Every month, the Furious Fiction Flash contest challenges writers worldwide to write a 500-word flash story in roughly 55 hours.

The October 2023 prompt’s criteria:

• It must be 500 words;

• the story must feature someone looking through either a TELESCOPE or BINOCULARS;

• the story must contain a five-digit number;

• the story must include the words BLIND, WIND, FIND, and MIND.

My entry was titled Nothing At All. It’s sometime in the 1950’s, and Dr. Beasley is prepared to introduce the StellarVision MasterScope — a technological marvel that can see to the edge of the universe.

The results came in, and I wasn’t on the list. C’est la vie!