On June 18th, National Flash Fiction Day (a group based in the UK) posted 24 prompts - one for each hour of the day - and tasked writers to craft 250 words or less flash fiction pieces. Since this was their 11th year, the themes of the prompts were focused around the number 11. Below are my pieces, which were first published on The Write-In. Eleven word story - Short and sweet (prompt 0) Perhaps, she pondered, perhaps this is right. Perhaps this is perfection. (This prompt required exactly eleven words.) "The time keeper" - numbers game (Prompt 3)I am the Time Keeper. It is my design. My program calls for it. My maker demanded it. My coding perfected it. So, here I sit, alone in my room. Watching time roll on before me with a slow, rhythmic pacing through the little window at my side. It never ceases. It is time. It is perfection. My mechanical hand moves with one motion. Tap. Tap. Tap. That is all. A single touch with every second that rolls on. I keep the time, the hours and seconds and minutes that pass me by like the forward progression of existence that encompasses all things. The clicking of my fingers, once soft, now creaks as the plated knuckles grind against the movements. I have been doing this for a long time. My maker told me to keep the time until he returned. I watched the world fall to war, to warmth, and waste. I don’t think humans are out there any longer. The grass is no longer green. The sky is a hazy grey. My neck needs oiling for it cannot turn any longer. So, here I sit, alone in my room. Watching time roll on before me with a slow pacing through the little window at my side, just as I have for the last three hundred years. And it is so quiet. (This prompt required the story to be told through the perspective of a robot, computer, or other electrical entity.) "Autumn" - one little paragraph (Prompt 10)It is autumn where I live and the breeze is pleasant. The trees have begun to turn golden and red like flames. The smell of bonfires and cinnamon linger on cotton garments everywhere. I can see the sun already beginning to set from here. From my window seat where I ponder all things. I ponder the movement of the earth and time with fervor. I ponder how fickle all things are, how beautiful and strange. I’m hit with nostalgia like the waves upon a rocky shore. Nostalgia for a place I have not seen or known before. The places novelty candles summon with their notes, colors, and aesthetics. I think of you and sigh, I dearly miss my Autumn. (This prompt required a single paragraph with eleven sentences.) "We are but ghosts" - the beginnings end (prompt 21)We are but ghosts, after all. Life, as all things, traipses onward with the pull of time. The ghosts of our past collide with the dreams of our futures. Our bodies are houses filled with skeletons both literal and figurative. They creak with age and decay against our pleading to slow down. They carry our secrets to graves with slow movements. Our memories are the residual haunts that roam the hallways of our minds. Important memories that draw us back to details, places and faces, and moments we are desperate to immortalize in the annals of time. But, like all structures, they fall. Our doors become boarded up and the laughter and light must leave. The details fade, the foundation accumulates dust, until all that’s left is the land we lay on. The upkeep of living is costly, but life itself is worth living. So, let us haunt this earth while we can. We are but ghosts, after all. (This prompt required the same opening and closing sentences.) "New Year's Eve" - repeat after me... (Prompt 22)Eleven resounding chimes bound down the corridor at the clock strikes 11:00pm, the echoing sound akin to war drums on the horizon as soldiers march onward toward battle. Father Herring sits in the chapel, in the eleventh row of pews, and listens to the church bells chime around him. One more hour until the new year rolls in. He can hardly believe it.
The eleventh call from the belfry beckons to him. So, he rises from the pew and paces back eleven lines of old wooden benches toward the pulpit. He grabs his leather-bound bible, opens it to the eleventh Psalm and takes solace in the words. The small pocket calendar tucked under the stacks of paper is stuck in the past, back in November, in the eleventh month. Stuck in autumnal times. The 11th is circled with blue pen, it was an important Sunday even if he cannot remember why. The snowfall outside the windows flitters and flows like glitter against the pale streetlight outside. Last he checked, the temperature would be stagnant at 11° Fahrenheit, bitterly nipping at fingers and cheeks of those who stay out to watch another year roll in. He could hardly believe it was his eleventh year in these hallowed halls. How blessed was he. How blessed this New Year’s Eve with so many reminders of eleven years of grace, good fortune, and kindness. What a powerful number indeed. (This prompt required eleven mentions of the word eleven.)
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AuthorA collection of short stories and flash fiction pieces. These original tales are the property of Alycia Davidson 2017-2023. This section of my site is rarely used now as I tend to post more short stories on my Patreon. Archives
July 2023
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