Flash Fiction Challenge - Opening Line Decision Time

Last week's flash fiction challenge over at the terribleminds blog was to write a 15-words-or-less opening line. I missed that by making the mistake of putting it off until later. My bad. This week, however, the challenge is to select one of the 15-words-or-less opening lines and write a 1,000-word-or-less piece of flash fiction. Now don't getting all excited on me; I haven't finished it yet... actually, I haven't started it BUT I have, at last selected an opening line.

Of the five pages worth of opening lines, there were a few that were clearly over the limit, and a number that didn't grab my creative conscious by what passes for its throat... and there were a number of opening lines that missed the throat but caught my attention.

My first pass brought the number of lines down to 20 written by:

Arwa Stone, mikepaul, Jera, Tony Taylor, Kevin George, Alecia Millar, thatcalamity, Jess, jebdarsh, JD, Julia, Brennan, Gabe K, feralbulb, Sean Tadsen, ILikeBubbles, Mikey Campling, Dave Farmer, viewfromtuesday, and David Novack.

My second pass dropped that to nine that I really liked:

mikepaul, Jera, Alecia Millar, Jess, JD, feralbulb, Sean Tadsen, ILikeBubbles, and David Novack.

The third pass took me to four:

Jera, Alecia Millar,  ILikeBubbles, and David Novack.

The fourth took me to two:

ILikeBubbles, and David Novack.

And then I had to decide. This week, if I can get my act together, I will start my flash fiction with  David Novack's beginning: "Well," Jimmy muttered, "it was clearly a mistake picking this room to piss in."

Of course, the lines that first grabbed my attention (yup, all 20 of 'em), will probably continue to haunt me. You should go check 'em out. Well done, one and all, and thank you for giving my imagination a kick.