Instant Story

Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #01846-E022: Where's the Cheevs?

Pokémon Go... in space -- TheDragonsFlame

Trends come, trends go, and some are revived, zombie like, from a place where they should have stayed buried. You can make up your minds about which ones are which. For a patch of time in the 1930's, the name Judith became incredibly popular, and was rarely that popular again. For a spate in the 1980's, every girl child was named Kylie. And pretty much since the 1980's until the current era, there has been Pokémon.

Like Beatlemania, it ebbs and rises, but it never truly dies. For every generation, there is an era in which they discover the four lads from Liverpool, or the obsessive joy of catching them all. And since space is vast, the viral spread of these trends can be like a confusing round of Which Flu Is This?

Rael swore under his breath at his own vambrace's app. He'd lost five rounds of Dog or Not Dog? with a five-year-old on the same tram. Now that he was in time-out, he had the time to notice that Shayde had gone ominously quiet. She was not playing Match Three Dazzle, which was her usual go-to for filling in time on the trams. She was, however, gurning at the screen and holding her dominant hand in a peculiar pose.

Support me on Patreon / Buy me a Ko-fi

Continue Reading

Prompts remaining: 13 Submit a Prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!

Challenge #01845-E021: Art in All Forms

Alien walking past human's quarters hears a harsh, vaguely rhythmic sound.

Alien knocks on human's door, enters, and finds that it's audio sensory organs are assaulted by this noise, the noise is so loud it is almost painful for the Alien's ears.

Alien: "Human, what is this noise?"

Human: "This is my music, you don't like it?"

Alien: "I don't know, the volume is a bit high and it sounds rather harsh, what is this music called?"

Human: "Many humans don't like

Read more »

Challenge #01844-E020: Considering Coconuts

http://otherwindow.tumblr.com/post/168918610430/ -- Anon Guest

Merfolk didn't want to have much to do with the surface. There was plenty more to eat under the water and they knew it. But the two-legs-like-us[1] were getting deeper and deeper nets, and something had to be done. Let's just say mistakes were made on both sides. Most notable of these is coconuts.

For eons of Merfolk civilisation, they understood coconuts as ill omens. Something that is made to float, sinking

Read more »

Challenge #01843-E019: Reminded of the Babe?

Don't do something permanently stupid just because you're temporarily upset. -- Anon Guest

My mother said/ I never should/ play with the faeries in the wood... - nursery rhyme.

The fae folk had her baby. Toddler. Even though her child could walk and talk after a fashion and perform simple tasks, Esa was still her baby and would be so until the day Risso died. Which might be soon, considering that she was marching into Fae territory with naught but her apron

Read more »

Challenge #01842-E018: A Place to Fit

The adventures/escapades of a Numidid raised by/among humans -- TheDragonsFlame

[AN: This continues on from this thing ]

Family is more than the people that excreted you, so goes the galactic saying. Family can be a bunch of loner weirdoes and their adopted Numidid keet called Pip. Scavenger M. DeVries and his daughter, Pip, cut quite a figure in the news, and they did so for all of forty-eight hours.

Because that was when the Galactic Alliance rediscovered a colony world

Read more »

Challenge #01841-E017: The Biological Solution

[End the story with this sentence] “Behold... the mighty predator.” -- TheDragonsFlame

First came the epithelials, and there was the Dust Problem. Amelioration worked, to a degree, but cleansing schedules soon became hell for multiple species. And someone discovered Fhitts and Squidges. Small, jellyfish-like animals that floated around via hydrogen gas bags. They either filter-fed as they drifted around on the air currents, or -in the case of the Fhitts- jetted about in active pursuit.

Then the Fhitts and the Squidges became

Read more »

Challenge #01840-E016: Toxic, Useless, and Ugly

"A man of words and not of deeds, is like a garden full of weeds." -- Knitnan

"I will work so hard," he said. "I won't even have time for golf. I won't have time to tweet. I'm talking bloody knuckles. I'm talking wearing out the grindstone with my nose. I'm talking twenty-four-seven. Hard. Sweaty. Work. For you. For all of you." And then he spent more days on the golf course, on holiday, or on leave than any other leader to

Read more »

Challenge #01839-E015: A Grand Day Off

Shoes off, comfy clothes, and good read. No phones, no Internet connection, a little bit of Heaven, and Room Service thrown in. Best Break Ever! -- Knitnan

Sometimes, you just need to get away. And sometimes, the problem with going anywhere is that the things you want to get away from tend to follow you around. And today, Ana needed to get away from the entire world.

To that end, she had carefully arranged this day. A new book. A collection of

Read more »

Challenge #01838-E014: Hour of Need

It had been a hard day today, she Needed chocolate! -- Anon Guest

So. Let's recap. Best beloved and most capable person in the house arrested for a crime they couldn't possibly commit. On a day when she had needed to run around between four different destination, with stops on the way to pick up whatever. And stops at the bank to get her running money for the week because their mutual funds had been frozen and their family still needed to

Read more »

Challenge #01837-E013: The Helpful Cup

Hot sweetened tea and maybe a biscuit or sandwich will help to solve most problems. -- Anon Guest

In the grand scheme of things, Britanians never expect much out of the Tea Lady. Some sage advice, a rambling story about their youngest, and, of course, tea. If you knew how to play your cards right, you might get a Jammy Dodger or a Scotch Finger. That was the way it had always been. Until Ambassador Harry.

So far, she had helped the

Read more »

Challenge #01836-E012: Debunked Beliefs

Non-human sentients are used to thinking of humans as impossibly durable daredevils of highly questionable sanity. However, historical human science fiction, pre-first contact, typically has humans depicting themselves as either ordinary everymen and everywomen in a world full of sentients who were stronger, smart, harder to kill, and/or had space magic at their disposal. Humans were surprised when their cynicism didn't play out. Aliens are shocked that humans could have ever considered themselves as such. -- Anon Guest

"And this one

Read more »

Challenge #01835-E011: The Caring Gap

Their world was games, and Facebook and selfies. Then they wound up in an emergency ward and discovered electric lives are no substitute for the real thing. -- Knitnan

[AN: You clearly have no understanding of modern connectivity. AKA: "You dang kids get off of your social media and get a real life!" ::shakes cane::]

Alice was technically a Cam Girl and technically a Gamer. In reality, that meant grinding assorted games for a pitiful income per game per hour, and taking

Read more »

Challenge #01834-E010: The Stakes

A wager will often get results when pleading fails. -- Anon Guest

One has to be wealthy to be eccentric. If you're poor, you're just odd. People could tell that Felwar Nassidd was an eccentric from a long line of eccentrics. The first dead-giveaway was the name. The second was their Wagers of Benevolence.

They laid a two hundred billion dollar bet that a town wouldn't be able to completely convert to green energy, and feed the populace proper nutrition at the

Read more »

Challenge #01833-E009: Revenge is Purring

If you truly hate someone give them a baby bear. Comment from Historical source. Nobody mentioned Bears just get big. But what if you give them a pregnant female house cat? -- Anon Guest

Across societies, across worlds, there are things that could be counted as gifts - but definitely aren't. Drum kits for the hated one's children. A bear cub. A baby ape. A dragon's egg. All of those and more can only be called trouble. And then there is the

Read more »

Challenge #01832-E008: Rightwise Born... er... Monarch?

"Whomsoever shall pull this sword from the stone is rightwise born King of England."

"Oh! Lookie! I've pulled it out," she said. -- Anon Guest

She was short. She had the sort of chubbiness born of years of feast and famine, with the body deciding to set up ample stores in case of famine. And she was clearly a scullery maid in the entourage of one amongst the many knights, ne'er-do-wells, and nonesuch that had gathered to try their luck.

The maester

Read more »