Jan 28, 2023 6 min read

HIH Flash Fiction Challenge #1

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Heralders, I call upon thee to participate in the Hirschhorn Intergalactic Herald's first ever call to literary action.

Fiction, in my experience thus far, has been by far the most enjoyable thing to write. In my delve deeper into the tranches of writing for fun, I have recently come across the concept of Flash Fiction. Flash Fiction is a writing activity thingy ma bob that challenges people to keep whatever they are writing to a set, most often low, word count. If you are looking for some more examples of this sort of thing I encourage you to go to r/writingprompts, a great place to find writing prompts and great examples of short stories that fit in the Reddit comments.

The Hirschhorn Intergalactic Herald will be running its first-ever Flash Fiction prompt from 1/26/2023 to 2/8/2023.

Please send all submissions to hirschhorncole@gmail.com.

For our first prompt, I have decided to keep it relatively ambiguous and as short as possible. Two words. That is what you will be granted in our first prompt at the Herald.

What you wish to do with these two words is completely up to you, there is no science fiction theme as is used in the example provided. It is completely up to you in every aspect beyond the prompt and the word limit.

Prompt #1: Space Ambush

Word Limit: 1000 Words Max

Submission Form (Please enter submissions using this form, email to hirschhorncole@gmail.com)

Title (if you dont have one one will be assigned by the editor):

Word Count:

If choosen would you like to share?:

Anon/no?:

You may send word files, .txt files, dropbox folders, or quite literally any other form of sharing documents you wish, we will figure out how to open it if you send it our way.

My thinking is if we get some participants it would be fun to share them in a group posting, and if you wish it to be shared anonymously that can be arranged.
Anyway, we hope to receive some submissions. Without further ado, a flash fiction story, exactly 1000 words, using the prompt "Space Ambush".

The Alarms Blare by Craig Maxon

The initial impact of the blast had been astonishing, in one moment the Galcari asteroid belt research vessel Woman’s Whisper had been cruising alongside the gas giant planet, Satareli, utilizing its abundance of Kelitarit gasses to refuel the ship's hop drive before the next jump. In the next, the momentum of the entire ship had come to what had felt to Hutch like a full stop, and in such a violent manner that Hutch swore he had felt his organs slamming up against his ribcage before he was thrown across the room.

Hutch found himself now crumpled in the far most corner of the rather small research room he had chosen so many months ago. The beakers, flasks, and hydro-kinetic containment pods had all been strewn about the room amidst the chaos. Years of research, once meticulously organized, now strewn in every direction.

As his senses slowly began to return to him the first noise that Hutch could make out was quiet. The sound was a soft metallic clang muffled by something that Hutch couldn’t identify the source of from his vantage point on the floor.

Hutch, wanting now more than ever to take stock of his situation, began to push up his body weight, as he did, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his wrist, a blaring and throbbing pain, one that signified to Hutch that it was not only broken, but must have been shattered in the initial impact.

“The initial impact”, he thought, his mind racing “What the hell just happened.”

At the moment of impact Hutch had heard nothing, no blare of the ship's alarm, and no sound of impact.

In one second normalcy, the next chaos.

As Hutch began to push himself up from the floor with his good hand, he took a moment to observe the room.

Everything had been thrown about, but the interesting thing about it was that it seemed to have followed none of the known rules of momentum. Not all of the room’s contents had been tossed into the same corner as Hutch, in fact just from where Hutch was now standing, he could see three of the same Tynek observation deck machines, which had been placed all together on the same table, were now each in completely different positions across the room. One had even burst through the ceiling and was now dangling precariously from the small hole it had created in the ship’s inner shelling.

Before Hutch even had a moment to unpack this strange phenomenon an awful deep and metallic “buruum” rang through Woman’s Whisper.

The sound was of the ship's main alarm system, designed in such a way that whether the passenger be deaf, blind, or blown to bits they would know and know surely that the ship was fucked.

The sound, if it could even be called that, was something you could feel deep within one's self, within every facet of one’s being if need be. Designed to stoke the fires of fear, and bring the innate human instinct of survival to the forefront of one’s consciousness, chilling “buruums’’ that followed each other in no rhythmic pattern, making it impossible for any human to escape the effects of the thing.

The alarm had the desired effect on Hutch, whose mind just moments ago had been racing, was now focused on the one positive the deafening “buruums” signified.

“The powers on” thought Hutch as another “buruum” rang out.

His eyes shot towards the door of the microbial research room, it was a white metal sealing door, meaning the only way to open it was using the ships’ power systems to do so.

“Powers on. Door’l work” Hutch’s subconscious said to him again in an increasingly frantic but calculating tone.

“This is the effects of the alarm,” Hutch’s own voice within him said in a distorted and strained way, almost as if a radio message was being scrambled by some sort of jamming frequency.

Even with the alarms psycho-neurological effects calling upon nearly every nerve within him and every ounce of his consciousness, he still could manage a thought or two of his own untarnished by the blares of the damned thing.

He stepped towards the door's access screen, feeling the terrible sensations of fear, focus, calamity, death, doom, home, family, life, and living, all mixed into a tremendously powerful cocktail of an overwhelming instinctual desire to live.

And suddenly, the alarm stopped.

While its lack of any rhythmic pattern made it near impossible to comprehend audibly, the psycho-neurological grip it took on any human when cranked up to a sufficient level was palpable. When lifted it often left its victims exhausted beyond comprehension sometimes even beyond repair.

Hutch had not been exposed to it long enough to leave him as a comatose twitching pile on the ground. Instead, he stood there a moment and listened to the soft metallic clangs and tings he had first heard in the moments after the event.

He turned his head towards the observation window and for the first time looked out into the vacuum.

He could see the source of the sound now, chunks of the ship were being hurled towards the window, tinging and clanging as they connected. He could see that one of the ships’ loading deck crane arms was now visible from the room he stood, in a spot it had never been before, and that it was the source of the majority of the metallic clusters being thrown at the window now.

As he stood there a shadow began to dim the crane’s arm, and slowly began to envelop the metallic pieces still in transit.

Hutch’s body suddenly tensed, the alarms “buruum”, again taking over every psycho-neurological ounce of his existence. Only this time a hundred times stronger.

Hutch could only manage a single of his own untattered thoughts before the cocktail of instinct took over.

“How could the loading crane be visible from here,” He thought, as the shadow began to swallow the room.

Word count for "Alarms Blare" by Craig Maxon