Category: Microfiction

50 Shades

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

Hello Hello and welcome to microfiction Monday, this weeks prompt was “Write a Fable”, which I absolutely fell in love with. Follow Fanny as she experiences her justice system from the side of the defendent, I will say it is not as saucy as the title implies, and the following trigger warnings apply: Murder, Attempted sexual assault, extreme justice, dark AF. Hope you enjoy.

The rating system had always seemed fair before Fanny found herself at its mercy.

Where a jury was made up of twelve people, the new system presented the facts to 10,000, simply as they were, with no emotion, embellishments, or heartfelt pleas for mercy to sway the raters before they chose innocent or guilty. There were only two punishments, exile to a penal colony, or death, though some would argue given the conditions at the colony, it was a question of which was worse.

Upon implementation, crime rates plummeted, and for the first time in her life Fanny felt safe walking home alone at night in the city. She did so each night, and she was honestly shocked when the man held her at knife point, and told her to take off her clothes.

She fought, she got the knife, she stabbed him, and despite the fact it was in no way her intent, that knife struck an artery, and he died.

Intent however, was classified as an embellishment, as was a description of her fear, the way it felt to have him standing over her, the fact he had 100 pounds on her, and even the fact that with her broken heel she didn’t think she could outrun him.

She looked at the facts of the case as they were presented, and hoped for death, because there was no accounting for circumstances, and should she be sent to the colony, she might as well have surrendered to her fate. 

Suddenly, the idea of a few guilty people getting off on the mercy of other, seemed like less of a tragedy than it once had, and Fanny sobbed as she recognized the price of the thin veneer of safety that had been created.  She never realized that she would be the one to ultimately pay.

*Moral of the story: Not everything is black and white, reality is full of shades of grey.*

Advertisement

Travelling Alone

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

Hello Hello and welcome to my sci-fi micro fiction based on the prompt: Write about a character travelling. This follows the story of Gem, who is travelling alone for the first time and has some anxiety about it. The goal was to work in the worldbuilding. *Note, I am going back to bi-weekly updating for a bit, taking two night classes and I just am not quite on top of weekly microfiction AND weekly six sentence stories

It wasn’t Gem’s first trip to the Geren, but it was a fair number of credits to take the trip, and though her parents were fairly well off, even they could not afford the trip more than once a decade. 

It was why Gem was alone this time, strapped in between two strangers, eyes squeezed shut, more scared than she had been in her entire life. 

It seemed, to Gem at least, that knowing that you had taken a jump ship before, was not the same as remembering it, and she kind of wished that she was little enough that she didn’t know the 3000 ways that this could go wrong, or that 1 in 20000 flights never made it to their destination, or that there was were 100000 flights per day in the commonwealth, so that meant that 5 would likely go catastrophically wrong, and she could be on that flight right now.

She was pulled from her musings by a woman in from of her, a Graxan, Gem guessed from the deep blue of her skin and overly large eyes.  Gem had only ever seen pictures in books, Franme was not exactly a diverse world.

“Are you coming dear?” The Graxan asked, voice echoing through multiple chambers to sound like a chorus.

“Coming?” Coming where exactly, was what Gem wanted to ask, but didn’t.

“Off the ship dear.”

“Was there a problem?” Maybe this ship wasn’t making it, a little less catastrophically than Gem had imagined, or well, dreaded.

“No dear, we are here.  Welcome to Geren.”

One False Step

~ annemcsommers ~ Leave a comment

Hello hello and welcome to this weeks Microfiction Monday a response to the adventure prompt on the Writer’s Mess, Write a piece under 300 words about a quester who doesn’t feel that the quest has changed them at all. Follow a friend of our quester that sees the changes wrought, only after the quest has ended.

She wished that she could turn back time, and pay a little more attention to him.

She wished that she had told him that this was real life, not a fantasy novel, and that he didn’t have to fit some sort of rigid character structure, that just because he was unchanged it didn’t mean that he was destined for the sacrifice play.

She wished that she had told him that even though he couldn’t see that he had changed, he had grown stronger, wiser, more empathetic, and that while she loved him before, he had become a man that she could fall in love with.

Looking down at her reflection in the glossy black surface of the casket, she flashed back to her reflection In the obsidian room on the tomb. He was by her side then, the relic secured in his trusty messenger bag, and they were on their way back out when the trap was triggered by a single misstep.

She had tripped, and it was over, she knew it would kill her to lift her foot, and if she pressed down any longer, the stone would sink low enough to trigger another. She looked up to say goodbye, and for a second when she saw the resolve in his eyes, she thought he had a plan.

He did have a plan, and she lay dazed, messenger bag in hand, watching him sink in her place before she realized It wasn’t a plan to rescue both of them.

The worst part was the smile on his face, the look of accomplishment, like this was the way it was always meant to be, and it was what made her wish that she could turn back time.

Dusk

~ annemcsommers ~ 4 Comments

Hello Hello and welcome to the six sentence story of the week with the word bubble.  It is also a fill for round 3 of the genre prompt fantasy, where the challenge was to write under 300 words about someone doing something mundane but load it with world building to let us know it’s fantasy. Follow our narrator as they take a walk alone at dusk, enjoying being on their own.

She never loved the valley more than in the gloaming, when the dark hadn’t quite taken hold, but the orange light of the sun wasn’t distorting the colors.  Some flowers had already closed up, and the night dwellers had begun to open to be bathed in the light of the moon.

It was a dangerous time to be out, as most the predators in the valley with diurnal, and if Karoth was right, they might have a wyrm on the property, but he wasn’t worried though, her craft was strong, and the amulet she bore would protect her from any roving creatures.

It wasn’t just the beauty that brought her out at dusk, it was the one time that no one would notice her missing from the palace, with the staff too busy cleaning up from dinner, and her family all preparing for bed. 

If she were back within the hour for her nightly rite of purification, no one would even know that she had left, that she had risked the four kingdoms for a stroll alone, without the thoughts of other elves pressing into her head, displacing her own.

It was not a luxury she would be able to indulge in after the wedding, after her coronation, for there would always be someone beside her to keep her trapped in a bubble of safety, stopping her from doing more than simply existing, and so, for now, she walked though the valley in the gloaming, reveling in the tranquility of her solitude.