A Story in a Flash - A Collection of 300 Word Flashfiction Stories Read online

  “My name’s Eva, this must be yours?” she said, holding out the butterfly to Darwin.

  “Thank you Eva. I’m Darwin. Welcome to Eden,”

  New World View

  By

  Michael Drake

  Davie clambered, single-handedly, down the ladder to the north orchard fruit cellar. His other hand held the claws of a large bird, flapping its wings for balance.

  "Dad! They've come back! The hawks are back!"

  "I can see that Davie." said Darwin, as he hoisted a bushel of everfruit onto a shelf. "Let’s go see what recon he brought back."

  Davie climbed back up while dodging flapping wings. Darwin followed right behind, pockets bulging with everfruit.

  Back at the computer lab, Davie’s mother, Eva covered the hawk’s head with a linkhood, calming the hawk while linking to the recon mod in the hawk’s brain. The results loaded to their armcomps, Davie, his sister Lynn and their parents settled in to analyze the results. Davie and Lynn organized the nan scan results while Darwin and Eva set up a quick scan program to review the visual flight data.

  “Positive nan results during day twelve scanning. The only nans found are in Environmental Green set. No War-nans found!” exclaimed Davie.

  “No positives for M-Plague found,” reported Lynn.

  “That’s a first”, said Eva. “and a relief. I’m seeing minimal, isolated bioblooms.”

  At the counter, where Darwin had sliced his everfruit to cover the fleshfruit dish they were having for dinner, Eva hit the Hot setting on the dish.

  “Dozens of moving target sightings, none nanhuman,” reported Darwin. “That’s also a relief. I think that the time may finally be right for us to take our first field trip.”

  “We’re really leaving Area 77?” asked Lynn.

  Eva stood next to Darwin, the hot fleshfruit dinner in hand.

  “We’ll stay close our first trip,” said Eva, “and start planting fruit outside our door.”

  “It’s time to start spreading the fruits of Area 77,” said Darwin, “Let’s hope there are people left to share them with.”

  Getting Home

  By

  Michael Drake

  Grafton was glad to be waking up. It meant that the experimental ship must have successfully made it through the first near-FTL test. The cryochamber cycled through its recovery sequence. He noticed a slight headache while climbing out of the pod but it was quickly forgotten as he realized something was not right with the ship.

  There was a tangle of stress lines, like a drunken spider webs, covering the walls and there were six red emergency lights flashing, one for each of the remaining cryochambers.

  Despite the freshly thawed feeling, Grafton managed to hobble down the row of chambers and much to his horror discovered every chamber had suffered catastrophic failure, every crew member inside beyond saving.

  “Ship Status check,” croaked Grafton, trying to get his voice to work again. No response from Ship and needing to get out of what had become a morgue led Grafton to don an emergency suit in what felt like record time. Suit systems checked green and he was out into main section of the ship. Stresses in the walls and floor kept Grafton moving as fast as he could, but he hesitated before entering the Bridge. From the entryway he could see the pilots chair filled with the pulpy remains of the pilot.

  It took several hours of stomach churning clean-up to get the Bridge in order and Ship had decided to come on-line during that time.

  There would be no more near-FTL. The fractures meant a slow crawl home in real time. Grafton was looking at over 250 years to get back home. The cryochamber would function that long with Ship monitoring and making adjustments. Nothing would be the same when he got home but he would at least make it back. He was glad to be going back to sleep.

  Goes Around What Comes Around

  By

  Michael Drake

  …and stepped into my room. I was surprised. Up until then I had assumed it was a mirror on the wall. Yet the man standing there had made the mirror seem like thin air.

  “My name is Kiem,” he said sticking out his hand confidently.

  “I’m Mike,” I said, with less confidence.

  “It’s a pleasure to….meet you Mike.”

  “How did you get through that?” I asked, glancing at the now normal looking mirror. “Why exactly are you here?”

  “I’m here to make sure you’re prepared for your mission and you carry it out.”

  “I’m a bookkeeper. What type of mission do you think I could possibly do?”

  “I’m from the future. I know exactly what you have to do. You have to save the world.”

  Kiem explained that future terrorists would give an ultimatum to all the world’s governments. They’d send up satellites that would control bombs hidden in major cities. Governments would be helpless to strike without provoking the terrorists into detonating the bombs. Software control of the satellites wouldn’t work and destruction of the satellites would trigger the bombs to detonate. So no government on the planet could know about my mission.

  The ship and parts took twenty years to assemble and were ready for use.

  Kiem was confident I was ready too, which was a good thing since the time had come that the world needed saving.

  After a flight and spacewalk to each satellite, replacing hardware with virus encoded equivalents, I managed to shutdown the satellite link to all the bombs and the terrorist headquarters worldwide, and revealed their locations.

  Years later as Kiem was dying he told me it was my time to be the teacher. I knew that was my new destiny.

  I set the switch. The mirror shimmered and changed. I walked forward…

  Goldilocks And The Four Bears

  By

  Michael Drake

  Goldilocks could hear crying from the other side of the front door of the Bears house. She let herself in and followed the sobbing to the kitchen. There sat Momma Bear at the table bawling into her large paws.

  “What’s the matter Momma Bear?” asked Goldilocks.

  “It’s Papa Bear, he said he’s going to leave me for…..for someone else,” sobbed Momma Bear. “He said he realized he likes bears, furry ones.”

  “Well you are a bear. What does he mean?” asked Goldilocks.

  “Of course we are and we’re furry too!” said Momma Bear, who was beginning to get agitated. “Pardon my rudeness, have a seat dear.”

  Goldilocks started to sit down in the large chair beside Momma Bear.

  “No, not there dear, Papa Bear throws a fit when someone sits in his seat and Baby Bear’s is too small for you. Take mine, its just right.”

  Goldilocks sat in the chair and gave Momma Bear a hug for comfort.

  Just then little Ms. Ridinghood came in the front door. “I hope I’m not interrupting but I had to get away from Grandma,” said Red, as she walked into the kitchen. “She’s a mess. Don’t let me look like that when I’m old.”

  “Would you girls like porridge?” asked Momma Bear.

  They both nodded and Momma Bear pushed her bowl towards them. “Have mine, its just right. You’ll have to share the spoon.”

  The girls were finishing up the porridge when Papa Bear sauntered into the kitchen.

  “I didn’t realize you girls were here,” he said, suddenly shy. He turned to Momma Bear “Well dear, I’ve brought someone for you to meet.”

  A large furry bear entered the kitchen and stood by Papa.

  “Dear, I’d like you to meet Bruce. Bruce, this is Momma Bear,”

  Momma Bear fainted on the spot.

  Hansel and Gretel Eat Out

  By

  Michael Drake

  Hansel and Gretel were both naughty kids. They knew they weren’t supposed to go back into the woods behind their house, but they would sneak back there every chance they got. Hansel was sure that the stories of evil witches and goblins must have been made up by his parents to scare him and his
sister. Hansel urged Gretel to go a little bit further each day down the logging road that led into the thick woods until one day they came across a gingerbread house. It not only had gingerbread walls, it was covered in candies and sweets, gumdrops and treats, all tasty looking and ready to eat.

  Hansel was not impressed and his sister didn’t even look at the house, but instead went right up to the door and knocked.

  Gretel was not surprised to see a large lady, more than likely a witch by the looks of her pointed black hat.

  The witch smiled sweetly at the children and greeted them each with a pudgy hand to shake.

  “My, my you look hungry,” said the witch.

  “You don’t,” said the rude children.

  “Help yourself to anything edible you see,” said the witch.

  “Oh, we plan to,” said Hansel.

  “What are you making?” asked Gretel.

  “A big pot of kid….kidney stew and potatoes,” replied the witch, coyly.

  The witch bustled up to the oversized pot, which was boiling on a large, albeit contained fire. She was just finishing peeling the last of the potatoes when, suddenly Hansel grabbed her peeler and threw it in the stew pot.

  “What are you doing, you naughty boy!” exclaimed the witch as she reached over the edge of the pot for the peeler.

  That’s when the children pushed her into the pot.

  In a house made of candy, witch did they eat?

  #aprayertogod

  by

  Michael Drake

  #aprayertogod:

  Dear God, I’ve been limited to 140 characters. I don’t see why. I have a lot to say, well ask, really and that just doesn’t seem like it would cover it. Anyway, Dear God plea

  Urgh! See? I just got started and I’m cut off. I’m going to have to keep the prayers to a minimum tonight, God, due to an apparent lack of space on the inventor’s server. Ble

  Awe Man! I’m mean Sir,uhm your Magnificence, Father?…um anyway I’m sure you know who you are. I mean you’re God. I don’t need to be telling you that. So, Dear God please bl

  I know the Pope is on here and I’m a faithful follower. I read his posts. Eventually. When I can find a hotspot, but maybe, God, this just isn’t the right way to send my praye

  Okay, enough already! How does anyone get anything across in these limited character blurbs? There’re billions of these things on the internet. What are they saying?

  Oh My God! Ooops!, sorry God but have you seen how these people are wasting their time with this thing? They want to tell the world every little thought (and I do mean littl

  Geez! I can’t even get a full sentence typed and meanwhile half the world posted what they ate for breakfast or what fleeting unfiltered thought they want to share, NOW!

  Don’t these people think before posting?! I mean especially the posts to You! Sure they thank You for things they do, but why do they ask You to make their sports team win?

  How do You sort through these? Well God I love you. I just wanted to check in. Sorry this didn’t work out I’ll be doing my prayers the old fashioned way, so look for me there.

  #aprayertogodout

  Head to the Edge

  By

  Michael Drake

  After eight hundred years of relative solitude a death literally shook our asteroid world. My only companion in our domed habitat was an AI, SAH. SAH volunteered to nanfact a drone to investigate the impact that clearly had occurred on the asteroid’s opposite, uninhabited hemisphere.

  The results showed an object whose crash had been sudden and total in its destruction. Confirmed traces of a Panda human, a humanda were retrieved from its lifepod wreckage. But its head, presumably in a cryocase, had been ejected before impact.

  Two days of debate with SAH convinced me that we needed to retrieve the cryocase. I was still arguing for a virtual cell within SAH to contain the humanda persona when the cryocase was located on a steady trajectory to our local sun. The drone required a first ever use of the pulsehole to insert it ahead of the cryocased head with an interception that still took over a million kilometers.

  The humanda’s name was Cooleenee and she had been in whole body cryo for 562 years, up until recently on an escape path from the destruction of her ship to pirates.

  Cooleenee’s head, it was agreed, would be paired with a cloned body and not have its persona dumped in a virtual cell.

  It took the death of Cooleenee’s body to cause attention to her life. I tease her that I fell in love with her the moment I saw her face. Of course that was all that was left of her to see. Any hesitation to interrupt my century’s long exile vanished when I saw her.

  We’ve since had three children, all of whom left the asteroid in an eventual search for their own destinies. Cooleenee and I have found our destiny on a tiny asteroid on the edge of the galaxy.

  Historic Hosehead

  By

  Michael Drake

  I had just finished setting up a stationary camera for the historic broadcast when my suit gave an urgent heads-up showing only seconds left of oxygen inside my helmet. There’d been no warning of a malfunction with no time for troubleshooting, instead I blindly grabbed behind for the emergency hose on my suitpack and dug for a breather to jam in the end. I triggered the activation button. With no direct connection for the hose to the helmet I would have to open it to vacuum and insert the hose to mouth the breather.

  I overrode the auto-safety, pulling up my visor against a barrage of warning alarms. The pressure loss burst both my eardrums instantly, but I had no time to acknowledge the pain. Frostbite threatened to set in as I frantically used the spacetape from the camera kit to temporarily seal my visor and the hose to the base of my helmet.

  Thankfully my breather was feeding me oxygen and eating my exhale breath, the helmet pressure regained its loss and the seal seemed to be holding.

  As each alarm subsided, I could barely make out Kolipinski’s voice through the cacophony.

  “Liz…they’ve…started broadcasting!”

  I knew Kolipinski was back on the Promise landing craft monitoring my erratic suit readouts as well as the stationary camera’s view of my awkward predicament. Seven billion people on Earth would also be seeing, some five minutes later, that same view of the first human on Mars.

  I, Elizabeth Fallon, was an embarrassment to humanity. I looked like a duct taped Darth and could barely mumble with the breather in my mouth. Here I was placed on the pinnacle of human achievement, the first human to stand on another planet and I’ll end up being known as “Hosehead Liz”.

  Humpty’s Downfall

  By

  Michael Drake

  Humpty Dumpty got his nickname from his horniness and his squat, rounded, egg body. Wanting a better view of the eggs in the chicken coop Humpty built wooden steps that led to the top of a large brick wall overlooking the chicken coop window. He had spent most of that autumn sitting on the wall, hoping to catch glimpses of the freshest eggs on the farm.

  “I’m having a great Fall,” thought the Dumpty guy.

  What were to become an inspiration for a certain famous sponge, Humpty’s suspender shorts hid all Humpty needed for his adventures. He pulled a pair of binoculars out of a pocket, adjusting the focus not on the chicken coop but instead on a cottage across the field. He had heard rumors of green eggs and ham and didn’t want to pass up an opportunity to meet them.

  Humpty suddenly felt ill by what he saw through the cottage window. Not some exotic green egg in a voluptuous skirt but a plate of COOKED green eggs and ham.

  Still focused on the window, Humpty was surprised again when a large green hand reached through the window and grabbed the plate of food.

  Lowered binoculars offered a flashing view of hairy green eggs, as large as Humpty, before a leaf-made toga was tugged down to hide them. Humpty’s instant reaction to the exotic eggs was barely contained in his shorts. The extremely large green man sat up eying Hum
pty’s predicament.

  “I was sick of just veggies. Problem with that Pointdexter?” asked Greenie, with a hungry look in his eye.

  The giant guy was about to pour his omelet when the King’s men arrived on horseback.

  Later at the hospital, Humpty’s last thought was “No wonder this is a disaster, they let the horses help with the surgery.”

  Lady Godiva Gets Johnny’s Appleseed

  By

  Michael Drake

  “What the hell!” exclaimed the nude woman riding on the startled horse. She reached up into her rather extensive hairdo and encountered a slimy apple core.

  “What. The. Hell!” exclaimed the woman, quite succinctly.

  “My humble apologies, madam,” said a voice.

  The woman looked down from her now settled horse and tucked her hair behind her ears and shoulders and back and buttock.

  “Who’re you and what the hell are you chucking fruit for?” asked the woman, lining the man up in her sights.