SEPTEMBER 2020 75-Word Writing Challenge -- VICTORY TO MOONBAT!

[The Judge]

RULES:

Write a story inspired by the chosen theme and genre in no more than 75 words, not including the title

ONE entry per person

NO links, commentary or extraneous material in the posts, please -- the stories must stand on their own


WHEN WRITING YOUR STORY, PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IS A FAMILY-FRIENDLY FORUM

All stories Copyright 2020 by their respective authors
who grant the Chronicles Network the non-exclusive right to publish them here


The complete rules can be found at RULES FOR THE WRITING CHALLENGES

Contest ends at 11:59 pm GMT, 23 September 2020
Voting ends at 11:59 pm GMT, 28 September 2020

You do not have to submit a story in order to vote -- in fact, we encourage all Chrons members to take part in choosing a winner


The Magnificent Prize:

The Dignified Congratulations/Grovelling Admiration of Your Peers and the challenge of choosing next month's theme and genre


Theme:

CLOUD(S)


Genre:

SCIENCE FICTION or FANTASY



This thread to be used for entries only. Please keep all comments to the DISCUSSION THREAD

We invite (and indeed hope for) lively discussion and speculation about the stories as they are posted,
as long as it doesn't involve the author explaining the plot



** Please do not use the "Like" button in this thread! **​

 

[Guttersnipe]

"Rainy With a Chance of Sun"

It was a sunny day for sunny people. I sat at the bus stop, observing the people whose clouds
shined bright and white, chatting and laughing.

There's no hope for me, I thought, getting drenched, my cloud thundering discontent overhead.

All of a sudden, someone snuck up on me. She was smiling at me, but her cloud was a bit grey.

My cloud died down a bit.

"It takes time," she said.

I smiled slightly.

 

[Ashleyne]

POTENT HAPPINESS

Laughter reverberates.

Brad’s hands quiver as he steps towards the alley.

Electricity snaps in the clouds a few storeys above.

Tears glisten on the homeless lady’s face, silver against bark. Dead eyes sparkle, as does her smile. Her and five others are group hugging. He throws the blanket, smothering their Death’s Bliss fire.

Brad needs to know how it feels, complete happiness, enough to die for.

Shivering, he clicks the open button on his helmet.

 

[Bren G]

Heads in the Cloud


Hal read the poster - Sunny Acres Retirement Awaits!

Sara – everyone - was gone now. So many memories. He wouldn’t leave!

But that poster…

He went the next day.

“Your room. Number 9000,” said the manager. Hal entered.

“Hal! It’s wonderful. All those resources - and our own room!” said Sara beaming.

He’d found heaven.

* * *

​

The computer engineer addressed her team. “Patch worked! The last retired AI was archived to the Cloud!”

 

[Capricorn42]

Cloud Life

A starship hung over a planet wreathed in clouds.
“Anyone there?” Asked the ship. She asked the same question every ten millennia.
She was patient. If this rolling, boiling cloud-world really didn’t have any occupants, then she could move on to the next.
Her sensors twitched suddenly as a tendril, two hundred miles long, unfurled from amongst the vapour and wavered, as if unsure.
The starship smiled, unfurled her own tendril, and they touched.

 

[Cat's Cradle]

Those that Drift

Clouds love quickly and without common sense – the fluffiest one waiting above the farmhouse pined for the girl living there.
She’d earlier lain afield naming shapes floating over her: “Frog… Boat… Hippomotapus…”
Hippomotapus welled with raindrops, surrounded by its vaporous kin.

When the girl later left the farmhouse to play, the sky was clear and blue.
Clouds are notoriously fickle, and Hippomotapus had gone, having fallen for a collie chasing butterflies further down the valley.

 

[AstroZon]

Kapteyn-B

Through the portal’s layered glass, I looked over the uninterrupted cloud layer. “Too bright,” Brody said as he closed the louvers. We watched the monitors as our probe parachuted slowly toward Kapteyn-B’s surface. For 35 minutes we studied atmospheric readings.

Our hearts raced as it neared the surface. “I don’t believe it,” I said loudly, “ferns!” “This is what Venus was supposed to look like,” Brody laughed. “Wait, what was that?” I yelled, “A brontosaurus!”

 

[Margaret Note Spelling]

Clouds of Witness

I watched the pilots zip through my sky every day. Two of them, excellent fliers, always together. I could feel their love. But...something happened on the ground. Friendship faltered. Soured. Within weeks, there was only shuddering rage.

One day, I watched as one shot the other from the air. I watched a murderer fly away alone.

When the others came avenging, I wrote the truth in my sky.

I am clouds. I will witness.

 

[Astro Pen]

Passing Touch

Sometimes I descend and kiss your mountain villages.
You call me different names then, mist or fog. But I am cloud.

Sounds softened, gentled, you breathe me in, your voices mellowed.
Later, I lift and you think all is as it was, but I have engaged, intimate with your homes, your trees and - souls.

Lives have been changed, like things under a magicians cloth. Your courses subtly altered.

 

[MikeAnderson]

I Told You That Wand Of Storms Was Priced WAY Too Cheap!

"What was the plan, peasant; slowly give me pneumonia?!"

Dalen only realized in the end clearance rack storm weapons at the bazaar were rubbish, as a smirking necromancer with a tiny rain cloud drizzling on his crown took the wand, and picked spinach out of his teeth with it.

“Should’ve tried to make me eat it; would’ve done more damage…”

“Oh!” he smiled at Dalen with menace. “That gave me an idea for you, genius!”

 

[Victoria Silverwolf]

Aphrodite Awaits

Isis drifted lazily through the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Venus. The mixture of nitrogen and oxygen within the ship provided sufficient lift to keep it suspended fifty kilometers above the inhospitable surface. The outside environment was almost friendly, if unbreathable, with temperatures resembling a warm spring day. Winds lashed sulfuric acid clouds into baroque shapes, lightning blazed, and volcanoes glowed far below. It was a luxurious prison for the tyrant who was its only passenger.

 

[chrispenycate]

A star is born

Stellar maternity, nebula's dust
Luminescence created by obscurity
Short of eternity, infall who must
With life elements mere impurity.

Will the system give birth to an alternate Earth?
Are gas fields all lumpy and planety?
But inhabitants local, whatever their worth,
Will never converse with humanity.

As we are all stardust, ancestored by the cloud
Which preceded our sun's radiation
Multiply elementary endowed
Supernova residue from earlier stellar generation
Let there be darknesses, prologuing creation.​

 

[Daysman]

Field Test

He raised the multispectral camera a little. "Better?"

She nodded. "Algorithm's kicking in."

On the laptop, virtual streamers descended from the flat bottomed cumulus cloud, flowlines marking it's invisible rise above the field. From the public path at its southern extreme, they saw dense vortices among sunflowers. Along the northern hedgerow, updrafts clustered about an ancient tree, and above a solitary cow.

"Is that a glitch?"

She smiled. "Go move the cow and we'll see."

 

[Starbeast]

Those Who Dwell in the Mist​

"Stay on the path. Stay off the moors."

"There's a weird cloud on the path..."

Local pub patrons fell silent. "You'd better go," stated the owner.

#

"We should have told him."

"Shush!"

Pub door creaked open.

"He's back," uttered a patron.

"You yokels didn't mention you had a werewolf problem. I killed it. Now, you have another problem, my vengeance!"

Three vampire brides rushed inside to gorge.

"Damnation. I still need gasoline for my Dragula."

 

[paranoid marvin]

It's Only Natural

Some call me Donar, Thunor, Thor
The mighty God of Thunder
For I can make the heavens lour
And tear the sky asunder

The hammer of my foes am I
The one who mortals fear
My lightning bolts released on high
That harry, rend and sear

But with amusement I do laugh
At men so fierce and proud
Who tremble at my thund'rous wrath
When I am but a cloud

 

[BT Jones]

The Electric Sea

“Here, grandpapa!”

Stratos clipped the harness, the cable tensed, and the pair gathered at the basket railing beneath the indigo night. Below, the umber cloud sea billowed tumultuously.
“Storms are beautiful,” said Mesos, giddy with joy.

Lightning lit the boy’s rosy cheeks. Stratos held him tight. “Even more so from beneath.”
Mesos gasped. “You’ve been undercloud?”

Stratos smiled warmly. “My grandfather; before we humans sailed the heavens; before…”
Stratos’ smile faded.
Mesos cuddled him.

 

[Hugh]

Undercover​

About two weeks ago I realised the clouds were watching me. This was worrying – they’re always the first to notice – but maybe they were just curious.

Then Mr Jones at number 43 seemed to catch on and began eyeing me suspiciously.

However, when the cats started, I knew things had gone too far.

I called home for an emergency airlift straightaway. Once a planet gets wind you’re an alien you have to move real quick.

 

[Ambrose]

22 October 1707.

It was a dark and stormy night.

‘I don’t like this,’ said the Helmsman. ‘If only the cloud-shoveller upstairs would stop, we’d see where we are.’

‘Don’t chatter,’ said the Mate.

‘But has he got his sums right?’

‘Shut up. He always gets our longitude right.’

The time-tourist spectators laughed and cheered.

Admiral Sir Cloudesley-Shovell’s flotilla ploughed on to its morning appointment with the reefs of the Scilly Isles.

 

[Justin Swanton]

Love in the Clouds

The capsule rose to the airship drifting above an endless sea of clouds. The old winch motor whined. Miriam winced. Let the cord hold. Finally the capsule reached the cupola. Thaddeo’s head appeared from the hatch.

“Well?”

He shook his head. “Chlorine down two per cent.”

Miriam did a mental calculation. “Another year at least.” Not enough food for them, not two children and two adults. Only one thing to do.

She cut the cord.

 

[Luiglin]

It’s a kind of magic

The wizard hunched over his staff and continued to twiddle with the knob.

The Dark Lord poked the Minion. “Once more.”

The Minion’s hand responded with an intricate series of twists and turns.

“That’s far too many thaumaturgical acronyms for me.”

With a shriek, the wizard collapsed, his last breath releasing a single rune that floated into the sky.

“Bit anticlimactic. Now, how do I download my reincarnation backup from this ‘In the Cloud’ thing?”