Bill and Harold watched the procession of turkeys from their deer blind.
“Why’re there a thousand of ‘em?” Bill whispered back.
Harold sighted the lead turkey and Bill smacked down his gun. “What’re you doing?”
“Ending the parade?” Harold scratched his head.
“Nah. This is too weird,” Bill admonished. “Who knows what’d happen if you shot ‘em.”
They watched the turkeys disappear into the underbrush. For a time they sat, neither saying anything, their slow, quiet breaths clouding the air.
“Let’s call it,” Harold said finally. “Already got two deer.”
Before Bill could respond, a twig cracking had both men peering out of the blind.
“That deer’s climbing our ladder.” Harold’s voice trembled.
There was a loud crash. Behind them stood a red-eyed buck, antlers glowing, teeth gnashing.
Neither Harold nor Bill got to their rifles before the deer was on them.
Jason P. Burnham (he/him) loves to spend time with his wife, children, and dog. He wonders what a deer blind in Area X would look like.
The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. Once a month Pete Wood
spots writers the idea for a story, usually in the form of a phrase or a
few key words, along with some restrictions on what can be submitted,
usually in terms of length. Pete then collects the resulting entries,
determines who has best met the challenge, and sends the winners over to
Bruce Bethke, who arranges for them to be published on the Stupefying Stories web site.
You can find all the previous winners of the Pete Wood Challenge at this link.
This
time the challenge was to write a flash fiction story of no more than
150 words in length that was inspired by the author’s choice of two words from this list: turkey, parade, football, fir tree, stocking, or cranberry.
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