Tag Archives: drabble

If I Could Turn Back Time

desk

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

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“No! This is not what I meant!”

Eight-year-old Erin pounded her fists on the back of the chair and then recoiled when it hurt so much. She squealed in her too squeaky, little girl voice.

She wanted to go back and fix the past. The experiment held that promise. The forty-two-year-old physicist stepped into the acceleration chamber and vanished.

It was thirty-four years ago. Her old bedroom. She thought she’d arrive as herself; as an adult. Instead, she was projected into her younger body.

The door opened and she cringed.

“Daddy’s here, Erin.”

The horror was starting all over again.

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The Exploding Candy Store

candy

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

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“Annoying,” Phil complained.

One of the tiny cameras he had hidden throughout the candy shop showed him the place wasn’t empty. The clerk was out front having a smoke, but the customer with the backpack was still shopping inside.

“Come on,” he whispered in the basement darkness, fingers poised on the toggle while his eyes scanned the monitors.

Pesky finally selected an ancient pack of Cherry Humps and headed for the register. The clerk was taking his final drag when Backpack went to get him.

“Boom.” Phil threw the switch. One more hated icon of his childhood blown to bits.

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Dinner for Two

dinner

PHOTO PROMPT © Sandra Crook

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Larry sat at his usual table by the window, always dinner for one. His wife had died when their daughter Chrissie was four. He tried to be a good Dad, but that ended with the drunken car accident. Chrissie was ten when she died and it was his fault.

A few weeks ago, he found he could go back, but only to that one day. He relived it all, terror making him tremble as he got her into the car. He returned to the present not sure if he had changed enough.

“Hi, Daddy.” Now it was dinner for two.

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Neglect

fleur

PHOTO PROMPT © Fleur Lind

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“Screw it.” Sam’s aging body sat heavily onto the wrought iron chair. Long legs were stuffed underneath the matching table. The garden she had lovingly created looked like crap. He’d neglected everything over the summer. Now the morning air had the familiar chill of autumn.

No one had died. They just left him. He finally thought he’d gotten his life together, but they just left him. The divorce was quick and clean. Danny moved his family, Sam’s beloved grandchildren, to the middle-east for his dream job. The other two kids were too busy. Her garden was his life in shambles.

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Anhedonia

lightning

PHOTO PROMPT © Dale Rogerson

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A storm was coming. It was perfect. A trick of the wind let him hear the laughter of old men swapping jokes at the nearby truck stop. Wyatt trudged through the freight yard. Old, rusted cargo containers were stacked high around him. In another life he would have found it artistic.

He couldn’t feel the humor in laughter nor the joy in art anymore. He hadn’t for a long time. Not since she came to stay.

She never spoke. She didn’t have to. He could feel her mood, her one mood always with him.

The demon Anhedonia brooked no pleasure.

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Odd Man Out

joes

PHOTO PROMPT © Rochelle Wisoff-Fields

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For a chain, Joe’s Crab Shack had lots of personality. It fit how Mickey saw the life he used to live. Now he had bigger problems, his co-workers.

“Hey, there he is,” shouted Nate waving him over to their table. “About time you got here.”

He sucked up his nerve and tried to look confident walking over to them. He’d always avoided these “team building” meetings before because they all had one thing in common; booze.

“Here.” Laurie handed him a beer as he sat down.

“Just a Coke,” he nodded to the waiter. He was starting a new life.

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Little (Synthetic) Girl Lost

brenda's bus

PHOTO PROMPT © Brenda Cox

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It was illegal for her to be in Shenzhen let alone to time shift into the past. Fortunately, she had enough power left to transmogrify into a western tourist and evade her pursuers. As she boarded the double-decker street bus, she did attract some male attention, but for predictable reasons.

He kept a home in the Bantian district where her transportation was heading. If Dr. Kao didn’t have the technology in 1998 to fix her, she’d have to spend the next thirty years pretending to age to reach her present. Could she warn her former self to avoid the accident?

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A Few Centuries More or Less in the Man Cave from Hell

man cave

PHOTO PROMPT © Alicia Jamtaas

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“Oh now, it’s not all that bad,” said the Dark Prince.

I reacted in appropriate horror. “Are you kidding? It’s hideous. Could we just go with the traditional lake of fire with demons wielding pitchforks?” I knew I was whining, but what more could he do to me?

“This isn’t on me. I wasn’t the one who spent decades swilling booze, snorting coke, and who ended up committing suicide after bankrupting his family.”

He had me there. I was a louse. There were reasons but they didn’t matter.

“It’s not forever,” he said smiling. “Just until you redeem your soul.”

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Steamflight

liz

PHOTO PROMPT © Liz Young

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“You really like it in that steampunk reality?” Josue Hunter stood in this secret museum admiring the flying machine with his best friend Wyatt Ellison.

“You sound so surprised, Josue. I got into time traveling for the adventure, so when history made this turn, you knew I’d jump for it.”

“And you knew I’d pass, giving up time travel. My universe became safe and mundane, well except for this.” He motioned toward alternate reality’s first steam driven aeroplane from the mid-19th century.

“You needed your history to be safe for your family. The time change gave you that, my friend.”

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Collector’s Item

guitar

PHOTO PROMPT © Jennifer Pendergast

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“You’re kidding. No. Absolutely not.” Daniel stared in disgust at the rainbow-striped acoustic guitar. It was hanging with others of the more common variety in a second-hand store catering exclusively to metanormal customers.

“I’m serious. In a couple of months, when GenZ discovers the music of legendary folk singer Kain DeMarko, it will be worth millions. He played it three times at the Fillmore West during the Summer of Love.”

“You are the silliest predictive AI I’ve ever engaged.” He’d just leased Sofia and uploaded her into his cranial implant last week.

“It’s on discount for one-fifty. C’mon, buy it.”

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