Short fiction challenge
In my series of short fiction challenges, I post short pieces I wrote for my Masters in Science Fiction and Fantasy at Anglia Ruskin University. We were set a challenge every fortnight, to practise writing in a particular style or genre, and (with permission from my tutor) I’ve decided to share them here.
This week’s challenge was to write a new scene raising the stakes for a character from a previous scene: I chose the one from SFF tropes and themes.
Ana knew it had been too good to be true. For the past hour she’d slipped from shadow to shadow in the quiet early morning streets, between buildings, down alleyways, taking cover amidst piles of rubble whenever a noise threatened discovery, but she’d been convinced she wasn’t being followed. She had no idea what she was expecting to happen, but pursuit was what she’d have gambled on, and she’d spent sixty minutes appreciating its absence. Now, just as she was beginning to think she might have got away with it (whatever ‘it’ was), it seemed her time was up.
She paused in the canopied doorway of a bar, closed now in preparation for the mid-morning rush, and peeked back the way she’d come. Yes, there was definitely a figure lurking there, unmoving but just about visible in the shade of one of the crumbling public sculptures that littered the walkways.
Her mind raced as she considered the possibilities. The Enforcers worked in teams and made a racket: you always knew when they were coming. Occasionally you’d get an assassin pursuing a private hit, but the workers were never targets: one of the advantages of being a nobody. And she’d never heard of a solo lawman working the streets: they hid in their high-rises, protected by their technology.
But then, she’d never heard of anyone’s Doomsday clock failing before. There was no precedent for this.
It occurred to her that she had no idea where she was going. She was just running, aimlessly, to escape a doom that had no conceivable form. She was assuming that this figure represented that doom, but why did they not attack? Maybe this wasn’t her doom after all. Maybe this person knew something about her situation and could help her. Maybe – and her heart almost stopped in terror and wonder at the thought – maybe she wasn’t the only one this had happened to.
Suddenly tired of running, fearful, yet desperate for answers, Ana stepped out into the morning sunlight.
‘Come and get me, then,’ she said.
© Gwyneth Marshman 2018.