Inspire Me #2: Flash Fiction

Well, let's take a break from the COVID-19 madness we are all surrounded by.


I'll try a game based on the Inspire Me app.  It selects three words at random, and then you try to construct a very short story using those three words.  There are no real length rules, but I try to stick to 100 words or less.

Maybe.  I'm not really counting.

I challenge all OHC Writer's Guild members to do the same, and post either on the group site or in the comments below.

LET THE RANDOMNESS...BEGIN!

#1

ranch, thirty, fought


George:  How many ranch dressing packets are you gonna put on that salad?

Melinda:  It's not a salad.  It's a zalad.

George:  Way to give in to the corporate monolith, Mel. 

Melinda:  I fought the salad, and the zalad won.

George:  OMG, Mel!  Another packet of ranch!  Your Zalad-O is swimming in a lake of Ranch-O!

Mel:  Lake Rancho.  I love it.  I'm taking a picture.  Remember, Instagram is Instafun.

George:  For you, maybe.

George starts to count the packets.  Thirty seconds later...

George:  Hokey smokes!  That's...twenty-nine packets! (What?  I already used thirty.  You expect me to use it twice?)

#2

hidden, walk, rapidly

Fluffly loved his daily walk.  He pulled his servant with him, using all the power of his eleven pound Shih Tzu body.  "Slow down, Fluffly!" complained the one the humans called Anita.  "How rapidly do you think I can go?"

Fluffy came to a screeching halt, but not because of his servant.  He smelled something just off the path, hidden behind the azalea bushes.

Fluffly growled.  The hair on the back of his neck stood up.  He had found his nemesis.  It snarled and hissed.

Today, there would be victory.

#3

merely, money, tonight

Tonight.

Tonight won't be just any night.

Tonight there will be no morning star.

Well. At least not for a few hours.

He waited in the gazebo.  He waited for Maria.  It had seemed like he had just met her.  The electricity had never left his body, and the lightning charges inflamed him whenever she was near.

This was different.  This was not merely another fling, a temporary infatuation.  It was a love that would light up the rest of his life.

Nothing meant more.  Not material things, not money, not the gang, not the family, not the church.  Nothing.

Tony has met Maria.  And nothing would ever be the same.