Well, I just blew the first challenge but I am up for the second dog-gone-it! Rachael Harrie's Fourth Platform Campaign boasts some challenges and the latest one is to write a flash fiction/short story or poem based around an image prompt. You can read and vote for entrants at Rachael's blog here.
Here's the image I chose...
...and here's the flash fiction piece I produced in 200 words entitled (for the moment) "Boom."
Let me tell you a story...
Once upon a time a boom created the world. Beasts roamed and acted on instinct, something everyone has, no matter what you’ve heard. Time passed, a crash, and man arrived living alongside the beasts. It was chaotic but not so much that One looking down would be concerned. Civilization was coming into itself.
Fast forward as man walks erect, animals conceal themselves, and the world becomes stone. Serenity breaks. Differences are found, not embraced. Beliefs are not in line, skin pallor is too dark, and what was once so beautiful about them was now what held man against one another.
And so the land cracked and nations developed, wars began, machinery made the sky as dark as the newly cemented ground. Man oppressed man (and woman) to retain “purity” all in the name of a holy being who watched and waited hoping for things to right itself without taking a hand.
It seemed better, but it wasn’t, not really. Creation begot humanity. It begot nature. It begot what was once good about the world.
Once upon a time a boom created the world and a boom would destroy it so life could begin anew.