Today’s Friday Fiction is courtesy of microcosmsfic.com. 300 word short story using the following elements.
Character: Bride Activity: Coming from Space Genre: Romance
Substation forty-two-seven. A glossy enamel coated hexagon floating against the dark expanse of space in the Northern corner of the Milky Way galaxy. In constant rotation around it were two satellites from DISTV, hovering higher than normal allowing the influx of passenger ships to stream in, while each satellite streamed the convoys to homes across the galaxy. The season finale of Interstellar Blind Date accrued its highest viewership since the romance between the Mantodeanite dancer and her partner during So You Think You Can Congambaltz. Reality TV had never been showcased on extra-terrestrial transmissions and they were eating it up faster than female Mantodeanites ate their male partners.
The running broadcast would finally reveal the contestants to one another, in a face-to-face date-cum-wedding between the star-crossed lovers in every sense – and only the audience knew of their fate. To each other, Ara had fallen madly in love with Diptera, the reverse tenfold, during silhouetted “online” dates where the two never saw each other’s faces; viewers on the other hand were privy to their identities and watched with bated breath as neither contestant guessed the other. Oh it made for stellar television alright, and the final episode would be the most watched, downloaded, torrented and eventually sought after episode in all of history.
Ara sashayed onto the stage with a veil over her face however everyone had turned to see the slowly widening compound eyes and gaping segmented mouth-parts on the spindly Diptera. The crowd sat in abject silence. Ara dragged her bulbous body forward, wedding dress and all, eight thin appendages clacking asynchronously while her chelicerae scissor in excitement. Diptera edged forward slowly, too terrified to notice the translucent threads around the stage.
“Diptera.” She whispered, “They should have given you a less revealing name.”
*Mantodea are praying mantis and the females eat their husbands.
Diptera is the “scientific name” for a fly and if you haven’t guessed it, Ara is a spider. Short for Arachnid.
A-Scribe To Describe 