My publisher introduced me to a group of people called The Iron Writers.  This is a fantastic group of people that are helpful and encouraging with writing.  I can’t think of a better group of people to be welcomed as a new member. When I joined the group I was informed that there were challenges that we competed in during the year.  The challenge is to write a short story using 4 elements, 5 days to write the story and the story is 500 words.  I have just competed in my first challenge.  I was very lucky to have a challenge that was not too difficult. You can find all the stories by the writers on the web site for The Iron Writers at www.theironwriter.com

Here are the elements.

A bouquet of flowers in a trash can

Draw inspiration from “The Pretender” by Jackson Browne

A critically important secret military message

Encroaching storm clouds

Here is the story that I wrote using these elements.

It was a Dark and Stormy Night.

By Sarah P Thomas

As Sam trudged along the trash strewn street, he contemplated what had brought him to this seedy side of town. He felt as if he were in an old detective novel that began with “It was a dark and stormy night…..” It soon would be a dark and stormy night with those ominous storm clouds that were hiding behind the city buildings waiting for just the right time to make their appearance. She had been the typical long legged blonde with the low cut blouse and high cut skirt. She was the reason he was here on the city streets. Her tear filled eyes, as she laid out her difficulties, were hard to resist. Or was it those long legs?

He pulled the collar of his coat up higher and bent into the wind. He was surreptitiously checking each of the trash bins as he walked along. She said the message would be there tonight under a bouquet of discarded roses. How many more bins would he have to go through? He was amazed as to how many people threw away roses into street bins. He hoped the next one would be the final bin. People also threw away some other very nasty things he really didn’t want to continue to rummage through.

She had been vague about the contents of the package he was to retrieve. With mind racing, he moves along discovering another bouquet of roses right there nicely placed on top of all that trash. Gently lifting the roses he sees a crumpled manila envelope, picking it up he opens pulling out a small stack of paper. The dim light of the streets did not assist much as he tried to see what was written on the paper. Slowly his brain realized he was looking at the blueprints of the newest fighter plane showing all the details with notations pointing out the design flaws, this was top secret information sent in a message for someone but who?

His mind goes back to the beautiful lady waiting in his office. Who was she, what was she doing receiving critical military design secrets? That faint accent she had, she was from what nation? Standing there with design plans in hand he hears sirens in the distance. Oh no what would he do now? Had he been set up by those long legs? If she suspected all had gone wrong then she would be gone in a flash and it would look as though he was betraying the country of his birth, the country he had served and the country he loved. Closer and closer the sirens came, frozen in place, suddenly reality dawned on him and he turned, stretching out his hand.

He hit the snooze button on his alarm clock. Oh man, just when it was getting good. Come on just ten more minutes to find out what happens. Nope time to get up and go to his 9 to 5 job of being an accountant. He would continue trudging through his life of lost dreams just like in the song “The Pretender.”