I was having a look through my Dropbox files today and realised I have a small cache of short stories, both finished and unfinished. Instead of letting them gather cyber-dust I thought I’d share some of them with you. I hope you enjoy them.
Today’s is something I wrote for Faber’s QuickFic competition, which seems to no longer be running. At 9.50am each Friday, a prompt was provided on their website – an image or words, sometimes both – and people were invited to write a story of 250 words or less, inspired by it. The resulting flash fiction had to be submitted by 2.50pm the same day.
This is what I managed to come up with, based on the above picture. If you fancy having a go yourself please feel free!
‘Stand over there, I’ll take a picture,’ he said.
‘Why don’t we take a selfie so we’re both in it,’ I said.
‘Yeah, we can do that in a minute. First let me take one of you so I get the horizon in it.’
I walked towards the shoreline. The sea-soaked sand was cold and a little bit slimy. The temperature had dropped and goose bumps appeared on my arms.
‘Stop!’ he called.
I turned to face him and smiled awkwardly as he held the phone in front of his face. ‘Right, come over and let’s get the two of us in it.’
‘Yeah, in a minute. Why don’t you hold your umbrella up? See how that looks.’
‘It’s stopped raining, it’ll look weird.’
‘It’ll look arty. Go on.’
‘It’s bad luck.’
‘That’s only when you’re indoors. And anyway, that’s nonsense.’
‘Fine, but hurry up.’
Oblivious to him, three teenage boys had appeared, grinning like idiots behind his shoulder.
‘Right, are you done?’
‘Yeah, just one more. This light is amazing.’
I watched as two of the boys started to walk on towards the steps that led back up to the road. The other boy remained where he was.
‘That’s enough pictures. Stop now,’ I said.
And then the boy grabbed his rucksack, which he’d discarded by his ankles, and bolted, throwing it to one of the others.
‘Your bag!’ I started running after them.
‘Yeah, I’ll get it in a sec. This is a great action shot!’
cloud cocoa 