“What Fuels Us” • by Richard Zwicker

Thaxxon gazed at his freighter’s viewscreen of stars, imagining planets teeming with fools.

His calm shattered as a ship of unknown origin appeared. A ripped-off client? When it refused to identify itself, he radioed: “I sold all my weapons of mass destruction except for the one pointing at you. Back off or die!” It was a bluff, as he frantically set his engines to maximum speed. A wail rose from the three imprisoned Doracens whose life force fueled his ship. “Do your job!” he shouted.

The lights dimmed. Silence.

The ship was on emergency life support! He stormed to the engine room. The energy capsules were undamaged, but the Doracens were gone! A material transference, but how? The Doracens didn’t have space technology. Who would bother to save them?

Back on the bridge, he watched the unknown ship vanish, leaving him to drift, out of gas, among the sea of fools.

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Richard Zwicker is a retired English teacher living in Vermont, USA, with his wife and beagle. His short stories have appeared in Stupefying Stories, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Dragon Gems, and other semi-pro markets. Two collections of his stories, Walden Planet and The Reopened Cask, are out now. A third, The Sum of its Parts, is due out soon.

In addition to reading and writing, Richard likes to play the piano, jog, and fight the good fight against age. Though he lived in Brazil for eight years, he is still a lousy soccer player.

Richard first came to our attention with “Stellar Dust and Mirrors,” which appeared in the now out-of-print Stupefying Stories #5, and “Riddle Me,” which first appeared in Stupefying Stories #7. Richard was kind enough to let us reprint “Riddle Me,” so you’ll find it at this link. As well, you’ll find “The Slings and Arrows of Childhood” and “Talking Turkey with Tom” at these links, and his most recent contribution to Stupefying Stories magazine, “Possession is Ten-Tenths of the Law,” in Stupefying Stories 26.

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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 phrase, “out of gas.”

Special Thanks to Paul Celmer: for going above and beyond to help with this challenge!  

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Categories: The Pete Wood Challenge