Tag Archives: 100 words

Chasing the Zodiac

photo prompt roger bultot

© Roger Bultot

Martin Fields looked out window of his rented condo at a street recently swept of snow. “So primitive, Isis, but we won’t be here long.”

“It’s your fault we’re here at all.”

Fields turned to face her. She was beautiful by design, reminding him that she wasn’t human.

“How could I know he’d find my time machine? It was a one in a million shot that he figured out how it worked.”

“We gave you time travel so you could enforce justice.”

“We traced him to 2014, forty years after the Zodiac Killer disappeared. This time he won’t get away.”

I wrote this as part of Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ Friday Fictioneers Challenge. Using a photo prompt, authors are supposed to write a piece of flash fiction no more than 100 words in length. My wee missive weighs in at exactly 100.

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

There are two influences for my story. The first is the Star Trek original series episode Assignment: Earth. The starship Enterprise travels back in time to Earth of 1968 to do historical research and encounters a human being beaming from a planet light years away to New York City accompanied only by a black cat.

The man is the descendent of humans taken to another planet thousands  of years ago by an alien race to be trained as secret agents intended to guide humanity to become a peaceful race. The agent’s name is Gary Seven (played by the late Robert Lansing), and he made a similar statement about primitive humanity looking out the window of his penthouse down at the streets of Manhattan. His cat was named “Isis” and was actually an alien metamorph.

The second influence is the 1979 film Time After Time. In late 19th century London, writer and visionary H.G. Wells (played by Malcolm McDowell) invents a time machine which is then stolen by his friend Stevenson, who has been discovered to be the notorious murderer Jack the Ripper (played by David Warner). Wells chases Stevenson to 1979 San Francisco to stop him from killing more women and somehow to bring him to justice.

In my case, I changed Jack the Ripper to the Zodiac Killer, who is believed to have murdered up to 37 people in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1960s and 70s.

I added a twist. Future humanity didn’t invent time travel. It was a gift from non-human entities who have chosen certain people to act as their agents, doing justice across history.

I know. You’re probably getting bored  of  time travel stories by now, however I want to see how many I can write based on these prompts.

Addendum: If you liked this story, I’m featuring the same characters in another, slightly longer tale called On Wednesday the Time Traveler Got Wet.

An Alien Walks Into A Bar

alien

Comic book cover from 1958

Frank Lyman was working on his third Vodka Collins when the alien came through the door. Frank had been stopping by Murphy’s Bar every Friday night after work for nearly ten years, and this was the first time he thought the booze was spiked.

All of the regulars at the bar, plus Murphy serving drinks behind it, froze like ice sculptures and stared.

“RJhmzzxpingwqupnmkl-ooo-dx!” Static came out of the alien’s spacesuit. It adjusted a knob on its chest.

“Better? Understand?”

“What?” Frank forgot to swallow and his drink dribbled onto his shirt.

“Spaceship broken. Roadside service here?”

Okay, I know the image I used as an inspiration doesn’t show a bar, but when I saw it, I thought it looked like the beginning of a bad joke, “An alien walks into a bar.” I wrote it for fun.

Flash fiction of 99 words.

Oh, the comic book was published in 1958.

The Magic Boat Ride

boat

© KayllistisQuill.com

Landon knew the boat was magic the minute he saw it. The 10-year-old boy and his 4 1/2-year-old sister Dani were vacationing with their Dad and his latest girlfriend at a beach house in California.

“C’mon, Dani. Let’s have an adventure.” He took his sister’s hand and helped her follow him into the boat.

“What about, Landon?” She looked up at him quizzically.

He stood dramatically facing forward. “Our spaceship to Mars is taking off!”

Imagination abruptly became reality as the magical boat and its tiny passengers rocketed out of Earth’s atmosphere.

This is the third and final piece of flash fiction in my series, inspired by photos at KayllistisQuill.com. The first story is The Prayer followed by Over the Edge.

I had a little fun putting my grandchildren in this one, even though I had to age them about three years.

I allowed myself a maximum of 100 words, and this story came in at a mere 91.

Over the Edge

the edge

© KayllistisQuill.com

“Come to the edge, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. Morons!”

Twenty-three year old Zandar let his legs dangle over the building’s ledge and took in the view of downtown Vancouver. It was magnificent. It was the main reason he let his group of stoner friends lure him up here.

But now they were gone and he was alone.

Mike, Kari, James, and Humberto had all been high on “Elation”. They thought they could fly. They couldn’t. Zandar survived because he was their designated driver.

Fire and Paramedics were just arriving to mop up the mashed, bloody corpses.

This is the second in my three-part miniseries of flash fiction tales inspired by three photos at KayllistisQuill.com. See my first submission The Prayer for more details.

This story is exactly 100 words long.

The third and final submission in this series is The Magic Boat Ride, which is a children’s tale.

The Prayer

church

© KayllistisQuill.com

Gary was the only one in church. Everyone else was dead or changed. He was temporarily safe. They dared not enter a Holy place. But soon hunger and thirst would force him outside to forage. If he prayed hard enough, maybe God would have mercy. His wife and children were killed in the first attack, but his little granddaughter Lisa was changed and part of the Zombie horde. “Please save her, God.”

A voice whispered, “He did, Papa. That’s just my body, not me.” Gary wept as his family in Heaven reassured him they were safe and waiting for him.

I didn’t find any flash fiction writing prompts in my email inbox this morning, so I decided to go looking for some. I found three at KayllistisQuill.com. The instructions say to pick one of the three photos and write a 15-minute story. I decided to change things slightly and do the usual “100 words” limitation. I also decided to write three different stories based on the three photos presented. This is number one.

This story is exactly 100 words long.

The next story in today’s series is Over the Edge.

Uncle Eli’s Machine

the machine

© Sandra Crook / Found at Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ blogspot

For two weeks, Evan had been investigating the odd, sprocketed contraption in the basement of the house he’d inherited from old Uncle Eli, an eccentric inventor who’d been tinkering with it for the past sixty years.

Evan didn’t fathom the machine’s purpose, but he did think he could get the gears moving.

He made one last adjustment with his screwdriver.

Evan jumped back as the large driver cog suddenly lurched one “ka-chunk” counterclockwise.

Then the light changed. “So, my time machine finally worked, I see.”

Evan turned. The figure speaking to him was Uncle Eli at age 26.

I wrote this as part of (last week’s) Friday Fictioneers challenge hosted by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. The idea is to write a piece of flash fiction using a max of 100 words and base it on the photo prompt you see at the top of the page. The details are at Rochelle Wisoff-Fields’ blog (scroll down).

Read all of the responses to this flash fiction challenge at InLinkz.com (over 80 as of this writing).

My story is exactly 99 words long.