Every week, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields (thank you, Rochelle!) hosts a flash fiction challenge, to write a complete story, based on a photoprompt, with a beginning, middle and end, in 100 words or less. Post it on your blog, and include the Photoprompt and Inlinkz (the blue frog) on your page. Link your story URL. Then the fun starts as you read other peoples’ stories and comment on them!
PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot
The End
Silence.
No voices, no footsteps.
No clicking of radiators cooling; no electronic chimes from computers.
Sunlight streams through the great window. The painted figures of the frescoes go silently about their business, unwatched, irrelevant.
Dust.
On the lamps, on the huge circular counter.
On the floor, dust, scarred by the tracks of small scurrying creatures. Dust on the clock, its hands forever resting at a quarter to one – whether day or night nobody knows and nobody cares.
Outside the building, life, luxuriant and green, thrusts through asphalt, chokes water-courses, swarms over rusting vehicles and rejoices.
Man’s day is past.
the end of humans…very dark!
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Dear anie
Thank you for reading and commenting. Yes, it’s very dark, but that was how the picture led me. Although there are a few figures in the photo, they’re dwarfed by the space which looks as though it’s slowly being deserted.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Mankind has completely abandoned all……or is it just a ghost town.?
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Dear Larry
Thank you for reading and commenting. In this story, mankind’s lack of care for the environment has led to us becoming extinct. There are no humans left at all. The story is set about twenty years after this quiet apocalypse.
Of course, life itself won’t be wiped out, and very soon it will completely obliterate the works of man.
With best wishes
Penny
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very Twilight Zone y
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Time for nature to reclaim what has been taken from it. Dark and timely Penny.
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Dear Iain
Thank you for reading and commenting. Yes, nature will reassert itself quickly. Humans won’t be missed.
With best wishes
Penny
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The shape of things to come? It could happen, Penny, it could happen! 🙂
Susan A Eames at
Travel, Fiction and Photos
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Dear Susan
It looks increasingly likely, I fear. It’s one of the reason why I’m a member of the Green Party; they’re the only political party whose policies towards the environment make any sense at all.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Yeah, take that, Mankind 🙂
Given some time to heal the Earth will be a paradise again.
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Dear Ali
Thank you for reading and commenting. Yes, life will go on after us. Who knows – maybe one day an intelligent lifeform will evolve?
With very best wishes
Penny
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yes, it makes you wonder if over night the human race just vanishes. What of all the great buildings, the evidence of people long gone. Will some futuristic explorer discover the planet and conclude there must have been life here at one time and think; did they over extend their existence.
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Dear James
Thank you for reading and for your thought-provoking comment. I don’t think the evidence will last very long – a few tens of thousands of years, perhaps. Our longest lived artefacts may prove to be the Voyager spacecraft.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Sounds like a Twilight Zone episode. I wonder if the statues and paintings would come alive?
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Dear Stuart
Thank you for reading and commenting. I must confess that the thought of the statues and paintings coming alive wasn’t in my mind at all…
With best wishes
Penny
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As Neel said, this is such a lovely picture and so many FF writers have taken it to dark places. But perhaps yours is not so dark. Maybe having man gone will be a good thing. Life seems to be carrying on just fine without humans.
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Dear Lish
Thank you for reading and commenting. Yes, there are plenty of ways humankind could go extinct, but life itself will almost certainly continue in all its savage beauty.
With very best wishes
Penny
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I often marvel at how plants force buildings apart, nature certainly would make a good fist at removing the evidence of mans presence.
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Dear Michael
Thank you for reading and commenting. I think there are few sights more melancholy but hopeful than a deserted factory being slowly overrun by vegetation.
With best wishes
Penny
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An abandoned, unused building.People left, building stayed. Now wild creatures made it a home. Nice narration.
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Dear Abhijit
Thank you for reading, and for your nice comment. Nature takes back what was only ever on loan to humankind.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Life goes on I guess.
DJ
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Dear Danny,
Thank you for reading and commenting. Life goes on. Human life does not. Game over.
With very best wishes
Penny
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This reminds me of something I saw on TV a few years ago called “100 years after man.” It’s amazing how quickly nature can recover without man around to screw things up.
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Dear Russell
Thank you for reading and commenting. Yes nature will recover quickly when we’re gone.
With very best wishes
Penny
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that’s very sad. hopefully, it doesn’t happen in my lifetime.
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Dear Plaridel
Thank you for reading and commenting.
Hopefully it won’t happen at all – but time is perilously short.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Love the concept.
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Dear Lisa
Thank you for reading and commenting. Let’s hope we get our act together and keep it just a concept!
With very best wishes
Penny
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And so, the circle of life continues… without the two-legged destructors…
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Dear Dale
Thank you for reading and commenting. Your phrase “two-legged destructors” catches my mood precisely.
With very best wishes
Penny
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😀
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I do love a good apocalypse story! Nicely done.
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Dear Jennifer
Thank you for reading and commenting. I’m glad you enjoyed my story.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Great visualizations here. Of course, one wonders how much of earth was destroyed in the destruction of mankind, or if they just. . .died. . . slowly, not reproducing. Hmmm.
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Dear Linda
Thank you for reading and for your thoughtful comments. Yes, the extent of the destruction will make a difference to how fast nature can heal, so let’s hope we don’t destroy too much.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Beautifully written. Man’s day and his twenty-four hour clock is done. A new era, with no care for quarter to one, has begun.
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Dear Jilly
Thank you for reading and commenting. How sweet of you to comment on the clock’s symbolism; your reading of it is exactly what I hoped!
With very best wishes
Penny
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Man’s last, or have we became the scurrying creatures… this reminds me of one of those temples in the jungle.. love the repetition of dust… I would like to see a lone custodian walking around in the remains of our civilization.
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Dear Bjorn
Thank you for reading and commenting. No, there is no lone custodian. Man has gone. That’s it. The End.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Your words paint such a vivid scene, and the ending is powerfully understated.
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Dear Magarisa
Thank you for reading and for your encouraging comment. I’m pleased you commented about the vivid scene because I tried quite hard with the description this week!
With very best wishes
Penny
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You’re most welcome, Penny.
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Your story is very well described, I could feel the silence and the mood. I enjoyed it very much! Man’s day was past is an excellent last line. =)
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Dear Brenda
Thank you for reading and for your very kind comments. I’m glad you could feel the silence.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Dear Penny,
A bleak, yet peaceful piece. The images are beautifully descriptive and the title says it all, along with the last line. Wonderfully written.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Dear Rochelle
Thank you for reading and for your encouraging comment.
How clever of you to spot the peace mingled with the bleakness!
Shalom
Penny
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Nature’s vengeance? The way we have plundered her, she’s definitely going to strike back soon. I love the descriptions and the vivid vocabulary 😊
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Dear Piyali
Thank you for reading and for your kind comment. I’m glad you enjoyed the descriptions.
With very best wishes
Penny
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Post apocalyptic scene! Reminds me of the movie, I Am Legend. Perhaps we drowned in all of our plastic?
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Or suffocated in plastic, rather? 🙂
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Dear Fatima
Thank you for reading and commenting. There are many ways the apocalypse could come – and it will come unless humankind acts quickly and effectively to stop damaging our planet.
With very best wishes
Penny
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I can barely imagine such depth of silence, although you have done well in describing it.
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Dear Dawn
Thank you for reading and for your lovely comment. You’ve made me really happy by letting me know I took you to a place you can barely imagine.
With very best wishes
Penny
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