The day it all began, the sky decided it would spell words with clouds.
Or more accurately, the aliens used the clouds to communicate.
“Have you got the manual, Commander?”
“Of course I’ve got the blasted manual, you idiot…I’m the guy in charge.”
“OK, sir. Just asking.”
“Now stop trying to think. Remember I’m in charge. I’m the one with badges. I’m the one with the nice photo of me and the Duke of Edinburgh hanging in my office. Now…go and mak’us a cuppa, there’s a nice lad. Oh, and make sure I get plenty of Jammie Dodgers, you know, for dunking. We can hardly fight a war without tea and biscuits, now can we?”
This is how things typically went in the well-oiled machine that was the British army. Nobody was going to threaten this impenetrable island, especially not aliens. This sacred fortress, this green and pleasant land, this stronghold had stood up to worse than aliens, the cheek of them. They’d be sorry they tried to attack here first. Especially when said army had instruction manuals just for this sort of thing.
Commander Wilkinson-Chivers, or Chunky as he was known, opened the Questalienology Manual. But he immediately got stuck on Question 1. This was not a good sign.
Q1. Is the alien force visible? If answer is Yes – go to Q2. If answer is No – go to ‘freestyle war’ section.
Being stuck he was reluctant to ask the lackey, besides which he’d gone off to make the tea and fetch the biscuits.
He didn’t like the look of ‘freestyle war’ so went to Question 2.
Q2. Have you tried to communicate back?
This was useless, he thought. How on this planet was he supposed to communicate with clouds?
Q3. Who has the greater firepower? The alien race, or Her Majesty’s army?
Wow, this leadership thing was really difficult.
Yes, yes, yes. Tea and biscuit time.
“What are you thinking, sir?”
“I’m thinking I rather like the clouds. They’re not really doing any harm are they? Shall we just pretend we never saw them? Get the map, lad, I never much liked living in Britain anyway.”
via Musings of Alissa Leonard: FINISH THAT THOUGHT #2-13.
The idea is that you’re given a starting sentence (which you can change between the brackets), a time limit and a word limit.
First sentence was: “The day it all began, the sky [was gray and rainy].”
There is also an optional Special Challenge:
Include 2 or more of the following:
1. A map
2. A number
3. An alien (or aliens)
4. A made-up word
5. A question
This was a quick entry of about 30 mins (I normally spent hours and promised myself not to reenter this comp as it resulted in two successive 1AM finishes). I had mixed feelings about it.
I actually enjoyed writing it. I knew I could have done better.
However, I was pleased with its uniqueness against the challenge. I was also pleased with the structure and getting ALL the Special Challenge items in.
Sadly, no mentions. But it was just some fun after all.
Metropolitan Dreams 