Flash Fiction / writing prompts

The Facility #6

Chris Hall56 Comments

You stare at the unlocked door as the disturbance outside retreats; alert to danger, you slowly get to your feet and shuffle towards the door, where you hesitantly turn the handle; now, peering around the edge, you hear frenetic footsteps pounding back along the corridor towards you.

It’s one of them – one of you, your mind corrects itself – you’re about to shut the door, when the figure, with its blurred blank face, just like yours, bursts into your room and thrusts a lab coat at you, gesturing to you to put it on.

Dragged along the sterile bright-white corridor, counting off the doors, you recognise the route to the elevator; your companion urges you to hurry and you break into a shambling run-walk; then you turn the final corner, the sliding doors open and, stumbling inside, the elevator swallows you both up.

Your companion punches a button and slumps against the control panel breathing heavily; the elevator ascends: you count the floors – counting has become a habit – and when the elevator slows to a stop, you realise you must be on the top-most floor.

The elevator opens and your companion beckons you across the hallway to a set of double doors, leading to an endless stairway; the doors snap shut behind you and bile rises in your throat as you, in a moment of clarity, read the words daubed on the wall opposite:

YOU WROTE THIS

YOU CAN MAKE THIS STOP

Your companion thrusts you towards the stairs.

Confused? You might be! Read previous episodes of The Facility here.

Written in response to two challenges:

– Di of Pensitivity101‘s Wednesday’s Three Things Challenge – COAT, WROTE, THROAT
– Denise Farley of GirlieOnTheEdge‘s Sunday’s Six Sentence Story Word Prompt – NET

Photo credit: Scott Webb on Unsplash

Read more Six Sentence Stories here – come and join the party!

56 thoughts on “The Facility #6”

  3. Wow! this is building better all the time. Now, I feel like I’m the character and I’m tied to a chair with a virtual reality helmet on and my subconscious is traped in the facility and I have to get out. Love it.

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  9. Every ‘episode’ is better than the last! Seems impossible as all are excellent.
    My choice for best line is… “counting has become a habit”. Well done, Chris!
    {I may need to return to my serial Six. You’ve inspired me. 😉 }

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  11. Excellent, Chris. The writing is literally on the wall. I wonder if the stairs go up or down, or both? And where to? Maybe it’s the way out and a stairway to heaven. Interesting how you imagined a six-parter yet the story keeps pulling you on. Cool.

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  12. Mm, having missed a couple of weeks, I’ve just had the treat of reading 3 episodes back to back. Eerie, frightening and a parable for the brainwashing that goes on all the time. Not so extreme as in the facility, of course, but… I love the last three lines. It’s great, Chris.

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  13. Aiyyee!*

    Excellent lulling of the Reader, (sure, we were tense and on edge, but we pretty much figured on a maze/puzzle progression)… then Bam!
    (Extra points for the ‘formatting’ of the two ‘You’ lines… and the push from behind of the last).

    All in 2nd person. (I know I’m kinda caught up in the challenge of POV and technique and such, but the difficulty, imo, is in managing the narrative momentum without turning into a guide book.***)

    *unqualified compliment on an enjoyable Six**
    ** defined as the narrative equivalent of the final descent of the roller coaster, (with a spiral at the end, for good measure).
    *** way, not a guide book…lol

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  14. Wow! The companion thrusts him toward the stairs. Hopefully that wasn’t down the stairs, or this might be the last six in this serial. This gets more interesting every week.

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