If you would like to submit a drabble (a short work of game-related fiction exactly 100 words), please @mail Queens with your submission, the title, the name you would like it to appear under and which category you feel it belongs best in.
Challenge Drabble for October 2018's the topic is Books.
316 String Theory drabbles written — and counting.
Categories
Abilities (9)
Animals (15)
Challenge: Books (10)
Character Study (101)
Family (43)
Life and Death (19)
Love and Relationships (108)
Miscellaneous (4)
New York City (6)
The Resistance (14)
Authors
Abby (19)
Adel (2)
Anonymous (14)
Asi (1)
Astor (1)
Audrey (2)
Aviators (1)
Barbara (1)
Bao-Wei (3)
Bella (3)
Benji (3)
Bolivar (1)
Cardinal (2)
Calvin (3)
Cash (1)
Claire (2)
Colette (4)
Cooper (2)
Corbin (3)
Dajan (1)
Danko (2)
Daphne (4)
Deckard (6)
Delia (2)
Delilah (21)
Eileen (15)
Elisabeth (2)
Emily (1)
Evan (1)
Faye (1)
Francois (7)
Gabriel (3)
Gillian (12)
Hannah (2)
Helena (6)
Howard (2)
Huruma (9)
Ingrid (2)
Iris (1)
Jane (1)
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JJ (2)
Jonathan (1)
Joseph (3)
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Judah (2)
Kaitlyn (1)
Kaylee (21)
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Lene (2)
Lexington (1)
Logan (4)
Lynette (3)
Magnes (1)
McRae (1)
Melissa (32)
Meredith (1)
Monica (1)
Murdoch (1)
Nadira (1)
Nick (1)
Nicole (1)
Nora (3)
Odessa (4)
Pandora (2)
Peyton (3)
Quinn (1)
Raith (3)
Robyn (1)
Roderick (2)
Ruiz (2)
Ryans (9)
Sable (2)
Stef (1)
Sylar (1)
Tasha (3)
Tavisha (1)
Teo (8)
Tess (1)
Veronica (2)
Walter (2)
Early Blight
by Teo
The first year, Teo sucks at farming. He rants about quitting. Francois takes no pleasure in his husband's frustration, but he just— doesn't share Teo's despair.
Then Spring turns over. When Francois drives in, Teo comes out running. He shouts: "Wanna see something amazing?"
He does.
It's a baby goat, newborn. White legs, black eyepatch. Hooves that go, badok!
Afterward, Teo's so playful. He climbs Francois' back with kisses, slow, sucking on each harder than the last. He lifts Francois' hair to place the final one; it tickles. Francois has to wonder how much of this joy is for him.
607
by Ruiz
Six hundred and seven.
Six hundred and seven days since I saw her. Six hundred and seven nights since I last heard her voice. Six hundred and seven dawns since I lost her. Six hundred and seven sunsets since she disappeared into the dark. Six hundred and seven days since I could not stop what I did.
Six hundred and seven times replayed in dreams. Six hundred and seven times I saved her while I slept. Six hundred and seven times I awoke to discover, in truth, that I never had.
Six hundred and seven failures. And finally, one success.
At (Her) World's End
by Pandora
Scuffling. Screaming.
Give her back to me! Don't do this to her!
Back against the wall.
Fuck you!
I won't turn around. I want them to look at me. See my face. Watch me shout my curses.
Pop!
Cheek to stone. Arms at my back.
My baby! We lost her father, don't make me leave her, too!
Pop!
Blood in my nasal passages. In my mouth. On my tongue. Slicked to my teeth. Spat on concrete.
Pop!
This can't be where it ends!
Trying to twist around. Trying to duck free of grasping hands and pinning limbs.
Junko!
P—!
Growing Old Again
by Ryans
Water streams down his face in rivulets as he looks up at the mirror, hands bracing at the edge of the porcelain sink, as he leans over the basin full of water. Turning his head a little to look at the silver that has started to thread it's way through dark hair.
Did he remember showing the signs this early?
Finger tips tug down a little at the corners of his eye, watching the lines smooth, but hints of creases remain. Didn't he already do this dance before?
The dance with time.
He get's to do it all over again.
The Corpses of Fireflies
by Anonymous
When I was a little girl, I used to collect fireflies in a jar.
I thought it was fun, holding them tightly to my chest, watching them glow and buzz around. Then one day the glowing stopped, and corpses of fireflies would litter the bottom of the jar. I cried the first time I saw it happen, felt like I had become a terrible person.
It was the first time I ever really understood death, and understood that my father was gone. When my mother found out, she took me aside and told me something I'll never forget.
"Everything lives to be free."
Aged Men
by Anonymous
They say the end justifies the means, and after seeing the way she died, I call bullshit. That wasn't no heroes death, but that's what she was, it's what she tried to be, and hell. Girls can be heroes too, shit kicking gun toting cowboys. I can introduce you to some, but I can't promise they'll like you — they probably don't even like me.
And I dunno who 'they' is anyway. 'They' need to go to hell. 'They' probably never got their fuckin' hands dirty and 'they' probably weren't around for the beginning anyway.
'They' didn't watch her die.
Selfish
by Anonymous
The last time I saw my daddy, he was resting in an unfinished pine box, and I remember wishing that when they closed the lid it could've just stayed that way.
They let us keep it for the wake. For the procession to the hole we carved outta the earth with our weighty old shovels, but they lowered him into the dark in a heavy canvas bag tied at his feet and head because it was the last casket and my second momma told me he would've wanted it that way.
He wasn't selfish, she said. And neither are we.
November in Yerevan
by Eileen
The stairs outside the Matendaran are the highest the girl in the white headscarf has ever climbed, and she's been up and down the four thousand, four hundred and forty-four steps at Lysefjorden above the sea and communed with the emerald doves of Chand Baori.
Neither altitude nor number makes them so tall. It's the nuclear fire at her back and the unforgiving man standing in Mkhitar Gosh's shadow at her front, but Tyr sees the terror in her eyes. Lets her pass.
When she finds their god-king, Munin alights as she has been taught and, weeping, tells him everything.
First Death
by Bella
You've heard the saying, about 21 grams?
The weight of the human soul.
Horseshit, of course. Actually, that's unfair to horseshit, which is very real and is maybe useful as fertilizer, I don't know.
The first death I saw was a coronary victim. Shouting and fast chatter from the EMTs. Made me want to hide behind a crash cart, tiny med student that I was. But the crash cart is what they needed, so I wheeled it over.
They couldn't revive him.
I knew it was a first. I felt him get cold.
Man to carcass. A matter of degrees.
Angel of Death
by Stef
Few people know when they're going to die. Few people get to choose how they go. I thought I had chosen, when I fought to lift the fallen rock as the flood waters came in. I survived, sputtering, water in my lungs, burning pain all along my body. I didn't die fighting, like I'd wanted. But I did die helping people.
And you were there to take away the pain, Gabriel. My angel of death. The last thing I saw was you. The last words I heard were yours.
And I died knowing my strength would live on in you.
Easier
by Cardinal
"You're dead tomorrow," they told me.
I knew they were right.
I'd seen the knife meant for my heart, my brother of sharpened mirror-glass. I'd seen the payment, slipped to the guards to look the other way.
I stayed up all night staring out between bars. "There's a way out," I told myself, but I couldn't see one.
It wasn't until I looked inside to the dark there that I found it.
I killed him in my sleep, before he could kill me. He was my first.
It scares me sometimes, but they were right.
It gets easier every time.
Equal Measure
by Eileen
I wish I could fill this space with a story about how I was lifted up by a halo of white light and born into the waiting arms of my ancestors, or how death is a solitary birch at the top of a snowy hill with a flock of starlings for leaves and a knot that changes shape between the faces of those I loved the most when I was still alive.
Something pretty.
The truth is that I was and then I simply wasn't.
Yours was an act of cruelty, selfishness and love. The equal measure makes it forgivable.
I Am
by Wendy
I was a bore, rude, insolent, artistic, tall, uncouth, gangly, rich and a joy. I was a woman with means and means to an end. I was an addiction, loathed, desired, wanted, kept close or pushed away. I was cherished, loved and adored.
I was a Sheryl Crow song; I was lovely and weak, I was foul when I speak. I was strange when I'm kind. I was frying my mind .
I was a finder of genetics and prophet of abilities.
I am dead in the ground. I am Wendy Olivia Hunter.
I am a ghost of what was.
Life and Death
by Anonymous
They said we were children of the Tuatha De Danann; heroes.
We did not ask to be heroes, or chosen, or gifted the way we were; lovers.
He was day and I was night, essence of life without the capacity to touch one another; cursed.
War drove us apart and fate kept us there, we longed to be reunited more than anything; eternal.
It took too many generations, too much death and too much pain; division.
Though now we're together again, where we have always longed to be; unified.
Ours was a curse that has finally been ended; thank you.
Lila
by Eileen
When children die, it's always before their time. Three is still very small; there are developmental milestones she'll never reach like catching a gently tossed ball, understanding the concepts of "same" and "different" and the realization of self as a whole person involving mind, body and soul.
And she is whole. Sickness has not taken the glass-brittle fingers from her hands, her hands from her arms or her arms from her torso, which is cold and naked as they wash it, preparing the little girl whose name began with an L for a hasty burial.
Her sister will not remember.
Ravens
by Colette
In celtic mythology, ravens carry souls of the dead to the afterlife.
I read that in a book once; a raven I saw at the Lighthouse reminded me of it.
It was funny, it had a colorful bead necklace in its beak, the strap was broken. It sat there, watched for a long time, pecking on the glass to come in; It shouldn't.
I watched him, he watched me, and after a while he left; leaving the necklace behind.
I decided to keep it. Maybe that raven was someone I loved, come back to say goodbye?
It's a sweet thought.
That Much Longer
by Ryans
The years were closing in and I would soon be held in your arms again, to hear your sweet voice in my ear, and touch those red curls. My arms were open to the idea that my life was coming to an end. I was at peace with it.
Then in only a moment of blinding emerald light, he took his own life and made me young again. He pushed me further away from you and the embrace I've longed for since the madman took you away.
Twenty more years, Sweet Mary, before I can be held by you again.
The Key
by Corbin
The necklace has been a twice-given gift. First to him, then back to her. In the beginning it was just the key to the store, a birthday present from a trickster, to let him know he was still welcome. When the key became useless, due to changed locks, he had it painted in dark blue lacquer and silver stars and returned it to her for her birthday on a chain. He'd thought it was classy, a cunning idea. Now he wears it around his neck, close to his heart, while her body is prepared to be placed in the ground.
Weighing of the Heart
by Eileen
The ancient Egyptians called it the Ib, seat of emotion and thought, dropped from the heart of a mother into her child at conception. At death, it testifies before the gods against its possessor and if the weight it carries is heavier than a feather, the soul is consumed by the monster Ammit: Devourer of the Dead.
The Norse had Niflhel. The Greek, Tartarus. No one mourns lost civilizations or dead religions, only people.
Last night I lay awake wondering if that isn't the greatest sin of them all. Then, for the fist of lead in my chest, I wept.