This month’s Mini Sledge brought out a supernatural flash fiction piece from Jacin Harter. Congratulations on your first win, Jacin!
The prompts were:
Character: A psychic
Action: Hitting the brakes
Setting: Beside an old tree
Phrase: “That’s incomplete.”
Beyond Belief
This was the last straw… Weeks of forensics had led nowhere, but the frustration had not driven Sgt. Troutbottom mad enough to resort to supernatural bollocks. Every promising clue had turned into a dead end, with Chief Inspector Pillows insisting his psychic premonitions would guide them to the answer.
Sgt. Troutbottom stood by a withering, old oak whose naked limbs cast clawing shadows over the latest victim. He peered at the corpse without stooping. This was simple: a hit and run, driver didn’t hit the brakes in time, no witnesses this far out in the sticks so he drove off. Open and shut.
He could hear Pillows shouting at the other officer, ‘This evidence log is incomplete! I want all these metal filings listed by length and weight. Nothing near the body is inconsequential. Am I clear?!’Clear as a cracked crystal ball, Sgt. Troutbottom thought. The inspector’s current hypothesis: an extraterrestrial made of intangible psychic energy (which only he could detect) had descended upon this lonesome pasture to study cattle from the inside out. The metal filings, along with an assortment of bottle caps and rusted nails, were among an assortment of ‘psychic instruments’ used by the alien in its dissection study.
Sgt. Troutbottom peered again at the dead cow. ‘Waste of fucking time. Waste of good beef.’
© 2019 Jacin Harter
Creativity is like a tiger on a string – hardly captured and just a few frightful fuffs away from devouring Jacin Harter whole. For the past six years this Jacin and this tiger have been sighted in Portland, OR, randomly strutting through radio theatres, travel videos, vasectomy parties, and dog buses. Exactly who is leading whom is ambiguous indeed, and one is advised to take caution when approaching either.
Filed under: Mini Sledgehammers | Tagged: fiction, flash fiction, Jacin Harter, Keep Portland Weird, Mini Sledgehammer, Portland, writing contest, writing prompts |
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