February 2019 -- 75 Word Story Challenge -- VICTORY TO NIXIE!

[LittleStar]

The End of a World

‘Vive L’Empereur’ rang with the gunshot. The blue-coats streamed in. It was just a damned house. I should have let them have it.

The powder smoke cleared. The musket cracked from my hands. Stepan’s little fingers were lost in Evka’s bloodied, torn sleeve.

Blood and saltpetre burnt my throat, dried my eyes to bone.

The damned God-King had taken half the world... and now everything. Perhaps his world would flourish... but mine?

 

[Vince W]

Big Plans

“You can’t be serious?”
“Why not? The British did it with less than what’s left over now.”
“But it took them nearly a thousand years to build.”
“I’m not saying it won’t be difficult or take time but we need something for humanity to work towards. There’s been death and suffering for too long now. At least if we try to build a new empire that doesn’t all have be meaningless.”
“I guess, Mr. President.”

 

[Bob Senior]

EMPIRE FOREST PRODUCTS

Years after all hell broke loose on Earth human survivors were still grubbing for roots and insects , slowly starving .
While searching for food outside a Canadian forest the Wanderers met the Forest Dwellers .
A small gaunt woman spoke for the Wanderers, " Forest Dwellers are well fed and fit, what's your secret ?"
" It's no secret replied the Forest Dwellers, come see the Forest Empire, we will nourish you, the Donners have always known how to survive ."

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Accession


Still quiet. Ten days, no humans disturbing their increasingly intricate webs.

Emboldened, Patience dared to go up to the library roof.

She looked out past her lion namesake, into city streets teeming with insect population; nothing larger moved anywhere.

Nothing she’d read gave her any idea what had happened, but Patience knew the world was hers. Casting a silken strand, she caught the breeze and soared.

Patience had always dreamed of building a worldwide web.

 

[Mad Alice]

The Circus On the Edge of Forever

Their last Big Top billowed with star winds, cast off adrift in an atomic storm.
A long dream of waking held two frozen dancers spiraling in the dark.

While ruptured Earth drops past, static echoes in emptiness,
"Supplies exhausted. Colony abandoned."

Torn nets juggle depleted oxygen bottles.

Far above the empty audience, the last Astronaut drifted. Reaching out. Forever just short of the ship that could return him to his destroyed home.

 

[Ursa major]

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Uninterruptible​

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Since civilisation crashed, we’ve been living on borrowed time… no more than a few billion of our years.​

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We hardly noticed the first phase of the crash: nothing happened to us when humanity wiped itself out. We celebrated having got out just in time.​

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Then we realised how vulnerable our new home was. With no mains power in the real world, only the UPS is keeping the server on.​

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It’ll only last a few minutes.​

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[Ursa major]

This challenge is now closed to new entries.

Voting is open at the link below:

POLL -- February 2019 75-Word Challenge -- READ FIRST POST!​

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