Ready to write the story that keeps even you checking the shadows? This flash fiction prompt will drag your reader into the deep end—fast.
First Line:
The phone rang once—just enough for me to answer—and then I heard my own voice whisper, “Don’t scream.”
Opening Paragraph:
It was 1:17 a.m., and the darkness outside pressed against my windows like a living thing. I hadn’t spoken a word all night, yet my voice—my exact tone, my subtle rasp—had come through the line. The whisper was too close, too knowing, as if the caller had been watching me for hours. My chest tightened as I scanned the room. The shadows seemed to lean forward. I replayed the sound in my mind, searching for flaws that would prove it was a trick, a recording—anything but what my gut told me: it was happening in real time. The silence stretched on, heavy and deliberate. Then, faintly, in the background of the call, I heard something else—my front door slowly creaking open. My body froze. My mind raced. And somewhere in the house, the floorboards began to groan under someone’s weight.
Three Questions to Spark the Reader’s Story:
- Who—or what—was using the narrator’s own voice, and how?
- What’s waiting beyond that front door, and why now?
- Does the narrator escape, fight, or learn a truth more terrifying than death?