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, pretty please.
And a few words on how your week’s going, won’t you, please?
This week’s Warmup Wednesday challenge: in honor of this week’s Spotlight interview, include a lost novelist.
Lagos bus station. CC2.0 photo by Jens Aarstein Holm.
Flash! Friday 
In search of Rosa Elena’s descendants
We crash through the night like an angry avalanche.
I squirm in my seat, restless, cramped, sticking to the cracks,
cold, even though the air is balmy, fetid with too many unwashed.
I am a sparkle of sweetness, even as we tear through the death chimes
which layer Tamaulipas, seeking the high hills, the distant chill above the gang-slaughter.
Croves set the stage back in ’46. It certainly buffaloed Huston.
This whole country has seen my kind, each of us madly winging into the midnight dark
on junker buses, stomachs squishing into our throats, all of us
mad for Traven.
100 Sierra Madres
@billmelaterplea
After a week of flu, I believe my inspiration has been compromised…
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@firdausp
(100words)
A cold breeze bites into her skin, the numb of sleep hasn’t evaporated yet.
I’m going to be late—come on! She shifts in her seat as if she could will the bus to move. The man beside her continues with his paper.
She glances at the bus alongside her’s. A young woman’s talking to a man.
Young lovers, she thinks, running away from an abusive husband. No–she’s too happy. Maybe going to her parents’ to announce their wedding.
Eyes shut, she lets the story unfold.
I’m going to be late, and I’ll forget the plot while crunching numbers.
The sky is cracking with lightening as I sit here in my front porch with a very restless dog. The sound of thunder isn’t helping any. He wants to go hide inside. We finally have rain, the first shower to announce the approaching winter. No walk for you today, Cooper! I hope you all are having a wonderful week.
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Stranded
100 words, Dave @ParkInkSpot
—-
Help me, Morty.
I’m lost. I have no idea where this is. No one speaks English, except the people from my bus. No cell phone service, I can’t get any bars.
Every few days another school bus pops in. Most of them are ancient, made in the 60s. We’ve constructed shanties from available materials, gutted a few of the vehicles. There’s no communication with the outside world or any roads out.
It’s a Sargasso Sea or Bermuda Triangle. Only for busses, not ships.
We’ve found a mailbox! Going to try using snail mail. Except no one’s ever seen a postman.
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Flash Fiction: Lagos Bus Terminal
for Warmup Wednesday
Wilting under glaring African humidity and wreathed in diesel fumes, Katie boarded the tape-encrusted bus to Lagos City Hospital. A tall man in a pillbox hat took her cash.
“Visiting someone?” he asked, climbing into the driver’s seat.
“I got this email. A Mrs. Eucharia Mamba is dying, and she wants to give me four million dollars.”
“Then we must hurry,” the driver smirked, turning onto the road.
A European man lay across two seats, his head pillowed on an ancient Underwood typewriter case.
He opened an eye. “Are we in Portugal yet?”
The driver laughed. “Silly fellow. Wrong continent.”
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Wilting under glaring African humidity, and wreathed in diesel fumes, Katie boarded the tape-encrusted bus to Lagos City Hospital. A tall man in a pillbox hat took her cash.
“Visiting someone?” he asked, climbing into the driver’s seat.
“I got this email. A Mrs. Eucharia Mamba is dying, and she wants to give me four million dollars.”
“Then we must hurry,” the driver smirked, turning onto the road.
A European man lay across two seats, his head pillowed on an ancient Underwood typewriter case.
He opened an eye. “Are we in Portugal yet?”
The driver laughed. “Silly fellow. Wrong continent.”
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Thanks for the inspiration! I’ve been consumed with another project & not writing enough over the last few weeks so this is very helpful.
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note, I accidentally cut-and-pasted the story twice. Oops! Let me know if you want to delete it and have me re-submit all tidied up.
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Oh, it’s no worries! If you like, I can delete one for you and spare you the trouble.
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That would be so kind. Thank you!
I love these challenges. I don’t always rise to them, but they do knock the tartar off my brain bumps.
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