Here’s a flash fiction I wrote a while ago. Enjoy!
__
“You are cordially invited to run. I’ll give you a two-minute head start.”
I had found the note lying on the desk in the reading room at my library on All Hallows Eve. “It must have been someone’s bookmark,” I said, holding the paper to the light.
It was a cold, rainy day, and I had only run out for candy, but the library is my favorite haunt, so I’d braved the drops and was still slightly damp. That’s not why I shivered.
There were two red droplets of…something on the note, and the ink was still wet. “This was left here recently,” I said to the empty room.
I looked again at the handwriting. The word “two” had changed to “one.” “Wait. Hold on, Deb. You’re letting your imagination get the better of you.” The note must have said “I’ll give you a one-minute head start,” not two.
But as I studied the words, the ink flickered and flashed again and again. “Fifty seconds. Forty-nine seconds. Forty-eight second head start.”
A sudden thrill of fear came over me. My knees locked, my eyes widened. I tried to run, but I couldn’t lift my feet. And slowly, ever so slowly, the world began to grow. No, I was shrinking and soon I knew nothing at all but the words on the page, for I am the words on this page.
You have two minutes to run.
Beth Overmyer 