This week is the official start of YEAR 13 of Siobhan Muir's awesome flash fiction contest. I can't believe she's been keeping it going this long. I can barely handle keeping a blog going with somewhat regular postings. Anyway - she's amazing. Check out her website here for the contest and poke around to learn about her books and where to buy them.
My effort in last week's prompt was meh. I wasn't really feeling it but wanted to try - and then I noticed after I posted that I switched tenses in the middle. YAY PROOFREADING!
Thankfully I caught my tense-flips this time. I hope. It is one of my more maddening habits.
This week's prompt for #ThursThreads is "But I heard the system break." Here is my entry:
Jean-Pierre stared at the bank of monitors in front of him, bored and impatiently waiting for the end of his shift. All the monitors were green, nothing out of regular parameters. Perfect way to end the day. He glanced at his watch and willed the minutes to move faster. No such luck.
He pulled out his phone to pass the last few remaining minutes. This was typically a no-no, but he couldn’t see what would possibly happen in the few minutes that were left. Nothing ever happened. In the five years he’d worked here, nothing happened. There had never been an incident on record in the company’s history.
Once his shift ended, Jean-Pierre eagerly signed off on the logbook. Thoughts of what he wanted to make for dinner flit through his mind and whether he’d have to run to the grocery store to pick up any ingredients.
The door to the room slammed open and his coverage for the next shift popped his head in. “JP! What the fuck, man!”
“What? What happened, Martin?”
“You didn’t trigger the alarms!”
“What? Why would I? Everything has been fine all day, like it is every day.”
“Everything’s fucked! How did you not notice?”
“How? I didn’t see anything on the monitors.”
“But I heard the system break,” Martin insisted. “Come on, we got to get out of here.”
Martin grabbed Jean-Pierre’s arm and dragged the man outside. Once there, he heard the alarms and explosions. And the screams. So many screams.
