the blog comes on little rat feet

Janet Reid, literary agent and blogger extraordinaire, recently held a flash fiction contest. The contest was in honor of the book Ratlines, by Stuart Neville. The requirements were: 100 words or fewer, using the words ratline, asylum, lodger, swords, bond.

Here's what I came up with:

     Tap. Tap-tap. Morse code spreads through the cellblock. The ratline opens tonight. 

     The rogue lab assistant crossed swords again with the Mengelean research director. The director activated the Brazil protocol. Now they’re trying to grow blue human eyes on our shaved backs. 

     The pierced assistant, the artful lodger, is granting us asylum at her Loisaida squat. We have a bond of shared sympathy. The cage doors slide open at three a.m., and a rope of braided lab coats leads to a waiting van. 

     The herpetofauna are on their own, but tonight the mice run free.

***

The winning submission by Michael Seese was great, and I really liked the one by eclectophlia that won the "left me hungry for more" honorable mention.  Mine was mentioned in the "just creepy as hell-I'm a tad worried about you guys" category, which seems about right.