Writing Exercise: 50-Word Prompts 2023

WRITING EXERCISE

Time for the December 50-word prompts writing exercise.

Quick reminder of the rules: Write a flash for each picture. Aim for 50 words, give or take five extra words. Don’t read my attempts until after you do your own. Writing them directly in the comment section below will help you focus on the flash aspect – just getting words out.

VISUAL PROMPTS FOR 50-WORD FLASHES

 

       

(Light in winter trees & Couple photos are from freedigital photos . net)

(African girl with Teddy – ID 9775075 © Lucian Coman Dreamstime.com (license paid for))

My Attempts

First Light: It was too early for dawn, the light too bright, coming from the wrong direction. The trees huddled under the snow blanketing their boughs. What was happening sent a chill down to their roots. Should I leave my shelter to find out what the light was or run? (48 words, first published 12/26/2023)

May I have your attention: Grabbing his tie, she pulled him closer and their lips met, touched for the first time. He gasped in surprise and she took advantage of his open lips, jumping for the taste she always wanted. Coffee and cream. Sugar and hazelnut. Around them, people clapped. Maybe she shouldn’t have done this by the office coffee pot but the boy just wasn’t getting any of her hints. (words 66, first published 12/26/2023)

Orders: Please don’t hurt me, her eyes begged, digging a hole straight to my heart. Her parents had done right by the little one – freshly washed, her hair neatly braided, her clothes in good repair. Her bear nearly broke me. Why was she allowed to bring her toy? Fucking orders. (words 50, first published 12/26/2023)

Series: 50-word Prompts

  1. Prompts 1& 5 (2/19/2017)
  2. Prompts 6 & 12 (2/26/2017)
  3. Prompts 7, 8, 10, 11 (3/19/2017)
  4. Prompts (The Mouse Roars) (3/26/2017)
  5. 50-word prompts 2018 (12/25/2018)
  6. 50-word prompts 2019 (8/27/2019)
  7. 50-word prompts 2020 (12/22/2020)
  8. 50-word prompts 2021 (12/28/2021)
  9. 50-word prompts 2022 (12/17/2022)
  10. 50-word prompts 2023 (12/26/2023)

 

Flash: As One

Photo by Massimiliano Morosinotto on Unsplash

Warning: Language

“If the true King of Alanis arose, the three Dukedoms would rally around him and defeat the evil wizard and his minions.” The dark eyes of Duke Lyrcon burned each of his equals in attendance; old though he might be, the warhorse remained a passionate speaker.

Duke Magneek strummed the table. “I’ve looked far and wide, searching the old texts. He that will rise to defeat the Black Eagle foe, to once again sit upon the Throne Sole. The single king, the Chosen one, the Dukedoms made whole.”

“Hold up, hold up.” Duchess of the Echoing Cliff, Brigette Hunfar, pushed the papers in front of her forward and then shoved herself up against the heavy old table. “You mean to tell me, you and my dad had been waiting on some myth to fix everything?”

“Not a myth,” Duke Magneek corrected. “The fulfillment of the Roget Prophecies, the most complete and accurate seer of the Grand Age and all the ages since.”

“So some dude, with no training or experience, is to fight that fascist bastard presently rounding up all Alanis people who have immigrated over the years into GreenVows and Nissey, and, according to our sources, either experimenting on them or executing them, and until he shows up, we have to wait?” Brigette’s voice got shriller the longer she talked. “That is some kind of bullshit.”

“Please, Hunfar, some dignity.” Lurcon crossed his arthritic hands over his belly.

“No, no old man, you don’t get to say that.” Brigette rounded her chair, making her attendants dodge to stay out of her way. “You haven’t seen the refugees coming across the mountains!” She threw out her hands pointing unerringly to where her lands laid.  “It’s fucking winter, you might not know it here by the soft warm waters of Capetown, but winter is insane, and they are STILL coming across my mountains! Dying in droves, but some still make it.” She took two steps closer to the others of the Tribunal of Dukes and slammed her hands on the table. “And instead of being there for my people. For the people needing aid, I’ve been stuck here for the last week getting briefing and explanations from Diplomat this and Department Head that about the state of Alanis. And finally, finally when you make yourselves available for my final indoctrination on the privy matters only the Tribunal knows, you tell me we can’t do anything but let that madman and his followers swallow up the rest of the continent, because we have to wait for some trumped up, sugar-coated bedtime story a deadman dreamed up nearly four hundred years ago?”

“The Chosen One will appear in our greatest need.” Duke Magneek tapped the two sheets of paper in front of him. “Patience.”

“Not only no, but fuck no.” The Duchess paced the other way around the table, pulling her hand through her hair, whatever her ladies-in-waiting had styled her this morning, long destroyed. “People are dying. Dying. Do you understand that word? And you know what is really, really bad.” She crouched across the table, whispering. “People here, in Alanis, are beginning to choose sides, like there is a choice between humanity and monsters.” The men leaned forward to hear her words, her words getting softer and softer. “You even say it,” suddenly she stood and shoved the portfolio the ministers had prepared at them, screaming “in these damn papers!”

Lyron frowned, his thick gray eyebrows meeting. “What would you have us do?”

“Fight, prepare, anything!”

“We have been preparing.” Duke Magneek stood and circled around his chair, leaning his arms on the ornate carvings covering the high back. “Our armies are trained and stand at the ready.”

“Then we fight.”

“We must wait.” The Capetown Duke said.

“You said with a single other person, this maybe King, and our armies, we can defeat the Black Eagle.”

“Yes, that is the prediction. All of us must act together as one.”

“As one.” Brigette stopped her pacing. “That is the true thing we must do. To wait is reprehensible. The murders, the cruelty, the treating of humans, any human, as less than human must stop. Let us act as one. We, all of us, can be the Chosen One. The Black Eagle is still small, he barely has control of Nissey, they are fighting GreenVows incursion tooth and nails. If we act, we don’t wait for some might-be savior, all of us, as one, we can win.”

“We have always waited on prophecy.” Duke Lyrcon said. “Prophecy always provided a savior.”

“But at what cost?” Brigette extended her hands to the older men pleading. “The DragonLords left the land scarred for centuries, the Blathid desert still stretches across a third of the Nexin continent, because Tiggin the Lionheart took three generations to appear once they finished their conquering. The Webzine race is no more.” She shook her head. “We can’t let that happen again. We know what happens when tyrants and genocidal monsters are allowed gain power unchallenged.”

“What if we lose?” Duke Lycron asked.

“Then we lose, but at least we tried.” Brigette bright eyes met the other two Dukes, and they looked away first. “Our armies are large enough. The others countries will stand by us, they are only waiting for us to act. As one. We all act as One. To wait until someone else steps forward is suicide. The countries need GreenVows will fall separately, too small on their own. But the dozen cities-state, and us, and likely the Dominion Church once they see the monsters created from Our People, they will rally around us.”

Brigette looked at her two advisors. Windsor, who stood by her father for decades, and Chopard, her personal guard and dearest friend. Though they did not know exactly what question she was asking with her eyes, they nodded that where she leads, they will go.

She kept her eyes on them, because at this point she was done. “Fuck the Throne Sole. If destiny insists on there being only one chosen, then let us act. As one.” She turned back to the would-be leaders, who were insisting on waiting for someone to follow even they knew what the right thing to do was, but they feared failure. “I will be returning to the mountains tomorrow, and I will be walking across them with the first melts in two months. You may join us or not, but my people and those we are helping will be acting as one. Fascism, lies, genocide, have no place in a world I want to live.”

(words 1098; first published 12/3/2023; created 11/25/2023)

The “text” inspiration for this flash came from an upcoming Aquaman movie trailer. Someone says to Arthur Curry, “If you lead, the seven kingdoms will follow you.” implying that everyone in the underwater world will let the monster take over unless a Chosen One popped up. Like Aquaman could defeat Mantis and his army on his own, and everyone else is just along for the ride. The reality is the seven kingdoms without or without Arthur Curry would win, he is just a figurehead to rally around. Why are they not acting NOW?

That got me thinking about how people wait for someone else to be the first to stand up against evil, letting evil gain power and strength. But if each person acted individually, yet also “as one”, evil won’t gain a foothold. Sometimes systems work against us, but sometimes they can work for us. Be loud. Define the system you want. Make a good system and act “as one”.

Flash: Friendzone Boss Battle

Photo by Pylz Works on Unsplash

Something a friend posted on Facebook:

“What men don’t realize is they aren’t ‘sentenced to the friend zone’, no, they allowed into the friendzone and given the first step of a quest. Women want to know if you can be friends, then we’ll talk about what else may or may not be added to the relationship.

Because if we can’t be friends, there isn’t a relationship.”

The following flash continues the “conversation.” Assume Shayda said the above.

“Yeah, noobs think they can just jump to Big Boss level 100 immediately.” Joanne snorted. “Amateurs.”

Shayda lay on her stomach between her friends, one on a recliner and the other hogging the coach as only a seven-month pregnant woman could. She grabbed another fistful of popcorn from the bowl between the two pieces of furniture, before asking, “So what would be your Big Boss fight on your quest?”

Rubbing her stomach, Joanne replied, “Oh, I don’t know, getting past my daddy issues?”

Carefully not looking up at the one in the recliner, Shayda asked, “You?”

“Hmm, sticking around through a crisis, I guess?” Patty shrugged, feet curled up in the overstuffed chair. “Never had anyone do that but you guys. The boyfriends always want to solve it and be done. Mack was the best of the lot and he couldn’t handle the long-term COVID fatigue that took a year to clear up. No stamina.”

Both of the other women nodded, with Shayda adding. “True dat.”

“How about you, Shay?” Joanne placing a small bowl beside the coach to be refilled. Shayda reached for it.

Patty rocked forward to look down, “Yeah, Shay, how about you?”

“Well, that stamina thing is huge.” After carefully doling out the next serving of buttery crunch for the land-whale and passing it up to Joanne, Shayda responded, “I guess that is part of the guys wanting to jump right through the friend zone to the boyfriend zone. No one wants to spend three months being friends with no ‘reward’.”

“Except they are willing to do three months on a game to get to level 100, so not buying that,” said the youngest member of the MMOG Thursday group.

“And friendship is its own reward. … Being around all of this is a pretty awesome thing, you know.” Joanne waved her expansive body, “And you are getting us off topic, Shay.”

Patty asked quietly, “What is your big boss?”

“Listening, I guess.” Shayda levered herself up to look at her two friends, leaning against the low center table. “Caring, supporting. Being a friend.”

“Yeah, if someone is in my house day-in day-out, I would want that.” Patty said in a wistful tone.

“Help with laundry, mowing, all the chores.” Shayda started ticking off requirements on her fingers. “Does me no good if you are more work than being on my own. Especially, if you want kids.”

Joanne twisted her lips, rubbing her stretched red-lined skin where her too tight shirt had slid up, and grunted, managing to sit vertical in one try, and set aside the re-emptied bowl.

“So a partner.” Patty wrapped her arms around her legs.

“Exactly,” the black woman nodded, “An equal.”

The group sighed at the concept.

“Yeah, that would be nice,” Joanne agreed.

The three gave little smiles to each other.

Then Shayda’s took a manic curve. “Plus explosive sex!”

(words 544; first published 11/29/2023; written 5/12/2023)

Flash: Full Potential

The busty blond shimmied over from the dance floor to Daniel’s minuscule table. “Hey, can you pretend to be my boyfriend?” She didn’t need to scream, since Daniel sat behind the aimed speakers.

“Problem?” he asked, waving her to sit on the stool opposite his. Daniel had been watching her, but not her exclusively, just enjoying the view between kicking up his boots. The woman was a regular and had a lowcut blouse, but not too lowcut, and a short skirt, but it didn’t raise the hem to mini. It was her friends that pushed the sensual envelope, and tonight they all seem to have hooked fishes.

The woman moved the chair closer to him, then shimmed up on the raised chair. “Not anymore, I hope,” she said, angling her body to him, while touching his arm. “Some guys don’t take no for an answer.”

Blue shirt, opposite side of the dance floor, fired his stalker stare at his prey and her camouflage. Nope, Daniel thought, that is not a guy that understands no. He turned toward her, smiling, leaning closer, he laced a tease in his voice. “How do you know I’m not worse?”

She laughed, partially for show, though nervousness laced it. “Short of you being a serial killer, we should be fine.” She dropped her eyes as she plucked at his cream-color linen sleeve. “Besides, I see you here every Saturday.” The woman angled her eyes up through her fake eyelashes and kohl cat eyeliner. “You are a great dancer by the way.”

“Thanks.” Daniel touched her cheek, turning her face back toward him. Her eyes had been drifting to dance floor and the blue shirt brute plowing his way through the crowd, his buddies chuckling from one side with several of the more risk-seeking regulars hanging out with them for the free drinks. The group that oversized asshole came in with weren’t regulars. Likely in town for the political protests raging back and forth while everyone waited for the jury to make their decision.

He pushed his drink toward her.

Distracted, she glanced down at the pale brown bubbly liquid.

“Ginger ale. Sorry I don’t have anything stronger, but you do look overheated.” he stated, drawing her hand towards it gently. “I’m going to need a name soon.”

“Jennifer.” She smiled, lifting his drink. “Usually, Jenny to friends.”

“Daniel, but never Danny to friends.” His firm lips twisted up one side, waiting for her to finishing swallowing, her shoulders relaxing at the sweet safe drink. “So how would you define a serial killer?”

Jenny still choked a little at the question. “I don’t know, maybe five?” Leaning forward, giggling a little more naturally this time, she asked, “Are you a serial killer?”

“Nah,” Daniel, never Danny answered, “but I got good potential.”

“Don’t we all?” Jenny rolled her eyes in sympathy. “Job or family.”

He took his drink back for quick sip. “Why not both?”

“Who the fuck are you?” the blue shirt psycho finally broke through the crowd. Sitting behind the speakers, and in the area furthest from the bar, bathrooms, and official entrance was a choice Daniel made to avoid too much crowding, but it did mean few witnesses to the man’s rudeness and less bouncer backup.

Putting on his game face, Daniel gave all the appearance of a suitor reluctantly pulling his eyes from the most beautiful woman in the world, a slight confused expression crossing his face. “Excuse me?”

The jilted stalker gave his perceived opponent a once-over. Even taking into account Daniel was sitting down, the goon had at least four inches and what appeared to be forty more pounds of muscles based on the way the linen didn’t stretch on the pansy’s biceps. No scars, perfectly straight nose, perfect teeth. Learning in, the blue-shirt poked Daniel with a finger, repeating each word. “Who.the.fuck.are.you?”

“Danny.”

Jennifer’s dark eyebrows crunched at this obviously hated nickname. Her pretend boyfriend wasn’t sweating, or worried, at least as far as she could tell. She hoped he wouldn’t get into trouble. His dark brown eyes returned to hers and his lips curved in a reassuring smile, which in no way, shape or form, reached his cold eyes. Their strange sparkle of delight twisted her stomach.

“Jenny here tells me you’ve been bothering her.”

“Nah, she came on to me.” The asshole snorted a laugh. “Guess she was tired of pansies. Time to go sweetheart.” The six-two man reached with his orangutan arms to grab her, flashing very specific tattoos of his full sleeves at the seated couple.

Daniel moved faster, grabbing a wrist, and with a quick twist, the brute kneeled while Daniel smoothly rose above him. “Leave now.” Nothing had been snapped. The hold was a non-lethal measure. “Unless you want to take this outside.”

“Outside,” the other growled.

“No,” Jenny said, scared for her chosen rescuer.

“It’s okay honey,” Daniel’s smile morphed to match his eyes, freezing her in place, “it’s what I’m here for.” He dropped the wrist of the blue shirt, and motioned the larger man to a fire exit slightly ajar for the DJ and staff to sneak out for smokes.

Shivering, Jenny asked, “How many?”

“Three, soon to be four.” Daniel’s brown eyes gleamed black. “Come back next Saturday. I’ll love to have someone help me reach my full potential.”

***

The following week Daniel arrived to find Jenny sitting at his favorite table with two ginger ales. He slipped in the chair opposite her.

“Serial killers have a type.” The busty blond, in a lower cut blouse than her normal style, gave him a very determined look. “If that asshole was your type, I want to help you.”

“Sister?” Daniel stirred his drink with the little straw.

She shook her head, “but two friends, yes. And … well …” Jenny looked away gripping her hands together until her knuckles were white. “… but not really, well, not really really, but every woman has a me too.”

“It is never right, and a wrong is a wrong.” He assured her. “It’s not a competition.”

“Do you do it,” she made eye contact, “to make things right?”

He laughed at that, a deep belly laugh. “Nah, I just wanted a challenge. Complete psychopath here.”

(words 1,043, first published 5/24/2023)

Flash: Z is for Zzzz

Photo by Photos_frompasttofuture on Unsplash

Jonathan meandered into the second-floor nursey looking for his wife and their newborn. Obviously the baby had been fussy in the night, and she decided he needed sleep more than her. While he appreciated her concern, her logic didn’t hold up to reality and he would need to remind her, like he did after the birth of all their children, that she was no longer alone in her parenthood. The long nights broken by feedings always reset her back to the amazing self-sufficient, but exhausted, woman Elizabeth had been when they first met.

What he would not remind her of is the fact he was two decades younger than her and could handle lack of sleep better.

Also, he wouldn’t say a thing about how he wasn’t the one who had just given birth six days ago. The last time he tried to argue from that position, she went off on an esoteric rant of the renewal energies from birthing. She lost him between midwifery blessing incantations and timing the birth for maximum astrological benefit.

Shifting back and forth, the rocking chair creaked in the moonlight, the beam creating a shimmer over the person holding the baby on her shoulder. A doting smile began to touch Jon’s lips when a small snort-snore came from the chaise lounge snapped his head to the right where Lizzo slept under a charm quilt her coven had gifted her on their marriage.

Oh, …oh!

Looking back on the indistinct human form in the rocking chair, Jonathan asked, “Abby?”

Not that he didn’t believe his wife and Malcolm when they said the old Henry Plantation Manor came with its own ghost, or when Jonny and Ada filled him in about their garden explorations with their beloved invisible nanny, or Barby went room from room demanding “awBEE!” appear as only a two-year old can.

But, he was a scientist. Seeing things with his own eyes made a difference. Now he got to add ghost to the list of things he knew lived outside of nightmares and late-night television.

The rocking slowed, the shimmer coalesced into something more the shape of a woman then a determined fog. A hollowed voice whispered in the room, sending shivers down the man’s spine, “Master Turning, how you be doing this evening?”

“I’m well.” Jonathan gulped, struggling to pull up everything Lizzo and Mal had told him to do and ignore all the fiction and campfire stories he had absorbed in his twenty-nine years of life. They hadn’t done a full-sit down with him species specific briefing like they had when Elizabeth added dervishes to their Sparkle Network Services, so it was not as easy to do as with their normal supernatural clients. “Emma, okay?”

The fog-light shape sent a limb rolling up the infant’s back to cradle the head in a pillow of mist before standing, Emma hovering midair against the apparition’s form. Emma bounced a few centimeters up and down, rocking back and forth over four and a half feet above the floor.

Jonathan fought the urge to reach out and grasp his child.

“Just a little gassy tonight,” the voice seemed to be the echo behind words never spoken. “Kept the mistress up until I insisted she lay down a moment.”

Jonathan stifled a louder laugh to a quick chuckle. He could not picture anyone, let alone a whisp – a real whisp of a ghost – forcing Lizzo to do anything. “That I would like to learn.”

“Not something being good for a man to know.” The shimmer moved side to side, letting Jonathan see Emma’s blue eyes were wide open but calm and taking in what little a few days old infant could see. “There are things woman folk just need from women.”

His eyes closed for a moment and the mundane man breathed in and out slowly. His wife gave up so much to be with him, for a second he imagined her old coven filling the manor, visiting for the holidays and passing the infant around. He hoped they came for the Solstice; the new High Priestess didn’t approve of him and often refused given permission for members to visit because of his “contamination.”

“A pity.” Jonathan approached the circle of the moonbeam where the ghost stood. “But thank you for being there for her. Would you like to tag out?” He held out his arms cautiously.

“Thank you, Master Turning. Dawn is coming soon, and I did want to get the meals set up for the day while I could.” The shape that the family named Abigail laid Emma gently in his arms, brushing her frigid essence against his limbs in the transfer.

Worried, he pulled the child against him and touched her cheeks for temperature, finding the infant warm, even a little hot and sweaty on the side which had been against the ghostly shoulder as though it had been against a human body. “I really appreciate all you are doing, by the way Miss Abigail. The children love you, and you have made my wife’s life a lot easier.”

The vapor sparkled slightly pink a moment before fading to nothing.

(words 857, first published 4/30/2023)

Series: Under Contract
1. N is for Noise (4/16/2023)
2. Q is for Quicken (4/19/2023)
3. Y is for Yield (4/28/2023)
4. Z is for Zzzz (4/30/2023)