The Unicorn Challenge.
A magical new weekly writing opportunity from her – Jenne Gray – and me.
Visit her blog every Friday to see the photo prompt, and post your amazing story in her comments section.
Or on your own blog, and stick the link down in her comments.
The rules are:
Maximum of 250 words.
Based on photo prompt.
That’s it.
To hear me read my story, just click here (apologies for the creaky voice):
Hostage
FLASH! BANG!
Detective Inspector Claude ‘Sheer Luck’ Holmes raises an eyebrow, and turns towards Constable Denis Dense, who, his eagle-eye quickly ascertains, has none.
Holmes, whose soubriquet reflects his ability to solve cases despite his default setting of utter cluelessness, is currently faced with a hostage situation, with some bad guys holed up in a shack with an elderly lady as their prisoner.
PC Dense, known as ‘Dopey’ for reasons which should soon become obvious, has, in addition to the aforementioned absence of any facial hair, columns of smoke blossoming cheerfully from his tattered uniform and somewhat charred helmet.
Claude groans and shakes his head but, before he can speak, the bad guys, hands high above their heads, stumble from their den.
‘Don’t shoot, we’re coming out,’ they cry, knowing full well that the sporting British fuzz are unarmed.
‘It’s a fair cop, guv,’ shouts Ben ‘Bad Guy’ Burt (I’m not going to explain his nickname, okay?).
‘You’ve got us bang to rights, and other cliches. That old lady’s been nagging us non-stop for four hours, and now you’ve cut the power she’s moaning cos she can’t even make a cup of tea. So we give up.’
Holmes nods sagely, and despatches correctly-uniformed officers to handcuff the villains.
‘Dense,’ he asks wearily, but not unkindly. ‘What did you do?’
‘Well, sir, you told me to cut the power, so I decided to be smart and use the electric knife in the top right of the prompt picture.’
Sound Bite Fiction 
To deprive a lady of her afternoon cuppa! PC Dense had the makings of a good idea there – shame he bungled the execution of it. Very funny – characters, names and situation. The lack of eyebrows and smoking uniform had me hooked from the start.
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Thanks, Margaret, happy it amused you.
Some folk just live up to their names!
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Great fun 😁
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Thanks, Lesley.
Are you going to join us again?
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I want to. I’m attempting to write something to fit the prompt photo😁 🤔
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Thank you for asking 💗
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Oh you scamp! A veritable bag of tricks and pins brought to bear on this one. 😂😂😂
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Laughing. It was fun, Liz!
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Enjoyed the story. 🙂
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Thank you, dear Lady.
Back to short and sweet, I see!
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I leave a comment that is “tried and true”.
Never leave mere “fiddle-faddle.”
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Love it!
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Then I’m happy, Chris!
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Cackling all the way through this one. Imagining the old lady nagging the villains until they just give up.
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Glad you enjoyed, Li!
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No wonder our cops are the envy of the world. What? They’re not? Okay.
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But at least they don’t shoot too many folk for being the wrong colour, which is something, Keith!
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Shocking policing and I’m stealing Sheer Luck Holmes at some point. Hilarious.
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Laughing. Thanks, Doug, I’m sure he’ll be back with Dr What’s on at some point!
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I’m speechless before what goes on iniside your head!
Crazy, clever and perfectly constructed story – I’m still laughing.
Particularly love the last line!
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I struggled with this prompt, Jenne, then saw ‘couteau electrique’ and wondered if anyone could be dumb enough…
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“Sheer Luck” Holmes.
Nuff said.
Laughing….
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Then my job is done!
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