Warmup Wednesday!

Mar4

Directions: Write a scene or an entire story of 100 words on the nose (no more, no fewer), inspired by this photograph. No judging. All fun. (Normal Flash! Friday guidelines regarding content apply.)
Don’t forget to add your Twitter handle & link to your blog, if you please.

And a few words on how your week’s going would be nice.

 This week’s challenge: give your protagonist a physical disability of some kind.

Milf Thrill Seeker. CC photo by darkday.

Milf Thrill Seeker. CC photo by darkday.

 

58 thoughts on “Warmup Wednesday!”

  1. Hard Landing
    (100 words)

    The fall didn’t hurt.

    Bouncing off the hard rocks that lined the steep sides of the pit didn’t hurt.

    Landing face first at the bottom of the pit didn’t cause Jessica an ounce of pain.

    After ending her free fall with a bang, Jessica stood up and brushed the dirt off her pants. When she shook her head, pebbles fell to the ground.

    It’s a good thing Jessica was indestructible.

    It’s an even better thing she was immune to pain.

    She was blind as a bat and lost in the deep. pit strewn section of woods known as “Holey Acres.”

    How’s my week going? In two words, it sucks! I’m fighting a head cold and I have to do a presentation at a workshop tomorrow so I can’t take any sick time until that’s over. At the moment I have a bit of a reprieve from the congestion that makes me feel as though I’m the one that fell in the pit and landed on my face. Hopefully I’m on the mend. If not then some sick time is in order once the presentation is wrapped up. Sorry for complaining, lol, but on the bright side it’s sunny and very spring like in my part of the world.

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  2. Broken by Dehydration
    A.J. Walker

    It’s dark but do you know how hot a cave can be? It’s like they say; it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.

    Up there there’s pulsating sun, but there’s the dream of a breeze tantamount to a kiss from heaven. It’s above me like heaven too and a dream, whilst I’m somewhere above hell; purgatory.

    Roots have insinuated their way through the rock, it crumbles as I get close to the cool kiss. I’m dripping sweat, I can feel lightheadedness enveloping. Limestone crumbles and crashes down the chimney. My sweat sizzling on the rocks below. I contemplate the fall.

    @zevonesque
    #FlashDogs

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  3. Escaping the Hole

    I reach up and find something to grab hold of. I pull with all my strength, what little I have left. My arm quivers at the effort, but gradually my body rises, like a zombie from the grave. I see the light, my final destination, but it still feels so very far away. I swing my leg around, find a spot for it and tentatively shift my weight. It wobbles, but I grit my teeth and move forwards. The only certainty is that I will make it, I have to. This chronic fatigue won’t stand between me and the bathroom.

    100 words
    https://todayschapter.wordpress.com/

    I can’t tell you how happy I am that it is March, it feels like this February lasted forever! We’ve had a bitterly cold winter in Canada this year so I am optimistically hoping this means we will have a lovely summer to make up for it. Fingers crossed 🙂

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  4. On This Day I Rise

    There is a hole in the earth, or so the legend goes. They say the hole leads topside, but there is not one of us who remembers seeing outside, let alone light.

    There are dark places, where the vaulted ceiling disappears into nothingness, but there is no movement of air, no signs that would tell us it leads up.

    Some say we used to live topside, but I can’t believe man kind would leave such a place– not after leaving the oceans, if that legend is to be believed, but today the dark places were lit… and I shall rise.

    100 words
    @mishmhem
    #flashdogs

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  5. Laney’s head buzzed.

    She couldn’t remember where she was.

    Everything was dark. Although it was always dark for Laney, but her other senses were “darkened” as well.

    The buzzing was so loud she couldn’t hear anything. Her nose was clogged with something…dirt.

    She had been running then, nothing.

    She got up, light headed, and felt around. A hole. She was in a hole. She couldn’t feel the top.

    “HELLO?!”

    No one answered.

    She didn’t remember anything.

    Where am I?

    “HELLO?! ANYBODY??”

    The buzzing got louder.

    Laney hesitated, scared of the unknown.

    She had to get out. So she climbed.

    100 words
    realmommaramblings.wordpress.com

    This is my first time posting on Flash! Friday. I am new to flash fiction. I just started delving into it this week. I love it!

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  6. Capitulate Cave (100 words)

    Bonnie fought two battles every day. Her asthma forced her to crawl up through tight passages to breathe. Inside her head a civil war raged. Bi-polar insurrection – two sides fought fiercely against each other, splitting what should be a union. Her generals armed her with inhalers for the campaign in her lungs, but her brain was not supplied with sufficient munitions to keep the peace. Daily gasping for air, desperately reaching for any slippery hand hold. At times choking, immobilized deep in the darkest depression. Exhausted, she tied her shirt to a long stick and waved it in surrender.

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  7. Tamara Shoemaker
    @TamaraShoemaker
    Word Count: 100

    Journey

    Heaven’s light bathes me now. Warmth and brilliance soak my skin, submerging me in anticipation.

    Before, when I could play without tiring, run without wearying, dance without collapsing, the light appeared like a pinpoint, so distant, like a breath of a feather dream.

    Now, the shades of color around me are muted in the brilliance from above. My mother’s laugh is tinged with shadows. My father’s hugs grasp me in an agony of desperation.

    I don’t mind, I try to explain. See the warmth of the rays?

    But they can’t see. They can only watch me climb closer to Heaven.

    ******

    Today, I am attempting to navigate a maze of a thousand things I NEED to do, and realizing, that at the most only a few of them are going to get done. And then I have to remind myself that tomorrow is another day.

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  8. Injured Reserve (100 words)

    Sarah was the captain of her field hockey team at Lawrence Academy. Now, at Smith, she was on day five of Hell Week, the hazing tradition for the one of the best women’s teams on the collegiate level. Sarah had earned scholarships to many schools, but picked Smith to find a girlfriend. After being forced to go to classes in diapers, pajamas, and bathing suits, rookie teammates were now made to run ten laps around campus in the pouring rain. Sarah fell into a sinkhole behind the science building and broke her left ankle. Their first season was a bust.

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  9. I have a question… sorry I am new to this and am not sure of the rules. Are we allowed to post stories on here that we have already posted or are going to post on our blog? I just want to make sure I’m not violating any rule.

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  10. Unseen

    Exhausted, the old man sits. His heart sinks ten fathoms.

    Deep inside the cave, the child stirs. She remembers sliding down by a vine. Falling pebbles had made a mad sound. Dust had filled her nostrils. Now it’s just wet soil under her nails and an eerie quiet. She isn’t afraid of the dark. She runs her hands around the wall. A sticky vine! It smells like medicine. She climbs towards the smell of open air. She doesn’t see the old man. She simply follows the smell of his old clothes and sound of his desperate voice calling her name.

    Pratibha
    @needanidplease
    https://theliterarynest.wordpress.com/

    Besides reading Flash! Friday stories, this week, I am reading some good submissions to The Literary Nest.

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  11. 100 words excluding title
    #flashdogs
    @susanoreilly3

    Stranded

    ‘Where have they all disappeared to?’

    Oh no, the battery in my hearing aid is gone I was so engrossed in trying to keep with everyone and the fear that engulfed my soul as we got to a certain depth. Who knew I could add claustrophobia to my list? I’m hoarse from calling now and if they heard they probably wouldn’t understand me anyway, sign language is pretty hopeless in this situation.

    I’m just going to have to climb I remove any extra weight, rucksack that stupid light on my head, I hate this, never again. I yet again fall.

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  12. Did this before I left the house this morning, but mustn’t have pressed post comment! Brains at 9am not working.. But my week so far has been better than last week, so no rant today. Just determination to write, write, write,….

    @awenthornber
    100words

    Through another’s eyes.

    I tried to climb out of the pit, my fingers bled, my knees ached, my head was throbbing and blood trickled down my face. Left for dead, but determined to survive, my anger exploded into a scream.
    ‘If I get out of here, you will pay me my money back.’
    My mistake, I’d hired the killer. I’d text ‘She feels life isn’t worth living’ I should have been clearer. My twin has a terminal cancer, but looks so well. She wished for euthanasia, illegal here.
    My facial deformities never held me back, but I guess we all see worth differently.

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  13. Mark Morris – The Indiscriminate – 100 words

    Pulling myself up from the gully, the skin on my hands torn and bloody, I’d almost given up before the top came in sight. Below me, my car was a write-off, the roof caved in and the interior filled with those tiny cubes of glass you can never clear out, but in this case the only thing coming out from it again was me. I was making damn sure of that. One lighted match and the ruptured fuel tank would make short work of its remains. And any proof that my red/green colour blindness had caused me to misread the stop signal.

    This week’s been a tough one – I’m already looking hungrily at the weekend, needing its reassurance and a chance to recover – but it’s at times like this that I can find relief in an automotive accident. An imaginary one, I hasten to add! 🙂

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    • Lol! Totally identify with the red/green colorblindness. My husband has that. When there’s a single blinking red light on the road, he has to ask whether it’s red or yellow. If I’m not with him, he just guesses. Yikes! 🙂

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      • I’ve very unusual shade of purple colourblindness. I once had an interview with the BBC for a broadcast mast engineer and never knew until I was tested. In a private room in a swanky London hotel, no less!

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  14. Becoming

    100 words
    @el_Stevie

    Narrow views channel my future
    Along a road I do not wish to take
    Where special access restricts options
    Prevents me from climbing
    Aiming high, disabling my freedom
    To tread my own path.

    I am but a speck
    Beneath unseeing eyes
    Until blind recognition makes
    For an uncomfortable reminder
    Of their own discomfort
    At my difference
    And they look away.

    Yet missing limb
    Does not mean missing life
    And I will not roll over,
    Instead I will raise myself
    Towards the light
    And prove that
    I do not need to stand
    On the shoulders of others
    To become a giant.

    This week, finally managed to throw of the worst of my cold but son is now suffering (man flu!). Over the past few months I have been involved in my first attempt at editing an anthology (Knightswatch Press Pun Book of Horror – it contains a story of mine, The Woman In Slacks – no prizes for guessing which story I parodied) and last night I sent the last two stories back to the publishers so hopefully the book will be out soon. Found it quite stressful feeling responsible for the stories of other authors in this manner. 🙂

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  15. The Climb
    (100 words)

    Falling down is easy. It’s the climb up that’s a challenge. How he got into this mess is a mystery. He woke up amidst strange smell and sound. When he opened his eyes he realized that he was sleep walking again.

    Everyday it’s a different location, a different scenario. He tried to avoid it but no matter what he do, this affliction hits him every time sleep claims him.

    Now he need to figure out how to get out of the cave he fell into. Armed with nothing but just his pajamas, he hope he can find his way home.

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  16. LITTLE RED WAGON
    WC = 100 03-04-15
    Climbing, clambering, stretching, retching………..and the distance grows. The little red wagon stands, pristine, promised. I reach, I need that ruby respite. Yet it rolls. Forward, backward, backward, forward again. My nausea overcomes me, but only temporarily. Overshadowing the nausea, the red wagon rolls backward over the bridge of my nose causing crushing, stabbing, numbing, blinding unrelenting pain. I desire the little red wagon in a way that forces me to stand. My climb has ended as I turn bloated eyes toward my prize.

    In my malaise, I reach for the little red wagon. Instead, to my consternation, it is Wegener’s.

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  17. Relief Pitcher

    Ever scale a canyon without fingers? Fists wedged into nooks, hauling yourself up on bare knuckles? I have. It’s not unlike getting my father to acknowledge my existence. Even if they made prosthetics that could get me pitching like Mariano Rivera, I have that sticky pairing of chromosomes that keeps me in softball.

    Chris peeks into my room, into the pit I’d worked myself into. Chris is Mom’s new husband. I tried to hate that guy, I mean, technically I already have a dad.

    “Nice outside. Wanna play catch?”

    I spare him a smile.

    “How about a bike ride?”

    —–

    The stunning weather continues over here on North America’s left coast. Playground hopping with the bean and the occasional jaunt to the forest at the base of ski mountains that should be draped in white.

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  18. It’s those technicalities that can hold one back. I, too, would love my town to be draped in white. On Cape Cod we are DUMPED in the stuff. Snowiest Feb. ever. Can you dig it?

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