Finish my story and win a prize!

Image: White farm house. Text: Almost Home - Win a prize if you write the best finish to my story. Matthew Cross Flash Fiction Collaboration Contest - MatthewCrossWrites.com
Flash Fiction Writing Contest – Photo by Derek Torsani (unsplash.com/@dmtors)

This is a finish-my-story contest where all you have to do is write the ending in 500 words or less.

For the October Contest, I’m offering 3 prizes, including the aqua narwhal shown below. You can see all 3 prizes here.

Image: Aqua, crocheted narwhal with striped sweater sitting on yellow submarine. Text: Finish my story and you can win this narwhal. Sorry, yellow submarine not included.-Matthew Cross Flash Fiction Collaboration Contest-MatthewCrossWrites.com

October Contest

October Contest: All submissions are due by midnight October 17, 2020. 

Look here for contest rules.

Almost Home

I look over my shoulder in search of the dark, floating shapes.  I stumble and fall face first into the crusty topsoil between rows of soybeans.  It’s almost harvest time, so the plants are half a meter.  Not tall, like corn, which can hide you.  I groan and roll over, looking up at the pure, blue sky.  No dark triangles up there.

Field of soybeans
It’s almost harvest time, so the soybeans are half a meter. Photo by Meredith Petrick (unsplash.com/@mpetrick)

I groan and make myself stand, even though my legs feel like jelly.  My joints ache, my head aches, and I shiver.  It’s the Vere.  I caught it either on the DR. ERNESTO GUEVARA, which everyone calls the “Che,” or on Mars.  Mars was already rife with the Vere, so it was not our fault.  And Earth had it before that, so I’m not the first to bring it here, either.  I’m just trying to survive it.

My facemask clouds with my breath.  I’m still wearing my entire suit because I don’t want to infect anyone else.  If not for my mask, I would be spitting dark, Indiana loam out of my mouth.

From behind the Old Barn and the windmill, a thin plume of smoke rises from the crash. The old, decrepit windmill still pumps the water for our irrigation. In a state full of wind turbines, the old windmill really stands out. People still use it to give directions by. It’s how I found home.

Old barn and windmill
From behind the Old Barn and the windmill, a thin plume of smoke rises from the crash. Photo by T.L. Strot (unsplash.com/@tammylynn)

I stole a local trader on Mars.  The owners didn’t need it any more.  I had to pull them from the seats, but I lay them respectfully beneath a nearby ship.  The trader was not made for interplanetary trips.  It did not have the fuel reserves for a fast shot between two planets.  But if you set your navigation correctly, you can save all your fuel for takeoff and reentry.  It’s a long, slow trip—weeks—but you can make it.

I made it, but just barely.  On Mars, a cop was cruising the abandoned spacefield.  My takeoff was too quick.  I was nervous and I’m not a pilot, so I burned a little extra fuel.  Precious fuel needed for landing in Earth’s stronger gravity.  But I survived the crash.  If I can get more fuel, I can probably get the ship working again.  I’m no pilot, but I’m a great engineer.

Still no triangles in the sky!  I should be glad, but instead I shudder, a cold spike running down my spine.  Is it so bad on Earth?  I push myself into a run to the farmhouse.  I still think of it as Granddad’s house.  We lived here with Granddad, until he passed away, and then it became Mom’s.  Like the generations before, we continued to farm the family land.  I did my share of chores, monitoring the cultivators and irrigators at the control board while I did my homework.  Once I learned some electrical, I even fixed a few machines for Dad.  And, yes, I drove a John Deere harvester every fall.  But once I reached midgrades, I realized I didn’t want to be a farmer like Mom and Dad.  I wanted to go to space.

Still no triangles in the sky!  I should be glad, but instead I shudder, a cold spike running down my spine.  Is it so bad on Earth?

I stumble through the soybeans.  The rows are too tall to climb over, especially in my condition.  I’m forced to follow the diagonal row instead of heading straight towards the house.  It’s still 100 meters away and I begin to wonder if I will make it, even without pursuers.  My legs are shaking so bad.  I slept the entire trip to Earth with autonav on.  I ran out of food three days ago, so there was not much else to do.  Between hunger, muscle stiffness and the Vere, I’m in pretty bad shape.

I focus on the white house, on Home, as I fight dizzyness and nausea.  My aching muscles, atrophied for two weeks, don’t want to move.  And when they move, they scream.  So I don’t mind getting all nostalgic.  I’m glad of the distraction, and my fuzzy brain is going there anyway.  I remember telling my parents I wanted to study engineering and not FarmAg at college.  It broke their hearts.  They had trouble conceiving me, and I was their only child.  And Granddad’s only grandchild.  Once I left, there was no future generation to take over the farm.

It may not matter, now that we have the Vere.  It’s sweeping across Mars, Jupiter’s moons, and Earth.

It may not matter, now that we have the Vere.  It’s sweeping across Mars, Jupiter’s moons, and Earth.  If it gets really bad—worst-case scenario, they say on news feeds—the remote asteroid colonies might be mankind’s only hope.

I need to get to the house.  I need to get inside.  Granddad was not exactly a Prepper, but he’d lived through two wars, and the basement was always stocked for the family to ride out three months.  And in flush years, Dad had always made a few upgrades to the security systems.  You know, just in case.

Sunflowers
I shamble across the green dooryard, skirting Mom’s giant sunflowers.  They wave joyfully in a light breeze. Photo by Nicky Osipova (unsplash.com/@voodoonicky)

I have not heard from Mom or Dad in several weeks.  Mostly because I never check in.  But at the very least Mom sends me a weekly vid with any news and asks for a call back.  I never call back.  Only for Mother’s Day or one of their birthdays.  Or Granddad’s birthday, which is kind of like MLK Day, a day to be somber and proud at the same time.  But no messages from Mom for weeks.

I need to get inside.  But I’m also afraid of what I might find.

My left leg suddenly gives out just shy of the end of the row.  I take another tumble and this time it takes longer to stand up.  My vision is going red, but my mind is so foggy, it just seems whimsical, not scary.  Red.  The farmhouse looks red, like it’s on Mars.  I giggle.

That’s not good, says a voice in the back of my brain.  You’re losing it.  I giggle at the voice.

I shamble across the green dooryard, skirting Mom’s giant sunflowers.  They wave joyfully in a light breeze.  I wave back.  When did this yard get so big?  I thought things were supposed to look smaller when you went back home.  The five steps to the wide porch are the hardest.  I have to drag my left leg behind me, and I trip over the top step.  I flail and stumble my way to the screen door.  It opens with my voice authorization.

I limp to the kitchen as the house system greets me.  “Welcome home, Cass!  It’s good . . . .”

“Shut it!” I say.

“OK!  You have messages.  One from your parents to all employees.  One to you from Mom and one to you from Dad.”

“Play the first one,” I say.

I hear Mom’s voice, weak but trying to be cheerful.  She says they are OK but they are showing symptoms.  They are headed into town to see the doctor.  It’s a couple week old, but I sigh with relief.  They might be OK.  They might just be in the hospital.

A field of wind turbines. Photo by Nathan Gonthier (unsplash.com/@natejgo)

I peek out the window and I finally see them.  Just two tiny triangles, but one is already veering off to the left.  I think maybe it’s headed to another farm, but it just keeps going down at a diagonal until it crashes in a field of wind turbines.  The lead ship comes straight ahead, following my smoke plume.

Submit your story ending

I can’t wait to see your story endings! Don’t forget to read the contest rules.

Please post your story endings below. And if you just want to leave a comment, that would be great, too!

Be stellar!

Matthew Cross

This is the first winner of the Matthew Cross Writing Contest!

Photo by Andreas Dress (unsplash.com/@andreasdress)

The winner of the Matthew Cross Flash Fiction Collaboration Contest is Frasier Armitage!

SEPTEMBER CONTEST

Frasier wins a $25 Amazon gift certificate and the narwhal amigurumi collectible shown below.

I received so many great entries, and I’ll share some more of them later this week. You can read some of my thoughts on why Frasier’s entry shone above all the rest. (It’s stellar!)

Photo of crocheted narwhal amigurumi, which is a prize for the contest, along with $25

October Contest: I’ll be announcing the October contest soon! (Probably next Monday.)

I started the story below, and see how seamlessly Frasier picked it up after the red line and gave it his own twist!

But this is Frasier’s moment, so enjoy the story!

Hello, Universe!

Jess leaned back in the blue, plastic Adirondack chair on the back deck.  It was a kids chair and he had almost outgrown it.  But it was the only chair that allowed him to tilt his head back to look at the stars.

Tunes from the 1960s purred from the outdoor speaker.  His Mom kept the family speakers on a steady rotation of “decades” music going back seventy years.

They lived in the suburbs.  With light pollution, Jess knew he wasn’t even seeing half the stars up there.  But this summer, with all the bad news online, he found himself escaping to the quiet of the back deck and looking at the starry sky.

In school, he had read about the Civil War and the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement and a bunch of other depressing stuff.  And then his grandfather had died.  Jess and his grandfather were not close, but everyone went to the funeral and everyone cried.  Even Jess cried.

Sometime that summer, Jess realized everyone else in his family would die.  Not anytime soon.  Probably not, anyway.  But, eventually, his parents would grow old and die.  And, eventually, Jess would also grow old and die.  And if he ever had kids, they would grow old and die.  Someday, everyone Jess knew would be dead.

It sucked.

Staring up at the night sky made him feel small and a little scared.  It never used to before.  But when he was little, he didn’t know how much empty space was really up there.  And how tiny the Earth really was.

Last week and the week before he had stared up at the stars.

Maybe, he had thought, it would be OK to die as long as I’m remembered.  Maybe I could get famous like Elvis or Beyonce.  So famous that no one would ever forget me.

Jess had thought about that for a couple of weeks.  He would have to be really famous to be remembered in two million years.  Like Hitler famous.  And he didn’t want to be evil.  He remembered seeing photos of the gas chambers and shuddered.

In two million years, the wind might even wear down the Great Pyramids and the even the pharaohs of Egypt would be forgotten.

Words floated from the speaker on the dark, night air.

Words are flowing out like

Endless rain into a paper cup

They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe

It was “Across the Universe” by the Beatles.  His Dad loved the Beatles.  All of the Beatles were dead.

Pools of sorrow, waves of joy

Are drifting through my opened mind

And that’s when the idea struck Jess.  He rummaged through the junk drawer and found a penlight.  He sat back in the kid-size Adirondack and shone the light into the sky.

Dad was an engineer and he knew lots of science.  He said light beams were made of photons.  In space, photons just keep traveling forever–travel at the speed of light, Dad said–unless they hit something. Like a planet or a star.

Jess sent the weak beam of light into space.  He clicked the light on and off.  If he knew Morse Code, he could send a message on a stream of photons into space.  And if that beam never ran into a star or a planet, it would travel forever.  Unlike the pyramids, it would never be worn down by wind or time.

The next day Jess bought a brand new flashlight–the most powerful one he could afford at the big box hardware store.  That night on the deck, he sent coded messages into space.  He looked up Morse code on his phone and shot off the messages in different directions into the sky.

Hi

I am here

My name is Jess

Im alive

I dont want to die

Never forget me

 . . .

Halfway through high school, Jess had learned enough about lasers to build his own high-powered laser from a kit.  He even got his Dad to help mount it on the roof.  Mom thought he was crazy, but Dad was into science stuff and thought it was a cool project.

Jess studied star charts and learned how to aim his laser using the computer in his room.  He sent coded messages into the night sky almost every night.  He aimed the laser into the empty stretches between stars, nebulae, and galaxies to give his messages the best chance of flying forever through space.

No human would ever see them.  Racing at the speed of light away from the Earth, no human could ever catch up with them to capture the light and decode it.

And what alien would ever know how to decode Morse code?  Or care to try?

But Jess knew that his coded messages racing through space would last longer than even the Earth itself.  Eventually, the sun would supernova and the Earth and the Moon and every human landmark in the Solar System would be absorbed, melted, obliterated.  But Jess’s small, silent, staggered rays of light would live on.

Forever.

. . .

In college, he studied engineering and physics, trying to decide which way to go.  Both were incredibly tough.  Jess had programmed the computer in his bedroom at home to aim the roof-mounted laser at the emptiest reaches of space.  He had saved hundreds of different coded messages and each night, his computer sent the messages into space.

He was so busy at school, he forgot about the laser most of the time.  And, miracle of miracles, he finally had a girlfriend!

But when he came home on breaks, he checked the laser on the roof.  He cleared the dead leaves away, wiped the lens, applied another coat of water proofing.  He checked his sky maps and scheduled some new programs to run when he was away.  At night, sitting on the deck, he thought up new messages to send.

Hi

I am Jess

This message will outlast everyone

The pharaohs

The presidents

Taylor Swift

BTS

Remember me

Jess was not trying to reach anyone out there.  He never thought to try to look for replies to his messages.  Besides, detecting a laser reply from space would be quite a trick.  That would take more physics, engineering and money than he had.

So it was merely by luck that he was sitting on the back deck after graduation, drinking a beer and peering up into the sky, that he saw it.


A single star blinked a rhythm of dots and dashes, over and over, like ocean waves. Jess’s beer crashed on the deck, spilling between the planks. He scrambled for his phone and recorded a video, pointing to the heavens, and muttering the words that flickered in clumsy Morse.

Hi Jess

Its grandpa

Dont worry

Everything will be alright

Jess staggered backwards and flipped his camera. He garbled something about his grandfather’s funeral and uploaded it to the Web.

Twenty likes.

Fifty likes.

Three hundred.

Eight thousand.

Within ten minutes, more than a million views ticked across the screen.

Was this really happening?

All he could think about were the lyrics to that Beatles song, stuck on repeat.

Images of broken light
Which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on across the universe

His phone shuddered. Unknown number.

Jai Guru Deva, Om
Nothing’s gonna change my world
Nothing’s gonna change my . . .

“Hello?”

“Hello, is this Jess Dawson?” A voice sharp as gravel crunched down the earpiece.

“Who are you?”

“Name’s Grant Knox, FBI. We’re sending a chopper for you.”

In the distance, a low rumble carried across the sky. Jess shook his head. “A chopper? Why?”

“For your protection, Jess. We saw your video. Half the world’s seen it by now. You’ve no idea how long we’ve been trying to make contact.”

“Contact? With who?”

“You’d best pack some things. We need to get you secure.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re about to go down in history, Jess. People will be talking about this forever.”

“About what?” Jess looked at the sky. The flashing dots.

Dont worry

Everything will be alright


I hope you enjoyed this piece of flash fiction that Matthew and Frasier wrote together. It was a fun collaboration!

For more fun endings to this story, look for some honorable mention finalists in a separate blog post later this week. And next week, we’ll reveal the October Contest story beginning and the new prize!

Finally, if you enjoyed Frasier’s prize-winning ending, please make sure to share some kind comments below.

Be stellar!

Matthew Cross and Frasier Armitage

Insidious Parasites in Sci Fi can be repulsive or beautiful

Photo by Nick Fewings (unsplash.com/@jannerboy62)

N.K. Jemisin designs a horrific parasitic overlord

N.K. Jemisin, a winner of both Hugo and Locus awards, writes about human-designed parasites that took over the world in her short story, “Walking Awake” in the 2019 short story collection Sunspot Jungle: The Ever Expanding Universe of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Vol. 1.

Alien woman's face

“They were created from other things. Parasites–bugs and fungi and microbes and more–that force other creatures to do what they want.” Most human bodies on Earth are controlled by the parasites, called the Masters, and the remaining humans serve them. The parasite itself has waving head-tendrils and a stinger.

When a Master needs a new human host, it visits a transfer center, where human hosts are raised. The transfer is gruesome and painful for the old host and the new one.

“When the Master came in and lay down on the right-hand table, [the girl] Ten-36 fell silent in awe. She remained silent, though Sadie suspected this was no longer due to awe, when the Master tore its way out of the old body’s neck and stood atop the twitching flesh, head-tendrils and proboscides and spinal stinger steaming faintly in the cool air of the chamber. Then it crossed from one outstretched arm to the other and began inserting itself into Ten-36. It had spoken the truth about its skill. Ten-36 convulsed twice and threw up; but her heart never stopped, and the bleeding was no worse than normal.”

Stephenie Meyer imagines beautiful, peaceful parasitic creatures

Stephenie Meyer, who wrote the paranormal Twilight Saga, also wrote a beautiful Sci Fi novel, The Host. The parasites have taken over the dominant species on at least seven worlds. Earth was one of their most recent conquests, but only a few human rebels remain.

The parasites, which call themselves “souls,” also have a procedure in a lab-like setting where they insert a parasite into a human body, but the human body is unconscious and the procedure seems much more peaceful.

Up-close image of a blue eye with a ring of pale blue on the inside of the iris

“[The Healer] Fords concentrated on the unconscious body; he edged the scalpel through the skin at the base of the subject’s skull and with small, precise movements, and then he sprayed on the medication that stilled the excess flow of blood before he widened the fissure. Fords delved delicately beneath the neck muscles, careful not to injure them, exposing the pale bones at the top of the spinal column.”

. . . .

“[The assistant] Darren’s hand moved into view, the silver gleam of an awaking soul in his cupped palm.”

“Fords never saw an exposed soul without being struck by the beauty of it.”

“The soul shone in the brilliant lights of the operating room, brighter than the reflective silver instrument in his hand. Like a living ribbon, she twisted and rippled, stretching, happy to be free of the cryotank. Her thin, feathery attachments, nearly a thousand of them, billowed softly like pale silver hair. Though they were all lovely, this one seemed particularly graceful to Fords Deep Waters.”

. . . .

“Gently, Darren placed the small glistening creature inside the opening Fords had made in the human’s neck. The soul slid smoothly into the offered space, weaving herself into the alien anatomy. Fords admired the skill with which she possessed her new home. Her attachments wound tightly into place around the nerve centers, some elongating and reaching deeper to where he couldn’t see, under and up into the brain, the optic nerves, the ear canals. She was very quick, very firm in her movements. Soon, only one small segment of her glistening body was visible.”

Design your own parasite

Caterpillar with black head and back and translucent underbelly
Photo by Holger Link (unsplash.com/@photoholgic)
  • Will it possess humans, cats, elephants?
  • Will it look horrific or strangely beautiful?
  • Will the host remain conscious? What will it think?

Please post your comments below.

Be stellar!

Matthew Cross