shelters to form a resistance when the attack was over. Humanity was down, but he would make sure they would fight what fight they could before it was out for good.
@blanchardauthor
Chris Blanchard recently posted..I’m still here, or OMG! A REAL BLOG POST!
Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
“But Mr. Andrews,” the doctor said, “I want you to know – “. One of the other men in the room, this one in a military uniform coughed loudly. The doctor made eye contact with the uniformed man and began again. “That is to say Mr. Andrews, we want you to know that your sacrifice is greatly appreciated by all of humanity.”
Ben was oblivious to the conversation going on around him. It was insane. It must be some kind of nightmare because what he was seeing and what these people were saying simply made no sense what so ever. He tried to raise his hands to his head to see if his head felt normal. He couldn’t raise his arms! Looking down he realized that they had been strapped to the gurney.
The man in the military uniform stepped closer to the hospital bed.
“To be chosen as an uh,… as an ambassadorial client is I’m sure a great honor, Mr. Andrews. I’m sure your children and grand children will be very proud of you.”
Those standing around him blanched, a pained expression on their faces.
“I don’t have any children,” Ben said to no one in particular.
“Gentlemen,” a younger man in a suit said by way of announcement, “We believe the E.T. manifestation is imminent.”
With that said, all eyes turned back to the cathode tube display where a real time magnetic image of Ben’s head was pictured. The mass inside was visibly moving and growing.
Ben could do nothing but stare at the screen, horrified.
@redshirt6
Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
“It can’t be!” he said to his friend Bob.
“I think it is!” Bob said back.
Ben’s mom had always been ‘out-there’. Raised by hippy parents, she engaged in one protest after another, but this time she’d gone too far.
“How could she?” Ben said.
Bob moved closer to the TV screen as Ben closed his eyes. A street corner full of people cheered as Ben’s mom was doing the unthinkable.
“Hey, your mom is incredible” Bob said knowing it would eat at Ben. “I always said your mom was hot!”
Ben punch Bob in the shoulder.
“Ow!” Bob said while laughing uncontrollably.
“What’s that she’s holding?” Bob said.
Ben opened his eyes. Both boys, now 12, squinted to read the sign the beautiful woman was holding on the downtown city street.
‘Fur is Murder!’
It was the first time either boy had seen a woman fully naked, and it had to be on the 6 o’clock news.
“How can I show my face at school tomorrow.” Ben buried his face in his hands.
john keenan recently posted..The Day The World Changed!
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. There was Carla. The picture was from a staff photo given to the press when they reported the double-homicide. Two people down from where she stood in the crowd was someone else. David Hessler, the reports said. Both were circled in red.
Investigators were reporting that it seemed to be the result of a fight over a sharp object. It was not clear who had started the altercation at this time, nor were there any connections between the two victims beyond the fact that they worked in the same office.
Ben sat back, and tears fought their way forward as he stared at the image of the cubicle where the fight had taken place.
That’s when he noticed it. The computer screen was still on. And despite the splash of blood that covered half the desk, he could swear there was a face.
Wiping his eyes, he leaned forward and looked closer. As he did so, his heart skipped a beat. The face had moved! He would swear it! Like a madman, the face grinned at him. Mocking his pain. Laughing at him.
Then he heard it. The voice in his head. It spoke to him of murder. Of how this whole situation was manipulated by David’s jealous lover, Colleen Jones. Ben’s eyes scanned the article again, for that name sounded familiar.
There it was. Colleen was David’s supervisor. There was no picture on the article, but he was sure he could find her.
Grabbing his jacket, Ben left his apartment, stopping only briefly to select a knife from the cutting board in the kitchen.
That bitch would pay for what she had done to Carla.
As the door shut, no one was there to see the screen on his laptop flash. Nor did any hear the deep rumble of laughter that echoed through his apartment.
Tom Doolan @TDoolan005 recently posted..Marvel Musings
Ben stared at the screen, horrified by what appeared to be staring back him. Sweat began to permeate through his clothes as thoughts began to rush through his mind.
How on earth is this possible? That image was private. Buzz .Now my phone has a new alert on Twitter. Buzz. Another one! Ben, shouted to himself. They will all know what I’ve done, how can I have been so stupid.
Sliding his finger across his iPhone screen he quickly battles through the notifications, but for each one he closes another one appears. As Ben finally managed to hold back the progressing attack, one final message squeezed through that caught is eye. “Congressmen caught sending nude photos on Twitter, more at 9.”
Ben threw his phone at the wall, with shards of glass falling to the floor and a heap of electronics laying among it. What have I done…
Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
He had less than 2 minutes till #5MinuteFiction was supposed to start. He had spent the last hour getting his two year old to take a nap; perfect timing for being able to concentrate on a little flash fiction fun.
After a quick trip to the bathroom and fresh can of Pepsi from the fridge, he returned to his writer’s nest to find that his little angel was not as asleep as he’d thought.
“Look Daddy! I write too!” she announced, proudly showcasing his laptop, which was covered in peanut-butter-and-jelly smears.
Swearing under his breath and placing his precious child into the playpen, Ben carefully cleaned off his monitor. He was a whole minute late, forever in flash fiction terms.
Just as the last bits of sugary fruit were coaxed from between the L & K keys, the screen went black.
“What the….” he stopped himself before uttering something he wanted his daughter to emulate.
The cord was unplugged. Of course. At exactly that moment, the battery had given out.
He plugged it in. Almost 5 minutes late, but with the 10 minute “cushion” he might still have a chance.
Leah had posted the link in twitter, and he clicked. And waited. And reloaded.
Nothing.
Back to twitter “Oh No! Database error!”
Well, that could be a good thing, he was late anyway…
Finally, it worked.
The prompt?
A picture of a jar of peanut butter.
And he knew exactly what he would do.
@US_Nessie
AmyBeth Inverness recently posted..Photoshopping Experiment
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”
Ben stared at the screen, horrified.
As an author, he was used to all sorts of computer problems. Crashes. Hard drive meltdowns. Database errors and smoke from the cable modem and e-mail interruptions when he was on deadline. The Blue Screen of Death.
But not this.
He’d tried to put her out of his mind. Stephanie had been the girl he’d stared at through high school and half of college, until she transferred half way across the country. Then, he heard, she got married. They lost touch, and then social networking had them exchanging birthday wishes and the occasional public photo. He’d gained a little weight. She had too, but she looked even better.
He’d tried to put that out of his mind, too.
Stephanie had been silent for the last six months. Ben had kept up with his writing.
Now here he was, three hours from deadline, and checking on his messages.
Stephanie’s relationship status had changed from Married to Single.
He would have to do something. And fast.
It had only been nine years since they graduated high school. What would a few hours mean?
Still, he stared at the screen.
Ben tabbed away from the browser window and back to his story. Back to the life he had drowned himself in to forget her.
His palms were sweating. His pulse was racing. He could not read the words at all.
Ben glanced at the clock. Twelve minutes had passed, and he hadn’t typed a word. He tabbed back to the browser.
Ben stared at the screen.
Horrified.
@briancortijo
Yeah yeah yeah I always forget…. US_Nessie on twitter!
AmyBeth Inverness recently posted..Photoshopping Experiment
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. It was worse than he could have ever imagined.
Netflix had increased its subscription services.
That was the proverbial straw the broke the camel’s back for Ben. He would never be the same. From that point it was a quick descent into madness, a madness from which he would never return.
Stories grew and became legend in that sleepy little town of Birchwood, of the man who refused to pay an extra six dollars or so for an unlimited DVD-by-mail plan AND instant streaming. The local kids would dare each other just to peek inside the dilapidated house where resided the ghoul known as Ben.
Then one day, the front door opened. A pensive foot stepped out into the bleak autumn sun. Ben could feel the warmth of the sunlight, but could not see by it. For he had scoured out his eyes, vowing never to trust another soul with them ever again.
@pyritedreamer
http://briefconceits.com
Eric Hamilton recently posted..The Prad
Ben stared at the screen horrified. What looked back at him were the remains of a young girl in her mid-twenties disemboweled, bloodied and covered in her own excrement from hip to feet. Who would do this and pin her body to the screen during one of the largest openings of a horror movie in recent history? Intestines hung in reckless abandon as the CSI team collected all they needed in hopes of catching this new bread of madness in human form. Ben took a step back, the rancid smell convincing him that the body was at least a few days old. He knew there would be no fingerprints or foreign DNA. No, whoever did this was as much of a professional as he as mad. Instead of looking for evidence he would need motive, drive. He would need to answer one question… Why?
Ben stared at the screen, horrified. He couldn’t imagine what he had done to deserve it. He thought back on the day, the week, the month, the year, the decade. He replayed every moment of the last hundred years of his short life, and couldn’t come up with a single slant or insult he’d delivered that could boomerang back and blindside him the way his sister had just done. This was war.
He flicked off the terminal in his room, cringing at the raucous laughter of the boys in the room next door, and smashed a fist through the screen. He wrapped a towel around his bloody hand and grabbed the keys to his podcraft. He stalked down the hallway and glared at anyone who dared peek out of their rooms. Their heads immediately vanished when the say the look on his face.
Ben reached his podcraft quickly and jammed the key into the ignition. A smile festered on his face when the ship’s main hatch opened. He checked the system’s onboard maps to verify his target’s location. Emily always went straight back to her room after dinner to finish her homework. Room 241, second level, right next to the game room with its wide, brightly lit windows that illuminated the darkness of space around it. Just a short ride around the craft to her room on the other side.
He hoped she kept her shades drawn. She’d never know what hit her.
This was war.
@saraheolson
Sarah Olson recently posted..Today’s Creation: Charcoal Drawing
Sigh. As usual, my trigger-happy keyboard fingers have pushed on ahead sans Twitter handle, or even the address of my blog.
Apologies, folks.
@AmandaLeduc
Amanda Leduc recently posted..Mysteries and loneliness (Or, Scotland: An Epiphany)
I’m calling time a little late because of the late start. So that’s it, folks. See you at 3:00 for the finalists!
Leah Petersen recently posted..For Strong Convincing Fiction, Control Your Narrative Voice – Guest Post
Ben started at the screen, horrified. Avoiding social networking like the plague he had no reason to immerse himself now. Except the she was on. He had heard her talking about it around the office. She loved to make her posts and share her pictures. Maybe, just maybe if he got onto this confounded site, he could finally talk to her. Go out with her. Marry her.
Ben shook his head, clearing away the delusions. He just wanted her to say hi.
He clicked on all the appropriate options and filled in all the boxes. There, he was in. Up in the search box he typed in her name with shaking fingers. There she was. He clicked and sent her the invite to join in his “friends”.
Two heart beats later a response she excepted. Now a message.
“Hey Ben! I’m glad you’re on.”
“Really.” He typed back hardly believing what was happening.
“Yeah really. : )”
Wow. Ben smiled smugly to himself. Piece of cake.