Here’s Suzanne Burke’s ‘Fiction in a Flash Challenge 2021 Week #43.’
I went with a Haibun format this week to fit this image. It is a prose paragraph combined with a Haiku/Senryu.
Image by Iván Tamás from Pixabay
The red and orange sky covered everything in death. Three months ago, the world lost its beauty. We were celebrating my daughter’s fifth birthday the day a deadly Nano bioweapon escaped from a laboratory. Trees, crops, and fish died immediately. Food and water became scarce, and people turned on each other. Only a few of us survived, scattered throughout the world in our shelters. My family and I only had supplies to last us a few days when help arrived from another planet. These green people, who weren’t much different from us, gave us two options. Board one of the old pirate-type ships that would take us to live in our past or die here. What choice did we have? We got on the last departing boat, leaving our destruction behind. The sea breeze blew our ships forward, and then everything spun, making me dizzy until I passed out. When I opened my eyes, I was lying on the boat under a blue sky with a message tucked into my hand: Try again. Change the past to prevent that future.
Help or just a game
Destiny’s cruel repeat
Can the outcome change?
