Your Story #123

Prompt: Write a drabble—a short story of exactly 100 words—based on the photo prompt below. You can be funny, poignant, witty, etc.; it is, after all, your story.

No attachments, please. Include your name and mailing address. Entries without a name or mailing address with be disqualified.

Unfortunately, we cannot respond to every entry we receive, due to volume. No confirmation emails will be sent out to confirm receipt of submission. But be assured all submissions received before entry deadline are considered carefully. Official Rules

Entry Deadline: CLOSED

Out of more than 200 entries, WD editors chose the following 6 finalists. Vote for your favorite using the poll at the bottom of the page.

The girl hadn’t known the rocks were alive until they moved. They rumbled, dipped, then surged upward in a shower of earth. A great beast loomed in front of the sun, pointed rocks on its back flexing like porcupine quills. Its warm-hearth eyes blinked at the girl on the shale.

“Are you hiding here?” it asked.

The girl hiccuped, wiped a grubby hand over her eyes and nodded.

For someone so vast, the beast sounded small. “So am I.” It touched its velvety nose to her scraped knee. “But I think we’ve hidden for long enough. Time to go home.”

Who the hell thought this was a good idea dropping off two old ladies out here to fend for themselves? I mean I gave away my set of Foxfire books back in the ’80s. And those books on herbs I’ve been collecting for years didn’t exactly fit into my backpack. My friend Robbe, who was brave enough to come with me, says her mama grew up on rock soup so maybe we can cook us up a mess of that. Tell you what, that’s the last time I won’t read the fine print on any “Win a Free Vacation Sweepstakes.” 

The small group of people went into the strange cave with the metal door. They knew that long ago people had buried something there.

“You really believe a curse?” one of them asked. They looked at the old, almost invisible, and unknown writing.

“This place is a message” … it began. “… is best shunned and left uninhabited,” it ended.

“A yellow circle, with four black marks in it” another said. “It means nothing.” He gestured toward the ancient white column with the circle and black propellor symbol.

With that, they began to smash away at the concrete cylinder.

He’d seen it before. The bodies piled on top of each other. The stench. The palpable heat of decay. A feast for the vultures, but not for him.

He’d stayed far away at first, creeping into the villages occasionally. He could never understand why the humans huddled so close together, cramped in their huts and wooden structures. Letting the disease spread so easily, so rapidly.

He could hear the keening wail of grief. He could smell the bonfires to burn the bodies when the burials became too much for the villages.

At least dragons couldn’t catch the plague. Could they?

Kendra smashes her tracking bracelet with a rock. They’ll search when the signal ends.

Since the Devastation, few Preserves dot the sterile wasteland. This Wilderness visa cost all her savings.

She bushwhacks many miles before nightfall.

Later, she eats cold beans.

Waking early, she repacks gear. A ranger steps into the clearing. “Let’s go,” he says.

“How?” she asks.

He points to her temple. “Tracker’s in there. The bracelet is for show.”

“When did you do that?”

“We all get one at birth,” he answers. “Otherwise, everyone would be running away.”

Kendra stumbles as she follows him out of paradise.

The rain stopped. The sky cleared. The hailstones melted, and the lightning and thunder faded.

Shaking and cold and wet—but fortuitously unelectrocuted—our waterlogged little group walked away from the granite outcropping. For almost an hour, we had huddled against that rock wall. We had passed the time glaring at Henry and suppressing our terror at being on an exposed ridge during an electrical storm.

Henry had invited us for this weekend hike in the mountains. He had said the weather would be nice, the forecast perfect. Never trust a meteorologist, even if he is your best friend.