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Nick Winney's avatar

I awoke with the taste of badness in my mouth.

Jack nudged Alfie.

Groggy by the camp fire, headache blur. "Where's Big Pete?" I asked.

Alfie looked at Jack, the slightest shake of a head.

"You fought. Don't you remember?"

"So where is he?”

"He took his gear and left."

I looked into the forest. "What?"

He was never found. At his funeral, his mother's hand on my arm. Jack and Alfie's absence. The weight of it. The night spiders crawling in my sleepless head whisper the truth I deny.

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Robert Garron's avatar

Microdosing - 90 mg

RECRUITMENT

His life plunged into a blur. It all came so fast…and disappeared just as quickly. He couldn’t snap his head back and take a final peak. Everything was gone, like a vesper in the night. All that remained of his past, present, and future was his childhood. It seemed like minutes, though probably seconds, when even those last vestiges streamed into oblivion.

“Get up!” The voice boomed from some unidentifiable source in the room.

The subject remained unresponsive.

“The procedure might’ve worked too well,” another voice interceded in the background.

“Might have?”

“Unfortunately, we’ll have to physically transfer the subject to the department of re-personing. We accidentally deleted everything he knew, including language. So, he’ll require a full mental refit.”

“You’re telling me we’ll have to start him off in nursery school?”

“And eventually work towards early primary. That’s all he’ll need.”

“Then we’re dealing with a shell; a functional idiot!”

“But a loyal berserker.”

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Daniel O’Donnell's avatar

Congratulations on your anniversary, Miguel 👍🏼

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Miguel S.'s avatar

Thank you Dan!

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Nick Winney's avatar

That's a thing of power and sad sad beauty. amazing!

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Nick Winney's avatar

Aaah! the allure of the undead....

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Nick Winney's avatar

that's a gritty one

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olivia s's avatar

Happy anniversary Miguel.... +/- 365 microdoses...?

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Miguel S.'s avatar

Thank you Olivia! Microdosing actually began on January 3rd 2024, so we're little over ten months in now 😁 And when I look into my document it says that I did a little over 300 micros total

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olivia s's avatar

300 stories + the rest of us... I think we can celebrate. We'll celebrate again when your record hit 365!

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Miguel S.'s avatar

I have something planned as a celebration of the community for the New Years 😁 super stoked for that.

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olivia s's avatar

OK!

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olivia s's avatar

Microdosing - 90mg of a Blur

===

“So, are you jumping or not?”

He had not noticed the woman, suddenly appeared on the rooftop.

He was standing on the ledge; rain droplets blurred his glasses. He looked down to the street.

“Your son is two, isn’t he?”

He felt the sting in his eyes, blurred by tears.

“He won’t remember you, but…we’ll make up some stories. We’ll write about your affair and fraud charges...”

He could feel his anger arise. He must stop her from ruining his reputation. He turned around and got down from the ledge.

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Gloria Horton-Young's avatar

Flicker and Blur prompts:

When Memory Flickers

Your body my choice they type

from screens that blur like memories

of my grandmothers—one dodging fists

in cotton fields, the other pregnant

In a kitchen bare as winter.

.

Their stories flicker now through time:

the hidden belts, the bruised excuses,

the babies born to empty cupboards,

the prayers whispered beneath

porch fans and poverty.

.

Who knew terror would return

sanitized as memes,

bright as new money,

sharp as the kitchen knife

my mother kept beneath her potholders?

.

Sister, when they come at you

laughing, remember:

your grandmother's hands,

knuckles swollen from cotton

and cooking and crying,

still taught you how

to grow gardens in war zones.

.

Remember: these hands

are yours now.

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Nick Winney's avatar

That's a thing of power and sad sad beauty. amazing! - I meant to post this to you, but instead I posted it to Miguel (again) - sorry! huge admiration for your poetry Gloria.

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Gloria Horton-Young's avatar

Thank you, Nick!

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Chris J. Franklin's avatar

PROMPT: BLUR

THE HOSPITAL

As his eyes flickered open, the harsh white lighting, coupled with the smell of disinfectant, soon made it obvious he was in a hospital.

The moments before everything went black were a blur, but gradually, a few details started coming back to him.

There had been blood.

Lots of blood.

And that was when the other trainees unceremoniously hauled him up off the floor and told him if he was going to keep passing out at the sight of the red stuff, being a Doctor was probably not for him… 😎

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Nick Winney's avatar

haha! been there!

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Chris J. Franklin's avatar

😎👍

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Nick Winney's avatar

im my physiology class there were 4 men and 9 women. We went to watch open heart surgery at the hospital. They inserted a catheter into the man's femoral artery to inject the radio dye stuff to do the xray film of his heart to see where the problems were - a blood jet hit the ceiling when they went into his artery - all four of us men fainted immediately. The women had to drag us out - how we laughed later back in class.

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Chris J. Franklin's avatar

Haha! That is so often the case, yes... 😎

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Jeannine's avatar

I sat in the cab, riding home from my father's funeral. I still couldn't believe he was gone, as I stared out at the sharp, cruel moon floating above the intricate trees and crisp fields. Everything was so sharply focused, it hurt. I took off my glasses to open my mind to the past. The years of my childhood flooded back, when the moon was still a friendly, fluffy blur floating over cotton candy trees amidst the soft fog of fields... back to the time when Dad was still alive.

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C J O'Hare's avatar

There's are real ethereal quality to this piece, which is aided alot by the rhythm and alliteration of your word choices, giving it a nostalgic feel - very beautiful.

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Jeannine's avatar

Thank you so much.

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C J O'Hare's avatar

Plastic ping pong balls sailed across the net in a blur. This was one dining room table tennis tournament that Muldoon did not want to lose.

He didn't care that his girlfriend's mother hated him. Didn't even care she was an actual witch, with sinister spells and weird naked midnight dance partners.

But as he bounced the winning point over her wigless head and into that rabid chihuahuas bed, he finally realized one thing:

He would rather walk the Earth cursed, than be seen in public with that dog again.

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Nick Winney's avatar

what the absolute fck is going on here?? nuts! i like it!

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C J O'Hare's avatar

It's all true - except for the dog - he was actually kinda cute!

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Jason Duck's avatar

Happy Anniversary 😊

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Evelyn K. Brunswick's avatar

Ditto

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Miguel S.'s avatar

Thank you!

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Steven Vickers's avatar

I don't remember the attack, exactly. We were camping in the mountains near Busteni north of Bucharest. In the middle of the night, I heard a big animal snuffling around the camp. Then there was howling, and something slashed the side of the tent like it was tissue paper. There was blood, so much blood, and the bright moon, and a great claw tearing at my throat.

Three weeks later, as the moon began to grow in the sky, the wound was gone. My body fairly quivered with anticipation. I knew the beast I would become.

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Feasts and Fables's avatar

What a milestone and what an amazing community you have built, Miguel. Thank you for providing the space and the inspiration for flash fiction writers of every level of experience and with such diverse ideas. Onwards 💛

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Miguel S.'s avatar

Thank you! Doing my best haha. 🖤

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Richard Blaisdell's avatar

90 mg blur

Poem “subconscious minds of ages”

Minds filled with desire

Physically inept .

Protrusions of bodies slip ;

Deep into valleys

Surrounded by forest recesses.

Over softly covered moss,

The hollows of trees

Widen at any rate ;

Preventing a thick break .

Branches hold tight

Singing, soft whispers

In the night ; of the wind—

Filled lungs, vocalize

“ I love you”.

Cradled in the limbs

Thinking embryonic times ,

Life never was so dim,

Surrounded by water,

Little islands formed

Being born before their time.

Past is now present

It is all a blur.

Rocked by the waves

Into sleepless nights.

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Nick Winney's avatar

this creates images which flicker like jolting film editing from one sense to another - really effective.

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