Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 152

This week's picture prompt is from Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski. He was known for his dystopian and surreal artwork. This one just struck me more than any of his other art but you should check it out. 

I tried a different take on this one, and quite like what came out. Channeling the kids in Mad Max Thunderdome.

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.


From the Deep

Obsey moved a little closer and stopped to see if it would move away. It didn’t.
They’d watched it from the dunes. It had come in on the water, but hadn’t moved like the other sea life. This was hard and inflexible. When it had washed up, everyone had waited. After two sun cycles a team had been put together to investigate further.
There were whispers that it belonged to the dangerous ages. One of the old timers had made a sound like the giant black birds that were always circling and trying to take their food. He’d said it was the sound you made when you called this thing.
It’s square eyes were hollow, yet watchful. Obsey couldn’t see a mouth. Maybe it was underneath. He wondered at the openings around the sides. Rilet said it might be a shell; the creature that had lived inside long dead. Obsey hoped she was right. The idea frightened him. He led the fishing teams out into the water. He’d never come across anything this big, and hoped never to.
They’d sighted sea animals from the lookout at the top of the old pole, but they’d moved in wiggly ways and flipped their tails and never come into shore. Obsey had even dreamed of catching something that big; it would feed their cluster for a month or more. But this thing was different. It didn’t move right. It didn’t sound right. It was all kinds of wrong, as Mamon used to say.
Obsey looked back at the team, huddled in among the low dunes, all eyes were on him. He decided to brave it and rush the thing, letting out a yell as he did, spear overhead, ready for the kill. But it remained motionless.
He came to an abrupt halt next to it, only the sound of him panting and the waves crashing filled the air. He lowered his spear and poked it in the side. No movement, but it had a hard exterior, like the lookout pole. He poked it again, harder this time. Still nothing. Then he dared to put his hands on it. Rilet was right; it was just a shell.
He turned and waved to the rest of the team and they joined him in investigating it. Then after a time they gave a signal to the lookout pole and the cluster came to see it too.

The mood turned from trepidation to excitement, and they decided to carry it up back to their dwelling, where the younguns could play on it and the old timers could teach about it. 

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