Welcome to Week 4 of our weekly community drabble! This week’s theme was “extraction.”
Thank you and bravo to everyone who submitted a drabble!
Not the Thousand. Just the One
by Gideon P. Smith
The obsidian scimitar sliced between Mystral’s ribs, shattering into a thousand burning splinters.
The wraith cackled. “You’ve lost.”
If a single shard pierced her heart, she’d be his thrall. Forget her family, her home…even Lorith.
She drew her dagger.
“You’ll never extract them all.”
She whispered a Spell of Sustaining and ran her blade from sternum to navel. Reaching into the self-inflicted wound, she felt for the pulsing of her heart.
She yanked.
Once.
Twice. The aorta severed. Fingers slick with blood, she tossed the pulsing mess aside. The wraith’s eyes glowed red. Finally, it understood.
Nothing would stop Mystral.
~
Practical Cooking
by Z. Hunter Scribner
“Suck the marrow dry, extract every last drop,” his mother had said. It seemed a cruelty, even undignified, but she insisted. Jacob gripped the femur, having already carved away the muscle, tendons, and grit for their weekly gumbo, but was hesitant, despite the many taboos already violated, to go further.
“We have chosen predation son,” his mother reminded him, her hand on his shoulder a comfort. “There is no shame in it, but what is shameful? Wastefulness.”
Heeding her wisdom, Jacob seized his claw cracker, burst open the bone and began to drink. Nothing had ever tasted sweeter.
~
Tower Twister
by Dawn Vogel
No one is prepared for a colossal hand to reach out from nowhere, pick up towers–the Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Tower of London, and other structures with “tower” in their names–and take them elsewhere. But what they expect less is for that hand to reappear three days later, wrapped around a missing tower, to deposit it in a place other than the one from which it was taken.
It’s like a giant rearranging their dollhouse, only now, hundreds of tourists have no idea where they’ve been for part of their trip, nor how they’re getting home.
END
~
Word of Mouth
by Cathy de Buitleir
“I heard it’s all a scam. There’s nothing actually wrong with you. They just want to steal them. They exchange them like currency.”
“But then every time you’d go they’d pull one out.”
“No, that’d make it obvious. They need to play the long game. Make it seem like extraction is the last resort. In fact, the longer they go without pulling one, the more valuable it is.”
“Just go see them, Carl.”
“No way.”
“Just get that wisdom tooth out, it’s clearly not doing anything for you. Let the dentist trade it on the black market if they want.”
~
A drabble is a story comprised of exactly 100 words.
