“Flashes” • by Gideon P. Smith

 

They say life flashes before your eyes at the end.  

That’s what Happy Trails Hospice Services promises—a virtual reality tour for your final moments, but with only the good parts.

I step in.

Our first kiss under a thunderstorm, Ann’s rain-wet blouse clinging to mine.

The day I said, “I do.”

Our baby’s laugh, joy incarnate.

My retirement party.

The cottage—wind-chimed mornings, barefoot evenings, Ann and I sipping tea as waves whispered ashore.

A soft chime sounds. Green letters flash in the sky: TIME TO EXIT

But I don’t want to leave.

Then Ann appears—not a memory, but here, smiling. “You don’t have to,” she says. “They don’t know. Some of us… choose to stay.”

“Stay?” I whisper.

“In virtual reality. Together. Forever.”

She reaches out her hand.

I take it.

The sea shimmers gold. Somewhere, a heart monitor goes still.

But here—here, the trails are endless, and happy.

 

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Gideon P. Smith has written for SFWA, BSFA Focus Magazine, Wyldblood Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, Troopers Quarterly, and anthologies from Black Hare Press, Shacklebound, and Fairfield Scribes. He was a 2023 NESFA short story competition and 2024 Writers of the Future finalist, and is a first reader for Diabolical Plots and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores. A first-generation college graduate, Gideon emigrated from Scotland to New England, where he enjoys hiking the White Mountains with his sons.

Gideon’s most recent appearance in our virtual pages was “Tonight, We Embrace the Dark.” If you liked this story, you should give it a look.

For more information, visit Gideon’s blog at https://gideonpsmith.com/

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The Pete Wood Challenge is an informal ad hoc story-writing competition. For each contest 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 played off the phrase: “Happy Trails.”

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Categories: The Pete Wood Challenge