Furious Fiction - October 2018

On the first Friday of every month, the AWC hosts Furious Fiction. Participants are given a set of criteria to follow with a strict word limit of 500 words or less. Below is my entry for October.

‘Dad, you need to hurry!’ Preston dug his shovel into the snow vigorously and shouted back at Violet.

‘What’s the hurry Violet?’

‘Time relativity, dad, we’ve discussed this. For every ten minutes we stay here, we lose an hour on Earth. You know what happens if we hit twelve midnight, everything and everyone on Earth is dust. Just like that.’ She responded.

‘Right,’ he said as he continued to dig, ‘there’s nothing here.’

He picked up the compass and headed north.

‘Stay in the spaceship Violet. I’m going to try further out.’

‘It’s dangerous out there dad! Be careful.’ She said.

‘I will.’ He shouted through the blizzard, interrupted by the gush of wind that struck him.

When he reached 250 ft from the spaceship, the compass began to quickly turn clockwise.

‘This must be it.’ He told himself.

He began digging, his arms sore, until he found the large electrical box they needed to take back to planet Earth. It was lighter than he thought – almost blending into the snow – but thankfully with his shovel and compass he was able to pinpoint exactly where it was.

He headed back to the spaceship, carefully dragging it along the snow.

‘You found it!’ Violet cheered.

‘I sure did.’ He grunted back, putting all his energy into dragging the electrical box.

‘Dad quick, we only have another 30 minutes here before it hits midnight on Earth.’

He pushed himself harder but realised there was a cord tangled between his legs.

He fell to the ground and called for help.

‘Violet, I need you!’ He waved to get her attention but she was setting up the spaceship for take-off.

‘Violet!’ He yelled again; she finally turned.

‘What happened?’ She shouted and ran towards him.

‘No Violet, go back! I need you to get me the black lighter from the toolbox and those silver scissors, you know the ones.’

‘The black lighter and silver scissors. I’ve got it.’

‘I’m going to first try cut this off me and then I’ll try burn it. Hurry!’

Violet ran towards the spaceship to grab the utensils for her dad, and as she hurried back she realised he had already managed to pull the cords off him with his bare hands.

‘You did it, let’s go back!’ She helped him load the spaceship and began starting the engine.

Chunk. Chunk.

‘Dad, it’s not turning over.’

‘What do you mean? We need to get out of here we have 17 minutes to head back.’ He panicked.

‘It’s just not starting. It must be something to do with the currents from the box. Do you think it’s drawing all the power out of the spaceship?’

‘Potentially, but this can’t be right. They built this spaceship for the sole purpose of us coming here to save Earth.’

All of a sudden an alarm blared through the spaceship and Violet quickly turned to look at the clock.

17 minutes had passed.