Police Appeal

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN?
She stared at the poster containing a grainy photo taken from CCTV of a man robbing a newsagent's.
She had seen him. Several million times.
He was her son.
She wasn't going to inform the police. She was going to go home and kill him.

Nearly There

How much longer?
The finishing line approached and he pressed on.

Just Phoning It in Now, To Be Honest With You

The bus rounded the corner at speed. The driver was trying to make up for the time that was lost back at the roadworks.
A woman stretched out her arm at the stop in front of him. He indicated and slowed down.
The meteor flattened the bus stop before he reached it.

Is Anyone Still Watching?

Who's still there?
I bet you are, you know which one of you I mean.
What about the others?
All dead?
I thought so.

The Apostrophe

He looked in the window of the shop and felt rage bubbling inside him as he spied the hand-written sign.
NEWSPAPER'S
He was glad he'd brought his knife.

The Thing

"Have you got the thing?"
"Yes."
He smiled and hung up the telephone.

Filler 3

Will this do?
Not sure.
Posts anyway.

Motorway

Three lanes in both directions. Thousands of cars each day using its surface, gradually wearing it down.
The road was aware of everything that happened and had had enough.
It opened itself and swallowed hundreds of cars before closing again.

Filler 2

This one's not good enough, but it's getting used anyway.

The Journey

"Are we nearly there yet?"
The boy's father had a heart attack and the car smahed head on with an approaching petrol tanker.

Mystery Item

He opened the curtains. It was still out there.
He sighed and went down to the garden to stop it.

Filler

This will do for today.

Centre of the World

After months of digging, drilling and controlled explosions they'd finally found it.
The red, glowing orb sat at the bottom of the pit, hundreds of miles deep.
"This will change everything," smirked the man behind the project.
The orb glowed brighter and began to increase in size.
Alarms sounded as the walkways near the orb were crushed.
Workers panicked and tried to get into the lift.
It was too late.

Citizen

She had valid papers, but while she had been away the rules had changed.
"You can't enter the country," said the faceless passport officer.
"What am I supposed to do?"
The man shrugged.
"Next!" he shouted and the woman was pushed aside.
She wandered aimlessly, a citizen of nowhere.

Tell Me

The man had a secret and he needed to share it. The knowledge was driving him crazy. He grabbed a notebook and a pen and began writing down the whole story.
He was two sentences in when he heard a tap at the window. He turned to see his nemesis holding a gun and shaking his head.
The pen dropped from his hand.

Have You Seen Me?

He had been lying down for almost 24 hours, watching them all through the hole.
He reached for the bottle of water next to him and carelesly knocked it over. There was a thump as it fell from one of the beams and on to a floorboard.
Below him, five people looked up at the hole. They knew he was there.

Is This the Way to Amarillo?

"Excuse me?"
The man wandered over to the confused motorist who had wound down his window.
"Yes?"
"How do I get here?"
He held a piece of paper containing a crudely drawn map with a scrawled address next to it.
The man looked at it.
"There is no such place."
"What do you mean?"
"That address doesn't exist. At least not in this city."
"And you know every address in the city, do you?"
"Pretty much, yes, and I'm telling you there's no such place here."
"But I've been driving for almost three days," protested the motorist.
The man shrugged and walked away.

Clickbait

You won't believe what happened next.

Switch Off

He took a toke and inhaled. He held it for a few seconds and then exhaled, his lungs burning.
He needed to forget the day he'd had, the things he'd seen. His usual solution wasn't helping though.
He stubbed the joint out in the ashtray and immediately set about constructing a new one.
He reached for the bottle of whisky, unscrewed the top and took a huge slug.
He lit the new joint.
He started to feel a bit more relaxed.
Outside, a man waited in his car, ready to do what had to be done.
His phone rang.
"Understood. I'll take care of it right away."
He put his phone in his pocket and stepped out of the car.

Back to the Start

The man in the suit looked down. “So sad,” he deadpanned and walked away. He took a leather-bound book from his inside pocket to see who else hadn’t paid their TV licence.
He jumped into a waiting vehicle and headed to the next address on the list.
This one would be especially good. It was someone he knew.
He smiled as the buildings blurred past at the thought of exacting revenge on his childhood nemesis.
Death would be the perfect punishment for the incident of 25 years ago.
The vehicle stopped and the man exited. He walked up the path and rang the doorbell.
"Who is it?" came a voice from inside.
"I'm here to check your licence," the man replied.

The door splintered as a bullet tore through it and into the man's face.
The vehicle screeched away from the house.

Eye for an Eye

"It was you, wasn't it?"
He turned towards the sound of the angry voice just in time to see a spork thrust into his eyeball.

Impossible

He wondered if it could be done.
He decided it couldn't.

Same Old Song

She pushed the buds into her ears and pressed play.
She loved the song she'd just downloaded. Millions of people couldn't be wrong and this was a deserved hit. The song ended and she chose to play it one more time.
After five listens she'd had enough of the song and pressed skip. The same song played again. She pressed skip. Nothing happened. She pressed it once more.
Sharp needles shot out of her earbuds and penetrated her brain.
The song played again and again.

Four words

And then it happened.

Jump

He stood on the edge of the bridge and looked down to the river 100 metres or more below him.
Nobody knew he was here and no one was going to stop him.
He'd had it. This was the end.
He launched himself from the edge, plummeting downwards ever faster.
The phone in his pocket rang.

First Day

He was nervous.
The first day was always like this. So many new people to meet, so much to remember. He hated it.
As he stood in a queue for dinner it became too much for him and let loose a long golden stream into his trousers.
"Oh my God!" someone shrieked.
"New boy's pissed himself!" laughed someone else.
It wasn't the ideal start to his time in the office.

Game Over

He hammered the buttons and moved the joystick as he watched the character on the screen in front of him execute some fantastic martial arts moves and despatch yet another opponent.
He had made it to the final level. There was just one more fighter to beat.
The opponent was revealed and they were much bigger than the character he was controlling.
This would take some skill.
No sooner had he started to think this and the giant martial artist had pulverised him.
GAME OVER showed on the screen.
A long knife shot out from behind the screen and entered the boy's chest before twisting and retracting.
The owner of the arcade appeared, dragged the boy out to the back room where all the others had been placed and instructed one of his operatives to mop up the blood.

Cable Car

The mountains were covered in crisp, white snow and they were going to be perfect for today's skiing. The sun was shining and they were all ready.
They sat in the cable car, holding their skis and chatting excitedly.
"How long till we're at the top?"
"About five minutes."
With that the cable car stopped.
"What's happening?"
"No idea. We'll probably be moving again soon."
"I hope so," said one of them.
He looked out of the window and saw that they were suspended over a deep valley.
There was a peculiar sound and they felt momentarily weightless as the cable snapped, before they plummeted downwards, ending the trip all too soon.

Not Long Left

The children sat in the classroom, staring at the clock.
It was 3:40pm on a Friday and they'd long abandoned the pretence of doing any work. There were five minutes until the weekend started and thoughts had drifted towards sleeping late, playing in the park and watching TV.
The clocked ticked onwards. It would soon be time.
The classroom door opened and a stranger with a gun changed everyone's plans.

Bald

It started in his 20s and he'd noticed his forehead seemingly becoming larger. By the time he was in his 30s his head hair had almost completely disappeared. By his 40th birthday most of his body hair had also vanished.
Now his eyebrows and eyelashes had also gone. He was totally smooth everywhere.
All except for his ears and nose from which there grew huge bunches of grey which grew back within a day or two of removal. Nature's cruel joke.

Eruption

The gods were unhappy. The mountain that watched over them was making angry noises. They had sacrificed everything they usually dead to halt the anger - goats, cows, virgins, horses. None of these helped and now smoke was rising from it.
The villagers stood and watched as it began to spew fire and rivers of red ran down towards their huts.
They knew not why the mountain was angry and made no attempt to escape, accepting their punishment with relative ease.

After It All

Once it was over it should have been over completely, but that wssn't the way it played out.
Some had been unaffected by it, and if there had been any scientists left they'd have struggled to offer up any kind of explanation for it.
Those who remained would have no proper life as we knew it as a result and they were destined to live the rest of their days in a shell of the former world.
Not that they would notice. They lived such an isolated exsistence that they would never know what had happened in the world outside of their small patch of jungle.
They would never know the damage others had done.