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Flash fiction fresh from my fingers to your mind!

Challenge #02278-F088: Getting Into It

It's hidden in plain sight, of course if you've been Shown or found your way there it's where you go. When you can. When you need to. -- KnitNan

Just about everybody in the school despised Weird Ellie. She was too weird, too quiet, too strange. She'd come out with knowledge that nobody else should ever know about as if it were something everyone should know - once you could actually get her to talk. For the most part, she was silent. In class, she did the work and rarely spoke to anyone, not even the teachers. Nobody knew where she spent her lunchtimes.

Gangs of other kids would roam the campus, trying to find her hiding spot. Somewhere a weirdo nerd like her would conceal themselves to escape the mob justice of the playground. She was never in detention. She wasn't in the shady spots or nooks where the older kids went to conceal more grown activities - smoking, nudie magazines, cussing, and so forth - she wasn't even in the library. It was as if she vanished when everyone else thundered out of the classroom, and reappeared when class came back in.

What's weirder than that is... that's exactly what she was doing.

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Challenge #02277-F087: Survivors

Humans have an oath, a promise they make to the world when they are born:

I will Survive.

Survive out of spite. Survive as a witness. survive as a warning to the future. survive so these stories do not disappear.

I will survive or else. -- Anon Guest

Every living creature greets their first taste of life with a complaint. Brief or lengthy, living is worth making a fuss over. Humans, especially, enter their lives and rage at it. Fighting from the

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Challenge #02276-F086: Flakkin' Weebo, Man...

There're always a big group of meme fans. Humans love their funny photos.

Aliens want to run when Big Chungus come and Hit Or Miss is the second favourite song in the room "of course first is Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up." -- Anon Guest

Memetic communication is dependent entirely on the familiarity of the recipient with the subject. Some, simple images with even simpler captions, are easier to communicate than, say, a mish-mash of images with contextual dependency that

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Challenge #02275-F085: To Share Caring

An Alien crew of Havenworlders tries to help their security-officer (a Human) to cope with PTSD-Flashbacks, Anxiety and Panic-Attacks. -- Anon Guest

The ship's Human had been sedated after the Upset. They lay now in the darkened recovery room with gently glowing screens displaying the words, You are safe, in the Human's home tongue. They would wake, eventually, but the trepidation amongst the Leseu crew was - what had happened to their Human?

Pack-bonding can happen in both directions.

Doctor Slysse faced

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Challenge #02274-F084: They Look Like Monsters

Humans meet an intelligent species who is nice, friendly, understanding and honest to a fault. A human vessel breaks down and they send the distress call to Help.

The Problem is, they look Like a horror movie Monster. Something that looks somewhat human but mangled, discolored, and just... wrong in all planes of existence. Not to forget their teeth, claws,etc.

They have the smell of rotting meat, decay and blood, when they are happy and they move through the vents for

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Challenge #02273-F083: Smouldering Leaf Habit

This is a page from the Safety Manual for Humans.

"...... even if dangerous and self-destructive, some Humans will continue to light small fires for the inhalation of toxic substances ( To-ba-co) and will do so anywhere, if not provided a smoking-area.

PLEASE ALLOW THEM THIS !!!!!" -- Anon Guest

[AN: Speaking as a lifelong asthmatic whose life has been put in peril by smokers - irresponsible tobacco addicts can go to hell. The prizewinner is still the bloke who lit up upwind of me

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Challenge #02272-F082: Celebratory Explosions

A Havenworlder Group goes despite warnings and with offensive-warnings to Earth.

On New Year.

Yeah.... -- Anon Guest

Visit Terra! Invigorate your genome! the poster said. As a sales pitch, some would ponder its efficaciousness. However, the idea that exposure to hazardous situations could bolster a species genes through epigenetic influence was not only provable, but scientifically endorsed. In brief, the target audience were Havenworlders, and the pitch was super effective.

Havenworlders were warned, of course. Areas of Terra could easily reach

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Challenge #02271-F081: Nacre or Facre

Pearls and Perlmutt[AN: AKA 'nacre' or 'mother of pearl'] are made by organic beings.

Aliens have never seen this Product before coming to Earth.

Of course, Earth has a new high-selling Export product. -- Anon Guest

Calcium carbonate is nothing new. It's formed from two relatively common elements in the periodic table and simple life forms make it the Universe over. Only one planet has evolved lifeforms that uses it in a laminal form. Aragonite, formed in plates, refracts light in

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Challenge #02270-F080: Location, Location, Location

On a spaceship a human salesman (yes, you aren't even safe in space from them) promotes his Product "FlexseALL" (just Flexseal with a different name). He has the same attitude of Phil and showtests his products on literally ever Problem on the Ship. And it works!

Even on the leaks, the engine, the air vents,...

Go crazy with your own ideas. And thank you for your time :-) -- Anon Guest

[AN: Thanks for making me see that with my own eyes.

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Challenge #02269-F079: Not Really That Deadly

Australia is a deathcountry. No talking back on that.

  • Giant Toads

  • poisonus Everything

  • f*ckt up climate everywhere

  • Birds, who defeated the Government (not even smart ones at that)

  • their Naming (Fairybread, Maccas,...)

Aliens learn of that from a human and an Aussie. (Will Australia receive an honorable Title of Deathcountry stage 5 or 5.5? You decide!) -- Anon Guest

Deathworld classifications work on how many factors can be seen as "being out to get" cogniscents who live there. These factors

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Challenge #02268-F078: A Light in You

I read an article a while back about humans having some sort of line system (like a fish with sensors) which controls for example diseases like (sorry not english: Gürtelrose[AN: Google says 'shingles']) it lays outside of the human visible spectrum. Only humans have this and no other animal or plants have.

Also we humans shine. Like really, really low, but still, we glow very weak in the dark. Again not visible for us.

But what if other aliens don't have

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Challenge #02267-F077: Friend? Friend!

Alien Snake-/Reptilian species meet the Human Race. Unfortunately (or Fortunately, depending on your viewpoint ^^) first contact happens between a snake lover (Pet the Snek !) and a proud Ambassador. -- Anon Guest

Many unfortunate First Contact situations have arisen because one or more cogniscent species in the encounter strongly resembles another's phobia species. We therefore recommend that all cogniscents finding themselves within a First Contact situation take a few moments to stop all voluntary movement, put down any tools, and properly assess

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Challenge #02266-F076: Toughest in the Room

"This thing all things devours:

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays kings, ruins town,

And beats high mountain down." - Gollum

Humans are the oldest, wisest but also the most curious and reckless species in the galaxy. -- Anon Guest

Humanity, thanks to various deep dives down one-way wormholes, is officially the oldest species in the known Universe. That said, they are still a dangerously deadly egotistical child race who also happen to be

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Challenge #02265-F075: Realised Set-up

A character rips up some paper -- writingprompts365

[AN: My hub site is down and therefore so is my prompts queue. In the meantime, I'm making do with the tag #writing-prompts on Tumblr. Normal services will resume as soon as we establish what 'normal' is]

In retrospect, maybe they shouldn't have taken the job from Lee R. "Slick" DeSchonko. In retrospect, letting Marvin do the negotiations was a bad idea. The Human fighter and trainee wizard was the most open and trusting

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Challenge #02264-F074: Health Spa and Karma Services

"Death is a door,

Time is a window,

I will come back" - Vigor (Ghostbusters II)

One human has this as his motto for life. -- Anon Guest

They say that the lands of Death are the undiscovered country. They say that mortality is the absolute final frontier, because nobody comes back. Imagine thinking that that is your limit. Imagine being that ignorant. In brief, imagine life before necromancy.

Yes, yes, yes. Subverting the natural flow of the cycle of life and

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