Category: Visual

Flash: The Final Door

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Efe Kurnaz on Unsplash

The blue corridor leads to an illuminated red-orange door. You thought it would be a glowing white tunnel. That is what everyone said it would be. Those that came back. Maybe that is the waiting room version.

The beeps had stopped. So many beeps. Seemed like days. You remember jumping when every muscle in your body contracted while on the bed. Had you been sick? Or was it an accident? Were you young or old? A short life or a filled one? Were family mourning you or waiting on the other side of the door?

The short walk ends with two steps leading up to the bright door. Clearly a front door of some sort, there is no doorbell, no knocker, not even a thrice damn (should you be using that language here?) camera-speaker to explain why you are here.

You knock.

It’s the polite thing to do.

Were you polite before? Things are slippery.

You knock again.

Third time’s the charm. You knock a little harder.

You try the doorknob.

It rattles as you move it, but only moves so far.

The door is locked.

Is the door to the afterlife supposed to be locked?

How long should you wait for someone to answer?

You bang on it hard, but it makes no more noise than the polite knock.

You wait.

Not long. You do remember you don’t have much patience. It was either because you were too young and everything waited for took forever, or you were too old and you felt the press of time. Maybe you were an important person and always had a place to be. Or was it you were always running late?

You look back along the corridor to where you came from. The corridor that direction ends in a neon yellow-green door.

One last knock, just in case.

No answer, you go back the way you came.

Is this why there are ghosts? Or maybe reincarnation? The green door’s knob turns easily.

(words 330; first published 3/2/2025 – – created based on a visual prompt for a Facebook writer’s group, aim is about 50 words)

Flash: Smol Snak

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash

:Hallo Fren. Mi nam is snak and I is smol: The green snake blinked its sparkling black eyes and flicked its tongue out.

I stared at it in amazement.

Raising up, it started wrapping itself around my finger. :You taste-smell-heat big. I luv u. Hug u.:

“Daniel … that speak with animals I just cast in-game.”

“Yeah, I’m still looking up the intelligent level of the racoons.” The DM glanced over his carved wooden screen. “Oh, Rascal got out again. I need to get a better cover for him. Don’t worry, he isn’t poisonous.”

“Venomous, he isn’t venomous.”

:I swift like wind. Hunt spring on buggies. Nom nom.:

Daniel shrugged. “Not poisonous either.” He flipped a few more pages. “Alright I found it.”

“Where did you get the chant you gave to me?”

“Oh, do you like it? I thought since we are doing one-on-one games while Mica and Dave are on their honeymoon, we could really explore your magic-using. Found it in an old Dragon Magazine at C-Me-Rolling. Someone had marked a set of six to hell and gone, so I got them for a steal – early publications, like in the thirties or fifties, and found that in the margins.”

“Um, so these other five charms you gave me…”

:You nice warm – bettir than lamp. I sleep.:

As you will, I thought toward it. I got back something that felt like a vibration-purr-drifting-off.

“Yeah, whoever did it stuck in a few in every book. They seemed cool, usually surrounding articles explaining how to make the game more immersive.”

“Just curious, did you read these aloud?”

“Sure, just checking the cadence and what-not. They felt good.”

Looking over the list Daniel gave me, after speak with animals, there was also Detect Magic; Light; Magic Missile; Invisibility; and Fire Bolt. “Anything strange happen?”

“What, like a light show? Nah, I never play magic-users, not like you.” Daniel smiled. “Give me a fighter any day. Something that could be real.”

“Right … um, could I see those magazines when we are done this session? They sound cool.”

“Sure, now the Racoon asks for some of your peanuts in exchange for the location the goblins went.”

(words 364; first published 2/16/2025)

Ye Olde Dragon Magazines Series

  1. Smol Snak 2/16/2025
  2. Hyperfocus 2/23/2025

Flash: Always Lead with Kindness

Erin Penn Leave a comment

ID 75056156 © Mik3812345 | Dreamstime.com

“Pops, will you slow down? Ain’t we suppose to be running in the other direction?” The thirty-five year old man scrambled over fallen pine trees.

At the crest of the impact crater, his gray-haired father bellycrawled the final few feet, his deer bow in hand. Pye, Junior’s teenage daughter, right beside him. Nuts, the two of them. And him, the tree tying them together following in their wake. He crouched crawled to their location.

Looking down in to the cleared sand of the pine barrens, he saw a circular UFO with the disc vertical and the half the circumference buried deep. Junior quiet-whistled against his teeth, “Someone is having a very bad day.”

“I’m not sure,” Pye squinted through the early mist rising out of the aquifer below the pine barrens sand. “I mean if they are a spinning ship, and that is kind-of what it looked like as they streaked overhead, then the gravity would be on the outer edge, so if you were to dismount, it would be through the floor. It would make sense for flying saucers to land edge up, right?”

“Good point, girl” His father whispered.

Junior was glad all those comics and adventure books leaked something into his kid’s brain. “Still it is a crash, pretty sure.”

George grunted agreement.

“Any landing you walk away from is a good landing, isn’t that what you say Pops?” Pye asked.

“Not seeing much walking.” George observed and started to stand. “The mist has made down the walls and isn’t burning off near the hull. Whatever that material is, it took care of the heat quickly. Come on, they might need help.”

Pye bounced up, following her grandfather down the sandy sides of the crater in a sideways slide. Youthful curiosity burst the question out burning in Junior as he followed the two with the dune-sand walk he picked up during his time in Afghanistan.  “What should we do if they say, ‘Take us to your leader’?”

“Well, election is next week, so I guess I’ll make introductions depending on their attitude.” George limped across the loose sand in the bottom of the crater. “If they are rude, they’ll get one. Nice, the other.” He winked at Junior. “But in the meantime, they might be in trouble. Always lead with kindness.”

“But pack heat while doing so.” The perky teenager touched the flare gun she carried beside the hunting arrows.

(words 402; first published 11/2/2024)

Flash: Sandwyvern

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Image by Leo on Unsplash

Kai flattened to the ground, spreading legs and arms and hoping the preysuit masked his breathing and heartbeat sufficiency. Beside him, Pele slowly lowered into a similar position, disturbing the gravel as little as possible where they had been searching for gold and minerals. Sandwyverns hunted by vibrations, lacking eyes. The tumbled rocks lining the Broad River’s summer-dry flood plain provided perfect opportunity for the creatures to swim upstream from their primary shore habitat to reach their laying grounds.

The clay red creature screamed, tilting its head this way and that to pick up the echo in its sensing antennae. It licked its long, forked tongue into the air, clearly smelling the humans, but unsure where they were. Another scream sent synapses scrambling to remember not to scream back as the register climbed shrilly and raked their eardrums.

The two gatherers managed to retain their wits and remained silence and still. Kai ignored the scorpion walking across his hand. The preysuit masked heat perfectly.

The most a sandwyvern ever screeched according to the records was nineteen times. Normally only four would satisfy it, but heading upstream to lay eggs, they became determined hunters. The colony biologists believed recent blood may be needed for one of the species reproductive processes, and it seemed human blood served just as well as banthum and wicket.

Lucky them, the planet could eat them as easily as they could eat the animals and plants of the planet.

Six shrieks. Hopefully, this creature won’t be a record-breaker.

(words 251; first published 9/22/2024)

Flash: It’s Not My Fault … For Once

Erin Penn Leave a comment

Image by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash

Nebula formed out of the fog, all judge-y like. His side-eye is strong.

“What?” My voice breaks on the question. “I found him like this.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Really, really, really, one hundred percent.” I cross my heart, touch two fingers to my lips, and lift them to the darkening skies. “God as my witness.”

He turns his body to face me head-on and spreads his legs.

I sigh before saying, “How can you think so poorly of me? We are partners.”

The old man crashes his eyebrows together at the last statement.

“Okay, not partners, but friends,” I step around the body that recently bleed out leaving a mess all over the road, “Right, friends?”

“So what did happen?”

(words 121; first published 8/25/2024 – created based on a visual prompt for a Facebook writer’s group, aim is about 50 words)