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February Flash Fiction Challenge
10 years ago
Here is my contribution to this month's Flash Fiction challenge!
The challenge is to write a short story in one sitting- no time for editing, hemming or hawing, just type it an share.
This month's work is inspired by this piece of photography by
Timid-Wolf http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12348756/
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They found me.
I can hear the crashing of windows announcing their entrance into the living room.
I tie my sleeping bag around my shoulders like a silken hello kitty cape and sling my backpack over top. I can hear those frozen beasts scrambling through the kitchen, wreaking havoc on the last of my supplies. It won't take them long to get upstairs and claw the lock right off of my bedroom door. I turn to my window and press up on the sash, the endless winter wind rushes in with a swirl of snowflakes biting into me, despite my thick fur. With a shudder I clamber into the snow that is several feet thick. And with an awkward bound I make it to the edge of roof, the snow swirling around me obscuring the ground below.
Here goes. I wrap my hello kitty around me tighter and jump. For a breathless moment I feel suspended in a white void. Ice stinging my eyes and muzzle. Then with an unceremonious thump I hit the snow drift. Three story high window in this weather. No biggie. I roll down the pile and stagger through the storm towards the barn. I should have left so much sooner than than this.
I hear a chorus of roars erupt from the house behind me. They've caught my scent!
I push on through the thigh deep snow a little faster, my chest aches from the effort and the cold. The swirling clouds of snow thin momentarily and I can see my beautiful half collapsed barn peeking through at me. Hope and sadness join the fear pumping through my veins. As I struggle onwards flashes of my last visit cross my thoughts. My neighbor - Tanzar- and I arguing. Desperation sending us to each other's throats with claws extended. He had taken all of my gear to build our escape and failed to mention it would only lift out one of us. Our fight smashed through one too many of the support beams and when the roof collapsed, I was the only one who made it out.
Behind me I hear a howl - hardly muffled. They're in the yard.
I scramble to the leeward side of the barn and dig through the snow with my paws. I feel an edge of wood and lift on it with all my might. With a desperate shove I toss the board over and reveal my ice coated savior, the master piece of technology Tanzar hobbled together from chunks of heater and my old bike. Thank the gods. I risk a glance backwards, but all I can see is the thick curtain of snow. Only luck is going to get me away from these frozen beasts. I swing my pack down and scramble through it. My hand circles around the last of my energy cartridges. Quickly I lift it up while brushing off some of the snow coating the bike's frame with my other paw, searching. When I find the slot I I click the cartridge into place and the bike begins to wirr. The wheels spinning and heating up the ice coated to it. With a crack the frame spins on it's axis and it locks into it's grav-bike form. The wheels are spinning so fast that they look like disks floating beneath the seat. I pull my strap back up to my shoulder when something hits me from behind ripping through my precious hello kitty shield. I flip around swinging my heavy pack and smash the beast in the snout. It stuns him slightly causing the wolf to back up on his haunches. I quickly abandon my pack and jump up onto the heat bike. My frozen assailant snarls and springs forward just as I hit the ignition and send a blast of heat into his face, melting half of it to dripping nothingness. The bike thrusts forward through the remaining snow drift and with a spray of half melted snow my bike bursts out into the white wasteland.
I don't glance back to see if the beast is is pursuing me, too worried about being surprised from the front by an unseen obstacle. A collision at this speed would kill me. I pass by a mound with the tiniest bit of a chimney peeking through and realize Tanzar's house is lost for good. Shivering in the cold wind as it whips through me I realize, I have escaped this time, but where to?
The challenge is to write a short story in one sitting- no time for editing, hemming or hawing, just type it an share.
This month's work is inspired by this piece of photography by
Timid-Wolf http://www.furaffinity.net/view/12348756/*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
They found me.
I can hear the crashing of windows announcing their entrance into the living room.
I tie my sleeping bag around my shoulders like a silken hello kitty cape and sling my backpack over top. I can hear those frozen beasts scrambling through the kitchen, wreaking havoc on the last of my supplies. It won't take them long to get upstairs and claw the lock right off of my bedroom door. I turn to my window and press up on the sash, the endless winter wind rushes in with a swirl of snowflakes biting into me, despite my thick fur. With a shudder I clamber into the snow that is several feet thick. And with an awkward bound I make it to the edge of roof, the snow swirling around me obscuring the ground below.
Here goes. I wrap my hello kitty around me tighter and jump. For a breathless moment I feel suspended in a white void. Ice stinging my eyes and muzzle. Then with an unceremonious thump I hit the snow drift. Three story high window in this weather. No biggie. I roll down the pile and stagger through the storm towards the barn. I should have left so much sooner than than this.
I hear a chorus of roars erupt from the house behind me. They've caught my scent!
I push on through the thigh deep snow a little faster, my chest aches from the effort and the cold. The swirling clouds of snow thin momentarily and I can see my beautiful half collapsed barn peeking through at me. Hope and sadness join the fear pumping through my veins. As I struggle onwards flashes of my last visit cross my thoughts. My neighbor - Tanzar- and I arguing. Desperation sending us to each other's throats with claws extended. He had taken all of my gear to build our escape and failed to mention it would only lift out one of us. Our fight smashed through one too many of the support beams and when the roof collapsed, I was the only one who made it out.
Behind me I hear a howl - hardly muffled. They're in the yard.
I scramble to the leeward side of the barn and dig through the snow with my paws. I feel an edge of wood and lift on it with all my might. With a desperate shove I toss the board over and reveal my ice coated savior, the master piece of technology Tanzar hobbled together from chunks of heater and my old bike. Thank the gods. I risk a glance backwards, but all I can see is the thick curtain of snow. Only luck is going to get me away from these frozen beasts. I swing my pack down and scramble through it. My hand circles around the last of my energy cartridges. Quickly I lift it up while brushing off some of the snow coating the bike's frame with my other paw, searching. When I find the slot I I click the cartridge into place and the bike begins to wirr. The wheels spinning and heating up the ice coated to it. With a crack the frame spins on it's axis and it locks into it's grav-bike form. The wheels are spinning so fast that they look like disks floating beneath the seat. I pull my strap back up to my shoulder when something hits me from behind ripping through my precious hello kitty shield. I flip around swinging my heavy pack and smash the beast in the snout. It stuns him slightly causing the wolf to back up on his haunches. I quickly abandon my pack and jump up onto the heat bike. My frozen assailant snarls and springs forward just as I hit the ignition and send a blast of heat into his face, melting half of it to dripping nothingness. The bike thrusts forward through the remaining snow drift and with a spray of half melted snow my bike bursts out into the white wasteland.
I don't glance back to see if the beast is is pursuing me, too worried about being surprised from the front by an unseen obstacle. A collision at this speed would kill me. I pass by a mound with the tiniest bit of a chimney peeking through and realize Tanzar's house is lost for good. Shivering in the cold wind as it whips through me I realize, I have escaped this time, but where to?
You did a sweet job of packing a lot of story in a small space: you built the entire man vs. man conflict with Tanzar and resolved it in like four sentences and in such a way my imagination could paint the scene vividly.
You like sci-fi chase scenes, don't you?
I also have a serious addiction to sci-fi, fantasy, and action. I think what I should start doing is taking the flash fiction and seeing how to flesh it out more in a second draft. Skeletons look better with muscles and flesh, right?
It would be neat to see some of these fleshed out. That's kind of what this flash fiction is becoming for me: I way to push ideas into a bin for "maybe later". I like that because I've lost a lot of ideas on sticky notes in the past