Author Archives: James Pyles

Redemption in a Playground

photo prompt liz

© Liz Young

I used to be like this junk. Drinking, smoking, a broken plastic person. A terrible father. A worse husband. Disreputable, divorced, self-destructive. But that’s before they were born. My grandchildren. They made me believe in myself because they believe in me. Now the man I was is just like this stuff, discarded. I’m sitting on this hill watching them frolic on the playground in the park below.

“C’mon down and play with us,” Johnny shouts.

“Yeah, Grandpa. Push me on the swing,” Cindy adds.

I stand up and walk toward my redemption.

Written for Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioners challenge. Based on the photo prompt above, you’re supposed to write a complete story of no more than 100 words. Mine came in at 93.

To read more stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

A Sky Filled With Hope

israel from space

Photo credit: NASA/Barry Wilmore – Israel from space

Each of the 1,038 nanosatellites that launched from the Satish Dhawan space port in India was hardly larger than a milk carton, but these small, inexpensive spacecraft, originally designed at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, were the hope of mankind.

Avi Salomon and Havah Tobias stood in Mission Control and watched the monitors as the nanosats reached their initial orbits. The “father” of the project, Professor Dan Blumberg, received a remote feed at Ben-Gurion in Beer-Sheva.

“It’s looking very good, Professor.” Tobias spoke into her microphone. “I think we will be successful.”

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Angel’s Eve

© Sunayana | MoiPensieve.com

© Sunayana | MoiPensieve.com

They rode through the city on their scooters on Angel’s Eve just before midnight. They rode through the avenues just as their parents and grandparents had before them.

The streets were filled with celebrants and anticipation. They could only hope that this would be the year she would return.

The clan Dunnmerry rode the lanes, waved at the crowds, and shouted “Happy Angel’s Eve.” The people in the crowds waved back with the greeting, “May she return to bless us.”

The brightly lit banners, all white and feathered, adorned every boulevard and byway. Just a few minutes left. The Dunnmerry riders arrived in the square. They got off their scooters and looked up expectantly.

Midnight came but not the Angel. They would have to wait another year and hope she would return to free them from the occupiers. The lights went off and a voice crackled out of loudspeakers all over the city.

“Return to your homes. Maintain order. Work begins in the mines promptly at 6 a.m. by order of the Commandant.”

Written in response to FFfAW Challenge-February 14, 2017. The challenge is to write a flash fiction story, based on the photo prompt above, between 100 and 175 words, with 150 being the ideal target. My story comes in at 173 words.

To read other stories based on this week’s prompt, visit InLinkz.com.

World Under Glass

biosphere 2

© Sascha Darlington

The history of Biosphere 2, supposedly the world’s first self-contained biosphere, was always surrounded by scandal. The first mission couldn’t scrub the CO2 out of the air and illicitly vented it. The second ended with a horrific battle in upper-management. Biosphere 2 entered the 21st century under the guidance of Columbia University, using it for climate change research. The project had been sold to new owners, owners with the correct vision, ethics, and science. Now they declared that after five years of exquisitely correct execution, they had created permanently self-sustaining environments.

Tourism at the Oracle, Arizona site was booming as the Luna and Ares domes were being prepared to be removed and taken by wide-load flatbeds to the Virgin Galactic launch site near Mammoth. Then they were to be mounted on massive Helena V rocket boosters. The Moon’s first colony dome will arrive within days, with its human and animal population arriving the following year. The Mars colony dome will become fully operational five years later.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Biosphere 2 project, and was disappointed by the continued failures and scandals that followed it in the 1990s. It looks like the technology has improved drastically since then, but I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to create a 100% self-contained sustainable artificial biosphere. If we could and if that environment could produce everything it needed to support a population with no external inputs for an indefinite future, then colonizing the Moon and Mars would only be the beginning of a new era of human space exploration.

I wrote this story for the Sunday Photo Fiction – February 12th 2017 challenge. The goal is to use the photo prompt above to create a flash fiction story of no more than 200 words. Mine comes in at a mere 166.

To read more stories based on this prompt, go to InLinkz.com.

Huastec

Av 5, Mexico City

© Google maps

Humberto waited until the rest of the workers knocked off for lunch. Then he went back to the part of the lot they were working on where he had found it. His mother was Aztec and named him Xochipilli after the god of feasting. His father forbade the ancient ways, so over the years, he met with other Aztecs in secret.

Mama taught him about their history and gods, which is how he recognized the stone figure of Huastec, the life-death idol concealed in the rubble. Who knows how many centuries it had been buried? He wrapped the figure in a small tarp and hid it in his truck. Huastec was a sign, a sign of the return of the rule of the Aztecs. Tonight, Xochipilli would meet with the others and plan. They would rise up. The first human sacrifice in centuries would take place next month.

huastec

Huastec – Brooklyn Museum / Creative Commons-BY

Written for the What Pegman Saw weekly photo writing prompt based on a view from Google Maps. The challenge is to use the image to write a piece of flash fiction of no more than 150 words. My story is 148. I did a 360 degree turn on Google maps and came up with a different view. I looked up the history of Mexico City and it has a significant Aztec presence. Then I looked up Aztec history and wrote my tale. I’m including a photo of Huastec for reference.

To read other stories inspired the what pegman saw, go to InLinkz.com.

The Mysterious Mummy

mummy

Stephen Voss – Smithsonian Magazine

The Tenth Story in the Adventures of the Ambrosial Dragon: A Children’s Fantasy Series

Landon had been bored and sleepy until the plane began its final descent toward Cairo International Airport. Then his face was glued to the window taking in every detail of a city that was over a thousand years old. Grandpa was sitting next to him, enjoying his eight-year-old grandson’s enthusiasm.

They had planned this vacation for months, ever since Grandpa read Landon the “Goosebumps” book Return of the Mummy by R.L. Stine. Grandpa actually had a friend in Egypt named Issa Salib who was an archaeologist, a person who studies history by digging at ancient sites like the pyramids, examining what they find…

…like mummies.

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The Mystery of the Fifteen Scrolls

scroll

The Temple scroll is the thinnest of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Discovered in 1956, it contains God’s instructions on how to run the Temple. Credit: The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

“This exciting excavation is the closest we’ve come to discovering new Dead Sea scrolls in 60 years. Until now, it was accepted that Dead Sea scrolls were found only in 11 caves at Qumran, but now there is no doubt that this is the 12th cave,” said Dr. Oren Gutfeld, an archaeologist at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology and director of the excavation.

“This is one of the most exciting archaeological discoveries, and the most important in the last 60 years, in the caves of Qumran.”

-Dov Smith, February 8, 2017
“Hebrew University archaeologists find 12th Dead Sea Scrolls cave”
Arutz Sheva

Martin Fields wasn’t at the press conference, but he did read this and other news reports about the remarkable discovery.

Actually, he wasn’t all that impressed, but Isis was.

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The Chair On The River

mystery chair

© Ted Strutz

Bill and Betty enjoyed walks along the river. Usually, it was beautiful and unremarkable, that is, until the chair. It was standing on the water as if waiting for someone.

“That’s impossible, Bill.”

“Probably not. Bet there’s a sandbar and someone in a boat put it there as a prank.”

Just then, they heard a rustling in the brushes behind them. A mediterranean looking gentleman appeared and said, “Excuse me.”

The pair moved aside and the stranger walked to the chair, sat, and waved.

“A trick.” Bill stepped into the water. Expecting to walk, his leg sank into freezing water.

Written as a response to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields 100 word photo challenge. The idea is to write a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words long based on the photo above. My story’s word count is exactly 100.

To read other stories based on the prompt, go to InLinkz.com

When Sean Met Sally

goth

Image: mookychick.co.uk

From the Unlife and Curse of Sean Becker

This is an open police investigation, so why am I involved? Because my boss, private detective Aidan Burke is paying me to be involved. More to the point, Conrad Grey, a wealthy commercial real estate tycoon, hired Burke to find his only granddaughter, thirteen-year-old Marianne. The kid went missing almost two weeks ago. LAPD thinks she’s a runaway. Grey thinks she’s been abducted. That’s why I’m walking the streets, contacting my informants, trying to get a lead.

Oh, by the way, my name is Sean Becker and I’m a vampire.

Officially, I can’t be licensed as a private detective because I’m dead. I work as Burke’s assistant by night, and sleep in his spare bedroom by day.

Being a vampire, I can cultivate information sources the police would never get close to. A few are other vampires like me, some with legit night jobs, others living on the edge of society, making it anyway they can.

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Why Should You Write Superversive Fiction?

super boy

© iStock

About the time I started my latest stint at writing fictional short stories, I discovered something called Superversive Fiction and particularly Superversive Science Fiction.

According to Russell Newquist, here’s generally what we can expect from Superversive Fiction:

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