“I wouldn’t touch that!”
Timothy’s gloved finger hovered an inch away from the gloopy mess situated in Dr Jessamine Bell’s lab while the boss herself tapped out instructions on the hologram screen behind.
“Is it dangerous?” he asked, retracting his hand and ramming it safely into his lab-coat pocket.
“Haven’t tested it yet. Could just be gunk with severely funky odor.”
Timothy nodded, eyes still fixed on the sample. “They found it topside right?”
“Yeap,” said Jessamine, popping the ‘p’.
“But why bring it back?”
Jessamine shrugged. “Supposedly saved the Director’s life.”
“How?” Timothy asked.
“Stopped her bleeding to death.”
Photo Credit: Madison Wood
It’s been a while since I wrote anything for Headquarters so I thought to myself, why not use this prompt as a chance to come up with a couple of new characters and a new idea to move the story along. Now I just have to write the segment which covers the finding of the gunk with severely funky odor
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Published by Carol J Forrester
Carol J Forrester is a writer and a history geek. Her debut collection 'It's All In The Blood' came out November 2019.
She has a 2:1 BA degree in history from Bath Spa University, enjoys judo at least twice a week, and tries to attend poetry events around the Midlands when she can.
Her flash fiction story ‘Glorious Silence’ was named as River Ram Press’ short story of the month for August 2014 and her short story ‘A Visit From The Fortune Teller’ has been showcased on the literary site Ink Pantry. Her poems ‘Sunsets’ and ‘Clear Out‘ were featured on Eyes Plus Words, and two of her poems were included in the DVerse Poets Pub Publication ‘Chiaroscuro’ which is available for purchase on amazon.Her poem ‘Until The Light Gets In‘ was accepted and published at The Drabble and her poem ‘Newborn’ was published by Ink Sweat & Tears.
She has been lucky enough to write guest posts for sites such as Inky Tavern and Song of The Forlorn and has hosted a number of guest bloggers on her site Writing and Works.
View all posts by Carol J Forrester
Photo Credit: Madison Wood
Carol, Welcome back. Good story. It looks like it’s especially useful stuff, whatever it is. Maybe it was left by an alien to help us people of Earth. Best to be careful though. Well written. 🙂 —Susan
Thank you for the lovely comment and indeed, it’s always best to be careful even if something does appear to be absolutely fantastic at first glance.
Some treatments can be quite gory.. and yes better safe than sound with something like that..
Indeed.
It’s amazing the lifeforms on this planet we have yet to discover…Kind of post-apocalyptic feel here. Cool.
Thank you, the whole Headquarters series is a sort of post-apocalyptic style and it’s really fun to write. All sorts of weird stuff can be explained by the genre.
Just did a bit of speed reading to catch up – gottit!!
I hope you enjoyed it.
I thought that was blood.
Great take on the gross and unusual photo prompt, Carol!
Thank you Lynda. 😀
Unique idea well-executed, Carol.
janet
Thank you very much Janet. I’m always trying to stay unique.
Popping the p really brought the dialogue to life. Clever story.
Thank you, I quite liked that little effect as well, I cut out a fair amount of the original draft but I had to keep that in.
I don’t want that thing close to my skin, could stop the bleending, but for sure will make a horrible infection!
Perhaps, I’m sure the test will tell.
Dear Carol, I loved “popping the p” – just perfect! I enjoyed your story and that is how most brilliant solutions are found – by accident. Good job! Nan 🙂
Thank you Nan. I love the idea of popping the ‘p’, though I rarely do it myself. It was nice to finally fit it in a story.
Gooey stuff can come in handy. I, too, liked the popping ‘P’. I have a friend who does that oftern. Good job!
Sounds like it had some anticoagulant properties. But, what else? Be careful what you bring into a closed environment. Good one. Lucy
Might find something like that in the back drawer of my icebox!
Nice story.
Will certainly look forward to reading more from these characters.
I’m glad, there is a little bit up already.
How’d you pick your character names?
By trying to think of one I haven’t used yet and then repeating the sentence until I find the character who fits.
Carol, this is good work you have here, the suspense and plot, this is new and fresh and to be honest I was kinda sad the last few pieces was a bit shorter. I like where your going with this I really do! it made me want to see what was gunna happen next and next you know! I haven’t taken the time to read much of your other post so I could possibly understand if you rmore into another series your starting, but from the looks of it (I was reading other peoples comments as well) we all enjoy this series!
Thank you so much, this is really lovely to hear. I will be updating this, but as I said, I’m not sure if I should be taking this older posts and using them to begin again or just building on top. The first draft of Darkened Daughter should be done by September, so I’m going to break from that for a month and try and tackle headquarters with the same sort of fever. I want to have at least 15 posts ready to go up by the start of November in the hopes of turning it into a regular feature. The friend who did the original artwork has even agreed to draw some more pieces for it so I was intending to do a bit of a relaunch style thing, with a set date and a bit of a blog party to celebrate.