Turning Tides: the jellyfish you never want to meet

“Drabbles” are exactly 100-word stories, flash fiction taken to an extreme. The challenge is to incorporate style, character and plot–all within a paltry 100 words.

“Turning Tides,” my scifi-horror, environmentally themed drabble, was first published at The Horror Tree‘s “Trembling with Fear” January 29, 2017 edition and later at The Drabble. Read at the links or below:

Turning Tides

By KC Grifant

The quivering masses bobbed above the shipwreck, trailing a plum-colored cloud.

Maggie tapped on her underwater camera. With the warming ocean temperatures, jellies were reproducing at unprecedented rates, spawning never before seen species.

It was beautiful until tentacles wrenched off her snorkeling mask. She kicked upwards but felt both electrified and numb. Neurotoxins, she thought. Her mind glommed around an emphatic declaration:

Ours.

Each flick of the buzzing tentacles onto her face imparted a new vision: massive jellies swallowed ships, clogged harbors, suffocated whole cities. Her throat gasped, desperate.

Ours.

The continents sparkled with purple dust, the seas liquid amethyst.

[image error]