Flash! Friday # 12

Feb22

This contest is now closed to entries (but always open to comments/feedback!). Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to fill these empty chairs. The decision by prosecutor/judge Patricia McCommas will be posted tomorrow (Saturday).

Welcome to Flash! Friday Round 12, O Brave and Hardy Writers! (Here are the rules if you need ’em.) Today’s flashy judgework is provided by magnificent barista and SVW member Patricia McCommas (thanks, Patricia!).

Let’s get right to today’s contest:

* Word limit: 150 – 200 word story based on the photo prompt.

* How: Post your story here in the comments. Include your word count and Twitter handle if you’ve got one.

* New Deadline: 11:59pm ET tonight

* Winners: will post tomorrow (Saturday) morning

* Prize: A blazing e-trophy badge, your own winner’s page here at FF, a 60-second interview feature next Wednesday, and WORLDWIDE PRAISE AND AWE (or as close as we can get ya to it).

* Follow @FlashFridayFic on Twitter for the latest news/announcements/dragon eating habits (hint: dragons don’t have habits).  And now for your prompt:

Chairs Alin

WRITE, little dragons, WRITE!

114 thoughts on “Flash! Friday # 12”

  2. The Factory

    One chair for each soul lost. Scattered about the field of dead grass, evenly spaced. An eerie monument to better times, when people had time to sit, instead of rising before dawn, working in the Factory, and going straight to bed. When the world had color and meaning, instead of gray mist and despair.

    Some have initials or dates carved in them; some are blank. Otherwise, they match perfectly. No one ever sees who puts them there, but every day at least one new one appears.

    The change to our world was gradual. Independent jobs disappeared one by one, until only the Factory was left. People stopped marrying; stopped having children. They simply existed to keep the Factory running, but now that is changing as well. Every day more people disappear, and no one questions.

    I am too old to work in the Factory now. I live in a barren house next to the field and wait. Yesterday I watched the field all day, and no one ever appeared, but by the end of the day, five new chairs sat there.

    I feel very soon a chair will sit in the field for me.

    196 words {with title}
    @Angelique_Rider

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  3. Free-Range Furniture

    Not a day went by Benjamin didn’t question the wisdom of opening a restaurant on the frontier. In a place without paved streets or indoor plumbing, his establishment was an oddity the locals neither quite understood nor seemed willing to patronize.

    Most challenging had been the simple task of furnishing his business. The general store carried the necessities of survival and sundries but certainly not tables and such.

    Thus, Benjamin found himself on a cold fall morning engaged in what he was beginning to believe was some version of a snipe hunt. The old trapper had assured him if chairs were what he needed, then he would just have to go out and wrangle himself some wild ones.

    The young man was cursing his naiveté for having believed in something as ridiculous as “free-range furniture” when he heard a low rumbling sound from the west and felt the ground tremble beneath his feet.

    They came thundering out of the mist and Benjamin was struck by the wild majesty of them. Instinctively, he knew they’d look perfect in the dining room and he swore, no matter what it took, to not return to town without as many as he could handle.

    200 words @klingorengi

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  4. Title: Et Omnes Sanctos

    The crime scene photog’s flash strobed as I examined the body on the chair. No easy death this, not that any of this ilk are, though some are quick. Not this one.

    I knelt down to study the chair. Sturdy. Utilitarian. Homemade. I’d already seen the basement workshop with identical chairs in various stages of completion, but that could mean nothing, after all.

    Straightening, I glanced at the handcuffed suspect. Simple. Unassuming. Homespun. The kind of person you’d pass on the street and never give a second glance, which maybe worked to his advantage. He made me remember my old art history class when the prof showed us Renaissance paintings of saints. This guy had the same beatific expression.

    “Hey, Detective?” The uniformed cop couldn’t meet my eye. His sallow face seemed to float, disembodied, in the dim light filtering through drawn curtains. “There’s something you need to see.”

    I followed him to the back door but stopped before I stepped onto the porch, one foot in midair.

    The field of chairs, all identical to the one inside, stretched as far as I could see.

    I had to turn away, to look anywhere except there. “Start digging,” I said.

    199 words
    @unspywriter (Maggie Duncan)

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  5. Maggie Turner, old and on her deathbed, looked with sympathy upon her husband Joe. She could see tears shining in his eyes. Smiling at him, she stated simply, “I love you.”
    With one last breath, Maggie closed her eyes to the world.
    Everything went black.
    She soon awoke outside in the open. The sun felt warm against her skin and she raised her face to its rays, eyes closed, arms open as if to fly.
    “Maggie…” A child’s soft voice brought her out of her moment. She opened her eyes and looked in the direction of the sound.
    A small girl stood, arm stretched out beckoning to her. Chairs surrounded her. Maggie walked slowly toward the girl, not knowing what was going to happen.
    “Here.”
    The girl led her to one of the chairs. She pointed at the name carved at its head.
    Maggie
    The scratches were precise, as if planned for her all along.
    “Sit.”
    Maggie did as told and the girl disappeared suddenly.
    “Wait!” Maggie had not expected her disappearance and was a bit frightened.
    Suddenly, though, a white light took over her vision. It was just as warm as the sun had been only moments before. Maggie’s feeling of fear washed away to be replaced with unconditional happiness. She knew that she would be safe wherever the light was going to take her.
    She knew, from the bottom of her heart, that wherever she was going was where she wanted to be.

    245 words @bookwormattack

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  7. I have memories as a child of coming here. Of learning from nature in our makeshift classroom outdoors. I remember seeing the animals as they would pass by, and listening to the teacher explain the unexplainable.
    As a child it was such an impact to be able to touch the land around me. To interact and feel as one with it. To taste and smell the fresh air and truly understand where I came from.
    It is a beautiful place, full of grasses and trees, water and blue skies. It is a place that I dearly miss, and a place that I would give to see again.
    I long to sit in one of those small, child-size seats once more and fall back into that memory.
    I long to fall back into those wonderful times where everything seemed to make perfect sense, where childhood innocence still existed, and where simplicity was happiness.

    152 Words @bookwormattack

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  8. “Do you know how stupid that would look?” says God.

    “But… just hear me out,” says Bob the Angel. “Here’s the deal…”

    “No,” says God. “That’s stupid.”

    “But it’s not,” says Bob the Angel. “Let me tell you why…”

    “I made the world the way I did because forests are a work of art, Bob. You know that. Forests are on purpose. They have, a music to them. They reach for the sky a certain way.”

    “Right, exactly,” says Bob the Angel. “And that’s why you’ve got to listen to me.”

    “Fine,” says God.

    “Good,” says Bob. “Here’s what you do. You grow, chairs.”

    “Chairs?”

    “Chair forests.”

    God just sits there.

    “And, tables. And maybe smart phones. That might be a good one, too, but let’s not get too far ahead. Start with just chairs. You short-circuit all the mess, get em to harvest furniture, your forests bounce back unmolested. See?”

    “Chair forests,” says God.

    “Exactly. You want your forests left alone, humans want chairs and stuff. Give em chairs, they forget to chop down your trees,” says Bob.

    “You’re forgetting something,” says God.

    “What?”

    “Evolution,” says God. “What happens to these chairs?”

    “I dunno,” says Bob, “Maybe credenzas?”

    199 words (!)
    @betsystreeter

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  9. Stumbling over roots and bushes, they made their way to a less dense part of the forest where they could finally see daylight ahead of them. They burst free of the last branches, and found themselves in what once had been a municipal park. There was a bandshell off to their right, fronted by rows of empty chairs for an audience, although the days in which music played here were long gone. Some of the chairs had broken and collapsed, and those that remained made the bandshell look like a gaping mouth filled with rotting teeth. The yells and the shouts grew louder, until Simon and Emily saw the fight break free of the trees. There were dozens of monsters, pursued by a small band of men carrying large hunting rifles. In the forest, the creatures had clearly taken huge losses, but here, in the open, they suddenly turned and rushed the men en masse. The air rang with gunshots and snarls, and Simon and Emily fled through the park, knowing now that their only hope lay in the enigmatic choices of the umbrella.

    184 words
    @drmagoo

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    • LOVE THIS LINE, “Some of the chairs had broken and collapsed, and those that remained made the bandshell look like a gaping mouth filled with rotting teeth.” You did a great job incorporating the picture into your story. Different approach. Nice. Now I want to read the rest of your story.

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    • You have a great sense of imagery going here! A couple of (hopefully helpful) thoughts — there feels like there is too large a canvas of backstory to which we are not privy. I could have dealt with the monsters chasing the men (who are not involved with the MC pair?). I think most of us readers could. However, the mention of the umbrella at the very end of this leaves it feeling much more like a fragment than a short story…. the umbrella appears to be an integral part of the larger story, but here it only muddles the waters, as it were. ,,,,, My other thought was that if you broke this up into two, perhaps three paragraphs, it could slow the reading pace down a tad and thus heighten the impact. Otherwise, intriguing!! 🙂

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      • You are right in that it is part of a much longer work. That’s certainly the danger in using a prompt like this as inspiration for a WIP. Of course, in my head, it all makes perfect sense, but most people don’t live there. 😉

        Thanks for the feedback – I’m always glad to hear ways I can improve my stories!

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  10. The old wood floor was cold under my feet as I slowly left the comforts of my warm bed. I could hear mother downstairs, and what sounded like the door opening. Her early wanderings told me it was a difficult night.
    She had lived eighty-three sane years, but the last three had not met those expectations. Nothing brought her to the present anymore. She yearned for her farm days and friends at her little church.
    Five years ago, before the church had been destroyed, she had insisted on buying every chair that had been in her beloved church and held the memories of her long ago friends. Those memories seemed to be all that she had left.
    I walked to the window to have a glimpse of the day, but as I pulled the curtains back, I was not prepared for the sight before me. Mother had placed every chair from the church into the yard and was slowly wondering from chair to chair perusing each chair and then smiling in fond memory as if each chair held a long lost friend. I knew this was the reunion she had longed for, even if not real in my world.

    199 words @monicaheffner

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  11. “How can you not see it?!” Mitch shouted. “Its right here in front of us.” He pointed to the wooden chair that had appeared before them in the fraction of a second he took to blink. It was the only other feature on the large grassy field they had been crossing after school.
    Megan just stared at him confused. He looked her right in the eyes. “It looks just like one from our English class!” He turned back to the mysterious chair, to find a second chair had appeared. Blink. A third. Blink. A fourth.
    Megan did not react to the multiplying chairs. More appeared on the grassy field each time Mitch turned his head. As the population increased, his heart raced. Who was doing this? Did she know?
    I wooden chair popped out of nothing right in front of Mitch. It was… looking at him, somehow. Taunting him.
    “Okay! Okay!” He shouted, in defeat “I’m sorry, Megan! I turned in your report with my name on it! Now make it stop.”

    @acmarkz

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  14. Oh, no! I can’t decide!….. Okay, well, here we go……

    ~~What’s For Dinner?~~

    Rupert carefully set the last chair down in the field as dawn approached. A sudden shudder of rage shook through him, knocking the chair over. Rupert’s thin upper lip lifted in a soundless snarl as he painstakingly placed the chair upright again. His sibs’ latest sneering singsong of “Rupert the Rosy” kept pounding ‘round and ‘round in his head.

    He’d show them. He might be pink…he snarled again…light red, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t get to choose what was for dinner. He grinned evilly to himself. Sibling sauté was a definite possibility.

    Of course, if his plan worked….

    Rupert looked over the field of empty chairs. The townsfolk would come investigate. Humans were bizarre creatures, but you could almost always count on their curiosity to get the better of them. Chuckling to himself, he leapt up.

    Word spread as fast as the morning light and people flocked out to the field. Two hundred. Three hundred. Rupert broke through the clouds, his first pass so fast and unexpected no one seemed to react. Chaos followed swiftly though as Rupert swept over the field again on his rosy-pink wings.

    Rupert laughed in glee. There would be people pie for dinner tonight!

    200 words copyright © 2013 Beth E Peterson
    @PotterBeth

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  15. Having read the rules again (snort, chortle, snuffle… love the updated version!) I see nothing against submitting more than one story. (Please don’t eat me, O Wondrously Draconian Rebekah!) Soooooo, long and short of it, here is the story I first wrote for this Flash! Friday:

    ~~Artist’s Statement~~

    *Will any of them even try to understand?* The artist gripped the back of the last chair. The velvet of the Shenandoah night was receding before the pearlescent colors of dawn. The artist was out of time. Already the twice-daily migration had begun.

    The chairs littered the field, ghosts waiting for the audience to filter into place. The artist ran to the blind; the message was all that mattered and all that should be seen.

    As a curtain rising the sun rose, bringing the lights up on the artist’s instillation. The empty chairs, each a tiny isle of isolation yet connected by the fact of their communal existence in this time and space, were revealed.

    Passing headlights resolved into passing cars. The artist gripped two of the blind’s saplings, waiting to see the human occupants. Cars slowed and wide eyes looked at the strange sight. Many quickly shook off the impact; seeing meant thinking outside the lines of their lives. Some even looked angry. Some, though…some seemed to understand that there was much more to see here than a field of chairs.

    A single tear, unnoticed. *I must speak, but I cannot speak with words. Please…. Do you hear me?*

    200 words copyright © 2013 Beth E Peterson
    @PotterBeth

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  16. “Dreams”

    She is in another bleak, foggy dream as voices yelled for her. She wondered if she was in danger.

    “Get past the bridge”.

    “Get to the foot of the mountain and climb”.

    How could she possibly get to either place when empty chairs were all she could see through the fog? Empty chairs reminded her of loved ones that had gone before. Tears fell down her cheeks as she stumbled around the chairs. She heard voices that were familiar to her.

    “Play with me” the little boy said and giggled.

    She turned and saw no one.

    Another voice spoke. “I won’t let him hurt you. I’ll protect you.”

    Tears continued down her face as she ran toward the bridge. She heard muffled voices everywhere. As she passed each chair, a different voice speaking different words brought more tears.

    “I belong there with you today” he said knowing she understood.

    She stopped and turned back when she reached the bridge. The voices in her dream are all together now. She recognized some voices and realized others were from a past she never knew.

    Another dream filled with voices gone from her life but voices that stay etched in her soul forever.

    200 words, not including title
    @baseballmama621

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    • How very interesting and evocative! Love that you leave so much unsaid… your writing echos the dreamscape your MC travels through, in that you don’t nail things down into sharp-edged “this is what it is”. Love that!!

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    • Thought provoking with a touch of eerie. Descriptive words elude me this early Saturday morning, but this touches on something just beneath the surface. It’s almost like trying to capture a quickly fadding dream. Nice job with this.

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  17. Catandana had worked non-stop for days to finish her offering, but she knew it was all for naught. When she revealed her work, she knew it would not earn her a second name.
    Her first mistake was using the Tuludanu plant. Tuludanus were considered beneath notice. They were only good for burning, but at least they were rooted in four.
    Everything was based on four. Everybody had four legs, four arms (though how many days had Catandana wished for a fifth hand!), four eyes. And the Four Gods, and the all-powerful Four Elders.
    It was the Four Elders she had to impress, and the ones she was sure would like her sculpture the least. It was tall, narrow, rooted in one, not four, with a hundred arms and a thousand hands. The body was brown, the skin rough. The hands had no fingers at all, let alone four. They were flat, useless, and she had painted them green, like the sky they were reaching for. Nothing normal about it.
    It was the monster from her nightmares, the angel from her dreams.
    It was her death, when the Four Elders proclaimed it blasphemy, and the others burned her with her gift.

    200 words
    @ctperry744

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  18. Yeah sure, why not?
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Alex stood and faced the chairs. They were empty, still, and yet it felt as though they were approaching her the way they appeared out of the fog. Dozens of identical high backed wooden chairs without any adornment and scattered across the field seemingly without pattern. It was her turn to sit.

    She drew breath fast and ragged as she felt the fear forcing its way up from the pit of her stomach. The raven visited you and it was your turn. There were stories of a season when nearly half the village had been called the same night. Alex shivered in spite of the humid heat of a summer evening. Her turn to sit. Her turn to disappear.

    She looked around the field. At the edge of the fog she could make out other figures around the field. No doubt they faced chairs closer to them. They would sit. They would wait. And in the morning they would be gone.

    161words
    @thorns_n_claws

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    • Excellent! Creative! Thought provoking! Mysterious! Dark! Eerie! You capture so much in a few words. This piece is timeless and relevant to everyone. Death and fear of the unknown is universal language. Well done!

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  20. “Get ready to rest, Great Windmills; we await.

    “Altering our shapes, we prepared ourselves for you: from heartwood to cambium, we cultivated our provascular tissue to produce four limbs rather than one trunk. Four limbs are most stable in the cross gales. For your comfort our uprights support broadened branches in the form of your turbine heads. Our interfaced xylem and phloem system has received your needs these many months.

    “We used to observe your approach. However, tipping of our broad branches in the tempests taught us to lie low and flat to preserve your turbine thrones. We changed ourselves out of love; convinced that enslavement to flesh and bones defied reason.

    “You approach as the snail approaches. Surreptitiously we pull toward one another. Your uprights sink immeasurably into the welcoming sod. Those turbine heads remain the soul of your former selves, changed from cellulose sun catchers to cellulose wind catchers on stripped trunks. You may set your turbines on our broad branch seats as we interface our systems to forever become low woody shrubs – no use to flesh and bone. And that is not beating around the bush!

    Wd Ct =190

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  21. Sandy jerked awake, catching the edge of the chair before she tumbled out of it. She had thought that dinner was kind of big but then…She wasn’t at her aunt’s for dinner. She was in a field. A field full of chairs that sat empty.

    “Crap. Crap crap crap.” She didn’t know what was going on. The last thing she remembered was feeling sleepy.

    “Okay, get it together. Maybe this was some really weird realistic dream?” She glanced around, standing up. “I really hope so.” She paused before pinching her arm as hard as she could. “Ow.”

    “Boo.” The low voice rumbled behind her.

    Sandy screamed like the girl she was and spun around, stumbled back and fell on her ass onto the ground, staring at the dapper man as he pulled the top hat down over his eyes.

    Of the brief glimpse she had of them, she could have sworn they were bright red.

    “Welcome, welcome. Ms. Hale, if you would be so kind as to come with me, you can wait with the others.”

    “What others?” Sandy was confused.

    The man gave a wide grin as a tail wrapped around one leg. “All in due time, dear lady.”

    200 words
    @solimond

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  22. Have you ever wondered where your old kitchen chairs go when you throw them away? I know. It’s like the elephants. The elephants go to the elephant graveyard, right? Dead cars, no longer needed, at the end of their lives, congregate in car graveyards. But, because the cars are not biological beings, we don’t think of them as graveyards. We think of them as junkyards. Old car tires find their way to tire graveyards. Again, we call them something derogatory, referring to them as dumps.

    Sometimes, I think that’s where old, worn out, dead humans go. The human junkyard. The human dump. I like that idea. If we call where we bury our pets, “pet cemeteries”, why don’t we call our junkyards and dumps more appropriate names, like “car cemeteries” or “tire cemeteries”?

    But I digress. I asked where old kitchen chairs go. I asked because I know. And I can tell you.

    They go to the old kitchen chair graveyards. I’ve seen them. They exist. They’re real. Here! See! I took a picture of one! Just to show you! Just so you will know!

    191 Words.
    @LurchMunster

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  23. My time is coming

    “The fog lifted and they were all gone. Vanished into who knows where.”

    Sarah, me niece of five years asked, “Where did ‘ey go?”

    “I honestly don’t know,” I said.

    We sat at the park and ate our sandwiches slowly, enjoying each other’s company. It’d been a few months since we’d seen each other, and this was the last time I’d see her angelic blond hair and rosy cheeks.

    The grass was green with new life as spring had arrived in the small town of Gattlesburg, Ireland.

    Wind tried and failed to blow me hair, as the gel held my spikey black style in place.

    We finished our lunch, and I started to walk her home. I got her to the front gate of me sister’s townhouse. That was when I knelt down and gave her a locket with me picture inside.

    “Don’t ever forget your uncle Michael, okay?”

    “I won’t forget my favorite uncle!”

    “Aye. I hope not. Tell your mommie I love her,” I said.

    “Okay! See you later!”

    She ran, and I muttered, “I wish you could, but soon it’ll be my turn to vanish into the fog.”

    Twitter: @critical_kurt
    Word Count: 200

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    • Loved this piece on the mystery of death and the great unknown. And I really love the underlying message of appreciating every moment we have with our family and friends, cause you never know when it will be our turn or their turn to go. Excellent job! What more can I say.

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    • That moment when you know you are saying good-bye…and making it count. Lovely. One thought on the writing style, offered only in the spirit of helpfulness: make sure your point-of-view character stays “in character” in their speech patterns. You move from “my” to “me” and back again several times. For me, it threw a hitch in hearing Michael’s voice in my head as clearly as I could have. But, otherwise, *thumbs up*!

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  24. Hildegarde struggled to tuck her long ears and horns under the wimple. Three months understudying the role of “Maria” and her big chance finally came.

    She peeked out at the audience, picnickers enjoying their sandwiches and dainty tidbits. Their blankets made a quilt out of the stubbly field.

    Not everyone was seated on the blankets. Most families had at least one elder with them, seated comfortably on the wooden chairs where they had a good view not only of the stage, but of their own brood.

    Hildegarde had fond memories of attending the shows with her own family. Of course, as dragons, they politely stayed off to the side or the back, in order to not block the view of those creatures who were shorter of stature.

    The show went off without a hitch. Hildegarde sat on the stage, alone. The quilted audience had lauded and then abandoned her, leaving the stubbly field with scattered chairs looking like they grew there.

    The regular actress would be back the next night. Hildegarde would return to being just the understudy. But for one brief, shining night, her dreams had come true.

    @USNessie 189 words inspired by “Dragons don’t have habits…” lol!
    …and I appreciate pushing the deadline back a few hours.

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  25. Enu never liked going there, but Elaida was fascinated with the chairyard. She’d wander through the field for hours, trailing her hand over their weathered backs. Choosing one, she’d perch on the creaky seat, blue eyes slightly unfocused.

    Enu sat in the chair nearest her. After about ten minutes, he said, “What’re you thinking?”

    She turned blind-eyed and then smiled. The moment was gone.

    “What it was like before Quietus, before the Keepers said we had to Sleep.”

    Chiled, Enu stood, his feet smudging into the soft ground. “What good does that do?” His voice was sharper than he wanted.

    In the distance, dead wires hung from their poles. Enu usually thought of them as benevolent overseers, gently sagging. Today, in the lowering fog, they were endless chains, hemming them in.

    Enu squeezed her hand with fierce anxiety, “You mustn’t say that.”

    The fog closed around them, listening.

    Colorless hair clung to her face in the damp. “There was a chair for every one of us. We didn’t sleep a year for every month.”

    “It won’t always be like this, Elaida.”

    “You’re right – one day we won’t wake at all.”

    Far away, the bell tolled, summoning them to Sleep.

    Twitter: @ruanna3
    Word Count: 199

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    • This is dark, poetic and abstract mixed with a bit melancholy. Nicely done. I had to read this about three times. I still don’t know what “We didn’t sleep a year for every month” means, but I love it. And I love that you also incorporated the electrical posts in the background of the pic.

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  26. “Your seat is this way, my dear.” The usher reached for my hand. He steadied me, stroked my forearm to soothe me. I looked down and startled when I saw we weren’t physically connected.
    “Where is everyone?” I asked.
    “This is your first time.”
    I nodded though it didn’t sound like a question, glanced back at the powerlines, the fog enveloping the way we had come.
    “The new ones are always the first to arrive. This way you have time to settle in before the rush.”
    “The rush?”
    “It’s the best show around.”
    “Why are the chairs so scattered?”
    “It depends on where they laid you.”
    I didn’t understand what he meant but was too embarrassed to ask. We arrived at a chair in the very front.
    “Your seat.” He let go of me and turned to leave.
    “Wait. What show?”
    “Life, my dear. It’s much more entertaining this way.”

    Word count: 150
    Twitter: @thedharmadiva

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  27. “Well that…wasn’t what I expected at all!” Tempest stared unblinking at the chairs, her mouth hanging open slightly.

    “But the spell worked, right? You did it! No more zombies!” Constance began a celebratory dance with all the exuberance of one who only moments before wasn’t sure she would live through the hour.

    “Worked? No, it didn’t exactly work.” Tempest still hadn’t blinked. She gestured expansively with her hand at the chairs, “they’re not supposed to be there.”

    Constance stopped dancing, “The chairs? But what does it matter? They’re not zombies anymore.”

    Tempest finally blinked, turned to Constance, and raised her eyebrows, “What does it matter? The spell didn’t work. If one thing didn’t work, how can we know what happened? Did it change them into chairs? Did it switch them with chairs from somewhere? Is this temporary? What happens –” She glanced back at the chairs.

    The chairs were walking toward them.

    “Connie, they’re moving.” Tempest took a step backward.

    Constance inhaled slowly through her nose, “They’re chairs. What can they do to us?”

    Tempest grabbed her by the arm, “C’mon! Who knows what they are! The spell went wrong somehow!”

    Constance stumbled, “They can’t hurt us… Can they?”

    200 words
    @lissajean7
    (loved the picture!)

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  28. “I know it sounds crazy, but I saw it, myself. Please take this seriously.”

    “We ARE taking this seriously, Mr. Driscoll. That’s why I’ve even called in some additional help.”

    “You mean the psychic?”

    “We prefer the term ‘paranormal consultant,’ Mr. Driscoll. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Masters?”

    “Yes, That’s right, Sergeant. I am quite serious about my gift and my job and I don’t use crystal balls or Tarot cards nor rent myself out for parties. Now, Mr. Driscoll, would you please describe what you saw?”

    “Well, from what I could tell, I had come upon a group of actors, but as soon as I stopped to watch them, they just vanished.”

    “And what were they doing with all these chairs out here?”

    “They appeared to be rehearsing the third act of Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town.'”

    “Then, I have news for you, Mr. Driscoll. Those people were NOT actors playing in the graveyard scene. They were actual ghosts, because this is an actual graveyard.”

    164 words
    @LupusAnthropos

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