Flash Fiction Friday: Strange and Stranger

Editor's Note:  Over at InD'Tale Publishing, they're having a little flash fiction competition using the picture below as inspiration.  The rules restrict it to 100 words.  Here's my entry:

Katie's Lamb

Three days in the desert, scorched by the blistering sun, resulted in nothing but heartbreak. I paused before the stone wall that encircled the great house, Whistle Rock proper, a lush and rare oasis sheltered between two buttes amongst the otherwise arid and barren world of sand and stone. I stalled before the adobe hacienda as I mustered the courage to take my bad news into the house. Thinking better of it, I set the sun-bleached skull and coiled, rusted barbed wire on the fence post, then stepped through the gate to tell Katie her precious pet would never return.

Xchyler Publishing Challenge

Over at Xchyler, the most interesting challenge attracted two entries and included the following words:  chimera, transmogrified, abrupt, and foible.

The Lab by Penny Freeman

Call it a foible. Call it a fault. However you wish to classify it, I found it a debilitating failing. I could never accustom myself to the abrupt changes the “exposure” made in me; an unrelenting cycle of metamorphosis: first from one mythical beast, then another and then another still. I don’t know what to call myself. The white coats call me a chimera. I suppose that’s as good a name as any other for someone like me. When the wind rose, when that deafening high-pitched screech filled my ears and the pain of it brought me to my knees, when a myriad of fluorescent colors swirled me up into a vortex of brilliant white light—whatever happened to me, I lost my humanity.

Flash Fiction: The Zeppelin

One hundred and twelve years ago today, the first Zeppelin took flight, rising from a platform anchored on European Lake Constance.  (Germany, Austria & Switzerland share its shores).  In honor of the event, American Night Writers Association is having a little flash fic contest that I thought sounded fun.  It has to be 250 words exactly.  Here's my bit:

     Water.  Earth.  Sky.  On this platform, I forget for a moment the hulk looming above me and all my dreams tethered to it like the lines which anchor it to this huge wooden raft.  Like it, my hopes strain to take flight, free and unfettered on an unbounded voyage of discovery.  But, bouffant clouds heaped miles high float serenely across the fathomless blue of lake and sky.  My heart plunges into the depths to soar.  In the glinting sun, an egret of brilliant white skims across the glassy surface of the water, matched by its twin, until the two become one and the mirror shatters.
     The breeze freshens.  The platform bobs on the lake.  The lines snap and pop.  The hurried plunk of boots on the wooden planks and the urgent voices of my men draw me back to my dreams, my life’s work and my fortune.  Calm as the day, I pace the length of my creation, testing its strength, the joints of gleaming metal, the seams of taut canvas, the vents and valves and gauges—the mechanics necessary for man to take flight.  All is ready.  The plan is perfect, its execution flawless.  This will work.
     I clamber into the front basket and signal to the men. They loose the lines and my heart. It leaps into my throat. The ground shifts beneath my feet. My breath catches. Silent as an egret, gleaming in the sun, my creation lifts from the water, snatches the breeze and I soar.