Some primal instinct of survival must have surged through my body. There is no other explanation for how I could have run so far into the woods.
I could be dead. I will be dead if caught. Run!!!
This singular thought electrified my exhausted legs.
I glanced back when I thought I had lost them. In that moment of folly, the entire world came crashing in a heap of green and blue and brown. I tripped over a tree root and fell on my face.
Fear overwhelmed me. Trembling, I struggled to get up. That’s when it caught my eye – that wide gaping hollow at the base of the guilty tree; strangely dark.
The sound of approaching footsteps spurred me to dive into the hollow. Refusing to breathe, I inched forward to flatten myself against its inside wall. On reaching it, I let out an involuntary yelp; the wall was ice cold, in the middle of the tropical forest.
I panicked. Surely they had heard me now! Confused and desperate, I searched for any means of escape. That’s when I saw the mark of a human palm on the wall. Would it open, if I touched it? With no time to decide, I had no choice. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than a violent death. I placed my hand on the wall.
I have been here ever since. Over the years, I have often looked back at that moment of desperation. Every single time, I regret placing my hand.
Flash fiction in response to Weekend Writing prompt hosted by the lovely Sammi Cox. Thank you so much, Sammi! This week’s prose challenge.
Write a story with a maximum word count of 250 words that tells the story of a character or group of characters who discover a secret doorway. Your story must include the following elements:
- a description of the secret doorway
- an explanation of how the doorway was discovered
- a firm decision to either go through the doorway or not
Hey Fluidphrase,
I enjoyed this, a sense of chill to it…I am left dying to ask, ‘why does your character want to go back?’ And where exactly are they?? You keep us in suspense 🙂
Hoping all’s well.
God Bless. Namaste 🙂
DN
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Hi DN,
Thank you so much for these kind words! :). Have a great weekend.
Take care.
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My pleasure. You too.
Namaste 🙂
DN
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This is wonderful! You capture the sense of danger and panic felt by the character so well. And a great twist at the end 🙂 Thanks for joining in with the Weekend Writing Prompt. Have a great weekend 🙂
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Thank you for the encouraging comment, Sammi! 🙂
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Great adventure story, Fluid Phrase. I particularly like this description “the entire world came crashing in a heap of green and blue and brown”; it’s such a vivid way of saying that the narrator fell over. Your response to the prompt is absolutely precise, and yet I would have found it very difficult to ‘reverse-engineer’ it to guess what the prompt had been. Very clever!
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Thank you, Penny! :). I found the prompt very interesting. I did enjoy writing this one.
Really glad you liked this one.
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