“In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.”
― Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies

Mid-Week Flash Challenge – Week 165

I have been feeling in a deep hopeless rut lately, and I’m sure a lot of you have too. After writing another Sunday Snippet I decided to set an ambitious goal for myself. I’ll write a short piece of fiction every day and put it up here. Obviously, quality will vary – you get what you get. Length too – I’ll have to write something short on busy days. They will be raw first drafts and full of errors.

I’m not sure how long I can keep it up… I do write quickly, but coming up with an idea every day will be a difficult challenge. So far so good. Maybe a hundred in a row might be a good, achievable, and tough goal.

Here’s another one for today (#71) More than two thirds there! What do you think? Any comments, criticism, insults, ideas, prompts, abuse … anything is welcome. Feel free to comment or contact me.

Thanks for reading.

I stumbled across a facebook group for a weekly flash challenge.

This week is a photo prompt – 750 word limit.

The explanation of the photo in the prompt:

This week’s picture prompt is sadly untraceable. It’s all over pinterest, but I can’t find anyone crediting it. Lots of people calling it street art, but where and by who? I tried loads of foreign sites. Even the Turkey Tribune used this for a poet to write to, but didn’t credit the source of the art. Such a shame cuz I love it but I don’t know where it is or who did it. 

Event Horizon

Time is a completely different thing on each side of an event horizon.

When the Dark Empire, violating every tenet of the rules of interstellar war, unleashed the singularity bombs on civilian populations across the galaxy, all fled the doom of the growing black holes. Some escaped in time, but millions were trapped inside. And a few, a cursed few, were caught in between.

When the attack came on New Zoya City, Xander said, “Run Hola, run! Run like your life depends on it, because it does!”

Xander and Hola ran before the oncoming horror, the giant sphere expanding until it looked like a solid wall blown before the wind. He thought they had a chance, but when he realized they were going to be overtaken he tried to push Hola, the love of his life, ahead. But he slipped in his panic and twisted as he fell and she stumbled back into disaster just as the expansion slowed to a stop.

And now, every day, Xander visits the event horizon where only the tip of Hola’s face emerges, only enough for him to recognize, only enough for him to remember.

The newest research by the bio-physicists prove beyond the shadow of a doubt the existence of the soul. After all, without a soul, what is the matrix that consciousness exists upon? But what of a soul that is trapped in an event horizon? Two halves of the soul are moving in different times – what looks frozen is in reality moving at a glacial pace.

Xander stares at that fragment of face, trying to see a tiny wisp of breath or a microscopic quiver of movement. There is nothing.

He is trapped in the event horizon as much as Hola is. And he know it. Trapped by guilt and longing and memory. Does she know it too? Does she hate him as much as he deserves?

These questions and millions more will haunt him as long as he lives and he knows he won’t live a fraction of the time he must to find the answers.