Tags
100 word story, Bacchantes, Chuck Wendig, flash fiction, maenads, micro-fiction, revenge, sci-fi, short short fiction, time travel
Chuck Wendig offered a challenge to write a 100 word story on the subject of revenge. I gave it a whirl. Many words died to get here, and my keyboard is sticky with their blood. Enjoy!
THE FIVE HUNDRED DAYS
“Illegal time window?” Shadrack laughs. “How many times can a mother watch?”
Windows are costly—calibrated to one person, place, and moment. No help, weapons, or resets.
They savaged me with cyberware fists.
Coughing blood. Hugging child. Failed. Too late.
But there’s a second me, bandaged and crutched. More me’s watch—each a day older, a day more healed. How many times? You can open a window once a day. Each a day more deranged. Shadrack stops laughing when he sees how many days. The eldest lope down like screaming Bacchantes. Shadrack’s thugs come apart in my thousand dripping hands.
Joshua Alan Doetsch 
Awesome!!!
Thanks, Alex!
You know, I didn’t get all of it, but that’s okay. I get the jist of it, and it’s an interesting story. It does make me want more, if only to understand it better. And I’ve always thought that was great praise, when someone wants to know more about the story.
Thanks for the comments, oldestgenxer. I will definitely take it as praise. I actually had about a page of notes jotted down about this idea, sitting in a file for the last few months. I thought of it when I saw the Revenge 100-word Story challenge. I wasn’t sure I could distill it all into such a small space, but the challenge sounded interesting. In the end, a lot of it had to be implied and left between the cracks (which can be cool too). I do not doubt that I’ll come back to it and write the longer version sometime. In fact, it can be a fun exercise to condense your larger stories to flash fiction (or even twitter fiction) or expand your flash fiction into larger tales.