Flash Fiction cooperative

[Buttrock as zen]

This is a thread for writing short complete works of fiction, take a prompt leave a prompt style. I myself will be aiming at 250 words or less.

Some starters:

1. The forbidden is buried under the manmade structure
2. A burst of light and then all fell silent
3. Animal wishes they could be another species
4. An author discovers a entirely new idea
5. They can't escape
6. Nothing could break their friendship
7. The thesis was plagiarized!
8. They peeled themselves like an onion

/pomo bait

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I'll bite.

The building had been there since before the war. I'd moved there`a few years ago, when according to everyone that was apparently an expert on such matters, things were normal. The basement was filled with shipping crates from companies that no longer existed. There were posters speaking of wonders and inventions that promised to be previews of what the century would be.

I wondered why nobody had been down here and cleared all this stuff out. Why was all this stuff sitting here, forgotten? The existence of this level couldn’t have been unknown to the property managers. The door leading to the stairway in the level above was off to the side, but it wasn’t hidden by anything. It would have been in plain sight to the maintenance crews.

The puzzle grew to become an annoyance. It almost seemed as though people believed there was some sort of curse to this stuff. I wondered if there was any point at all to concerning myself with something whose existence nobody else seemed to acknowledge. I couldn’t discuss it with anyone else, after all. Resigned, I make my way towards the stairs

The prompt I'm leaving:
The fate of the missing mambos (mambos 1-4)

[Utisz]

A burst of light and all fell silent. The first cry incised a path that others could follow. The newly baptised saw shadows once again. They clawed out to unseen loved ones that had once clawed out to them. Soft flesh slid away under their hands. Not ready to know this new world, they laid back and awaited their cradle.

Prompt: Please hold while we connect you to an operator

[Buttrock as zen]

Mambo #1
From antiquity, we can with slight certainty trace the archtypal mambo to the Old Kingdom, from the walls of the tomb of Neptut II, the so called Man-bo Sapem, or “Mambo of the Harem”. However, some modern egyptologists (Franzerl, Crumb in his later years) maintain that this was a silent dance which would confound our project here.

Mambo #2
The next reference in the historical record is in Villedelacroix’ Templar Chronicles (1274). “And the Greeks were commanded to send the evil women out from the city. This was done: the evil women were all put in a vessel as the bard intoned the Mambeaux Dei joined by the doleful strums of a lute.”

Mambo #3
Willhelm Grismeldus, in an apocryphal draft for his epic poem De Liminus, refers to our third Mambo:

The globe of blood forg’d rives
Deep from sky to sea and drown’d
The mambo gild with greaves of sin
Until the slab resound

Mambo #4
The fourth mambo was found on a sugar plantation and cradled like a baby. The jungle buzzed around her face, a little bit of Monica in the mangrove, a little bit of you makes me your sweat stained military shirt. a shiny black gun barrel. The river a blanket of cold sucking around her body, flailing towards a red bank, grey market methadone in a Havana bar

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

Mambo #1
From antiquity, we can with slight certainty trace the archtypal mambo to the Old Kingdom, from the walls of the tomb of Neptut II, the so called Man-bo Sapem, or “Mambo of the Harem”. However, some modern egyptologists (Franzerl, Crumb in his later years) maintain that this was a silent dance which would confound our project here.

Mambo #2
The next reference in the historical record is in Villedelacroix’ Templar Chronicles (1274). “And the Greeks were commanded to send the evil women out from the city. This was done: the evil women were all put in a vessel as the bard intoned the Mambeaux Dei joined by the doleful strums of a lute.”

Mambo #3
Willhelm Grismeldus, in an apocryphal draft for his epic poem De Liminus, refers to our third Mambo:

The globe of blood forg’d rives
Deep from sky to sea and drown’d
The mambo gild with greaves of sin
Until the slab resound

Mambo #4
The fourth mambo was found on a sugar plantation and cradled like a baby. The jungle buzzed around her face, a little bit of Monica in the mangrove, a little bit of you makes me your sweat stained military shirt. a shiny black gun barrel. The river a blanket of c old sucking around her body, flailing towards a red bank, grey market methadone in a Havana bar

Gives me Borges vibes. I'm trying to read him in Spanish now, but it's slow-going because my vocabulary is shit. But that's why I'm doing it, to build my vocabulary.

[Buttrock as zen]

"Please hold while we connect you to an operator"

"Moth..er..fUCKER!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that, could you repeat-" She smashed the beige plastic receiver into the formica. "...billing please press or say ONE, for all other inquiries please hang up and-" SMASH
"the options press"
SMASH

A slight tone rang through the flimsy house. The circuitry mangled, her hand dripped blood onto the faux wood tiling.

"honey...it's just plastic and wires. that we own. owned, I guess"

She triangulated him with a dull weariness "why do you have to be SO.. ABSTRACT"

His face inflated to a quixotic dimension.

"DON't need to hear an answer THANKS"

He turned his head and drew a soft breath.

"look, let's try three options. One, you just call back and deal with it. Two, you can call back and get an agent. Three, you can write it down on a piece of PHYSICAL paper and send it through the PHYSICAL mail."

Her head tilted three degrees downward

"If you'd like me to repeat those options-"

[Buttrock as zen]

Gives me Borges vibes. I'm trying to read him in Spanish now, but it's slow-going because my vocabulary is shit. But that's why I'm doing it, to build my vocabulary.

Thanks, yeah I love Borges

[Utisz]

"If you'd like me to repeat those options-"

[Utisz]

It was in the queue that the author discovered a new idea.

He would write in an artificial language that uses English words with a different meaning. The sentences he formed would appear sensical in both languages. Joy would mean envy and envy ennui. Believing would mean trying and trying forbidding. Hell would mean future, and future certainty. His work would be beyond reproach. But to master the language would be difficult; as he approached the counter, he resolved to immerse himself in it without delay.

"How can we live without our lives?", she asked. He grinned for a moment and surveyed the options. "Strawberry."


Prompt: All was as it seemed.

[Buttrock as zen]

"If you'd like me to repeat those options-"

Lol sorry it’s just an experiment to write without dialogue tags couldn’t resist the cheap shymalan