I had some very interesting, intriguing and exciting interpretations of my opening line challenge: ‘She wished she hadn’t opened the letter’. Read them below and enjoy.
Yesterday my market of the week was for a daily flash fiction competition, which invites stories of between 20-100 words. So to get you in the mood to enter, my new weekly writing challenge is for a flash fiction story. No entry is to be below 20 words and no entry higher than 100 words. I look forward to reading them.
Here are last week’s entries:
Keith Channing sent in this story, which sadly could be true:
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter.
It wasn’t addressed to her and she should simply have marked it “not known at this address” and popped it back into the post. But she didn’t. She opened it.
If you asked her why, she would have said something about wanting to be helpful. She was like that. Inquisitive? No. Nosey? Never. Helpful, was our Rosie.
She had never heard of a Mr A Nchimbi. Sounds African. The people she and her husband had bought the house from, six years ago, were from Wolverhampton; name of Hammond; lovely couple, West Indian as she recalled.
The letter was from a bank in Nigeria. It said that it was imperative that Mr Nchimbi contact them urgently, as they had a business proposition for him that would earn him a lot of money very quickly, with no risk at all. Rosie decided that she should call them to let them know that they had the wrong address. No doubt they have his correct one on file somewhere.
She called the bank. She wasn’t worried about the cost, because it was a Sheffield telephone number, and her plan includes UK calls. Didn’t she think it strange, that a bank in Nigeria should have a Sheffield phone number? Not at all; they probably have a branch in Sheffield.
The man she spoke to at the bank was very grateful for her call, and such a nice young man. He asked her some questions, and suggested that she might like to take advantage of this offer, too. Rosie told him that, following her husband’s death, she had about eighty thousand pounds sat in her account doing nothing, and was delighted when he told her that he could turn that into more than a quarter of a million in less than six months. At his request, she gave him details of the account, so he could manage the investments for her. Such a nice young man; so polite, so helpful, so attentive.
She never heard any more from him, of course. Eighty thousand pounds was transferred from her account the very same day, it turns out to a bank in the Cayman Islands, but in the six months that followed, nothing came back. She tried calling the Sheffield number, but that was unobtainable. She asked about the bank at the library, where one of the staff very kindly looked them up on her internet, but couldn’t find any trace of them. She went to the police with it all, but they couldn’t help either.
If only she hadn’t opened that letter!
Eddy sent in lots of different takes on that opening:
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter. But how could she have known that it was a bomb. It was the last thought she ever had.
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter. She cursed the growing ebook market as she read the headline in the local newspaper, “Charming Indie Bookstore, The Letter, Foreclosed”.
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter. Immediately the letter was closed and the genie said, “you have two more wishes remaining.”
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter. But now that she had, she was forced to read it even though half her brain was hungover and the other half was still drunk. After all, her success as an author wouldn’t have been possible without her fans.
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter. The handwriting was that bad.
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter. There was a grammatical mistake in the very first line.
New entrant Booghostiegirl sent the following entertaining story:
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter.
It was bad enough that this now-deceased great aunt she hadn’t known about had left her a creepy-looking mansion in the mountains of northern Pennsylvania. She had also left her a legacy she was certain she wanted no part of.
At least that’s what the letter said. The letter that had been hidden in a secret drawer in the basement stairs. Who hid letters in staircases anyway?
Oh, that’s right. Great-Aunt Celeste, or Catherine, or whatever her real name was. No wonder Kyrie’s father kept her away from this eccentric old woman. Apparently, she was far more than eccentric; she was involved in something no good Christian girl would ever even consider.
Great-Aunt Celeste was a witch.
And the letter, addressed to her, said that she, Kyrie Carter, was also a witch.
Oh, how she wished she hadn’t opened the letter….
Jasdeep kaur is last but by no means least, with her emotional story:
She wished she hadn’t opened the letter. Rebecca was no more, but she had left a scar that could never heel. She looked at the age of Rebecca’s son again and again. He was four years old.
“Why?” she cried.
The fact that all this happened after her marriage was killing her. Her trust was shattered. George had never changed, nor his love. Then how could he be involved with another woman. How could she trust George again?
Her mobile rang. It was George’s call. She cancelled it.
She didn’t conceive even after 10 years of their marriage, but could it be an excuse for such an act? It would have been better if she hadn’t opened the letter. All would have ended with Rebecca’s death. But now she’d have to live with this wound for the rest of her life.
She received a message. It was from George again. She thought that it must be an excuse for coming late. But Rebecca was no more. Then?
She picked her mobile and read. It said, “Tony’s ex-girlfriend Rebecca has expired. She wanted us to take the custody of their son. You know Tony; he won’t.”
Esther Chilton 
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