Responding to a Challenge by Sarah Nicholson
Way back in April when reading the Authors Electric blog I came across a post written by Joy Kluver about an introduction to crime writing workshop she attended held at the inaugural Farnham Literary Festival. https://authorselectric.blogspot.com/2022/04/farnham-literary-festival-joy-kluver.html They were given the starting line ‘So, what have we got here, Barton?’ as a writing prompt and Joy was impressed by the different directions the stories took. At a loose end I made a note of the prompt and set about scribbling a piece of flash fiction. I’ve edited it, re-edited it and sent it into a few places for publication but so far it’s not found a home so I decided to share it with you. Thanks Joy for the initial inspiration, hope you like the twist at the end. “So, what have we got here, Barton?” Did he really say decapitated heads? Plural? “And headless corpses.” He consulted his notebook, “with assorted limbs scattered throughout.” My breakfast rose ominously in my throat. A...