A whole world on a single page!
The short story morsels of One Page Worlds are flash fiction adventures of all flavors. Every Wednesday will feature a complete story in one page, or the first page of what could be a novel or novelette.
Sharing the fun and geekery is the best part of writing! Please tweet or comment with your guesses on what genre, character, and job is central to each tale. Enjoy touring new universes each week with One Page Worlds!
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I search the stadium full of eighty thousand blue-clad fans for the sea demon. Damn thing knows how to hide on land. Not in a lake or a river where my thermavision would’ve seen him go in. Not at a zoo or aquarium among creatures of his kind. But a damn stadium. Full of screaming people. Cheering for the Hammerheads and their shark mascot, funnily enough.
Blinking once, the ocean of football fanatics becomes a plethora of orange and yellow thermal images. The spaces between drunks and beer vendors appear with the same cool purple as the sea demon would. No reason for me to rush after the first colder image I see. Freaking demon would be looking for me flying the wrong way and escape when I was distracted.
I need to see him and nail him the first time, without him lashing out at the crowd to hurt civilians. Damn thing knows all the superhero moral weaknesses.
Blinking once, my vision returns to normal and the shark mascot downfield gnashes its teeth after a big play. Shouts swell and sweat stink rolls off the crowd. A frat guy “trips” on his beer and staggers into me. I twist myself around to avoid him groping me and he gapes instead. Lulls in the action allow him to yell. “Ain’t you that superheroine Josey that patrols the coastline? Thought you never took a day off. What you doin’ at the game?”
His expression might be half horny college guy and half struggling-to-be-respectful, but the students around him step back and gaze at me with awe.
I look down at myself. Tight Hammerheads t-shirt, ripped jeans, and wind blowing my black hair back like an actress on a movie set.
Damn super powers giving me away. Wind needs to stop being so jumpy when I’m ready to fly. Now that a hundred people are forming a circle around me, the demon is all but guaranteed to catch my location in seconds.
Blinking, I glare at the students with thermavision and catch the Hammerhead in my peripheral sight. They’d been mostly blocking the mascot until they backed away.
It’s purple under the costume.
I leap over the ring of people, seizing the wind and riding it straight toward the almost-too-clever sea demon.
Now it had nowhere to go except into the tunnels or onto the field.
It rushes the players closing in on the end zone. Of course.
A blink brings my normal sight back and I spear-tackle the demon from the side, corkscrewing mid-air to dodge a vicious bite. The thing’s head rips through the costume on the way to the ground, skin green and pulsing. Its serrated head ridges flail and it clamps its jagged teeth around my right hip, the only part of me it can reach.
Screeching, I plow the thing straight into the goal post and snap its neck against the metal.
By the time I regain enough consciousness to see that I’ve killed it, the grass beneath me is as red as the opposing team’s colors. I gasp, “ambulance,” and the wind whisks past my lips toward the trainers on both sides of me.
I blink several times, but it all goes black.