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10 second fiction

We challenged our members to come up with a story which could be read in just 10 seconds! Here are their stories. Got your stopwatch ready?


Out of Sync by Halla Williams

“Keep in time, can you?”

“I lose the count while I’m holding the note… and it goes wobbly if I tap my foot… and the beat’s so slow, it gets loose. I’m sorry.”

“We’ll just follow her, Mit, like we always do.”

“One day you’ll get it right and we’ll have got so used to your crappy timing, we won’t be ready.”

“If I worry too much about getting it right, I stop feeling it, Mitchell. If it’s that precious to you, perhaps I should leave?”

“Wait, Pea!”

“No, Boon, she’s right. If she can’t be good and in time, she needs to go.”

“Good luck then, Mit, I guess. Boon, I’ll catch you later.”

“See you, Pea.”

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”


 

From PS Livingstone

‘But I killed you.’

‘You did.’

‘You’re dead.’

‘I am.’

She glanced down at her hands, the crimson-stained grass visible through what should’ve been flesh.

The smirk she loathed crept across his face.

‘Great minds ...’


 

From Jamie Richardson

He cast the net out one more time. By his feet, three pitiful fish flapped against the boat as they breathed their last.

‘I’ll be joining you if I don’t catch anything else.’

With his last remaining strength he hauled in the net.

It was not enough.


 

From Thomas Perkins

“You sure it was him?” Barret asked, stroking his long jagged scar.

His young protege nodded, “I knew it was even before they read off the charges.”

“Well then, grab your gear, Laris. We’d better go get him.”

“You’re really going to come out of hiding just for a friend?” Laris scoffed, but obeying nonetheless, ”Why risk your life? More importantly, why risk mine? You can always make new ones.”

“Aye, but you can’t make old ones.”


 

From Annabel Campbell

I drift awake, feeling the weight of my cat sleeping on my ankles, heavy and warm. As the shadows resolve into shapes around me, I can see the outline of the lamp, the chest of drawers on the other side of the room.

And my cat. Her back is arched, her tail is bristling. She's frozen, staring across the room - the way cats do when they look like they've seen a ghost.

I can still feel the weight on my ankles.


 

From Richard D Andrews

The land ahead stretched out as far as they could see. It was bleak and empty. They plodded slowly forward, the wind in their faces, shuffling, and rocking slowly from one foot to another, moving, inching forwards with each motion. The wind blowing their coverings. They were a group, protected from the winds, spearheading into the storm ahead. From behind they looked like a long train of black moving over the landscape. Relentlessly moving as they huddled together. Not one looked up to check the direction in which they were going, they just moved as a whole towards their goal; a point on the horizon.


 


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