Today is Wednesday. We should all know the drill by now. Indies Unlimited gives out the pic and text for their flash fiction challenge on Saturdays and then we have till Tuesday to respond with a 250 word story based on the prompts. Stories go through a rigorous panel of judges to find the best stories for the week and then on Wednesday the final judgment is given to the readers.

What follows is the picture and prompt for this week as well as the story I submitted for the contest. But you all know how this works already right?

The Great Cookie Conflict

The toll of war is not always measured in the spilling of blood. There are struggles that embody something beyond nationalism and petty politics. They strike at the very foundation of civilization, the very meaning of life itself.

photo by K.S. Brooks

This war, however, began with a dispute over a snickerdoodle. Oh, if only there had been a pan of brownies instead. Brownies just make everything simpler.

The combatants were a very famous and well-loved little white terrier and an obscure mop-like character from a little-known children’s television show. One snickerdoodle – two mouths. Oh, the humanity!

The combatants had their strengths. The pup was lithe and quick. The blue monster had the magic of puppetry. For each of them the cookie was real.

They faced off, opposite sides of the table. The choice was clear, rush over the table itself and broke social graces or race around the side of the table and stretch for glory, the snickerdoodle in the center.

The white pup lacked social graces so he scrambled up and over the edge of the table. And the blue mop, forced in his puppetry status, ran along the side. The advantage went to the mop due to the ease of the run.

The monster reached the area of the cookie first but he hadn’t counted on the quickness of the puppy’s scurrying legs. The pup slipped on the glossy surface of the table and fell into a power slide that took him past the cookie.

In that moment as he slipped past, the blue monster latched on to the near edge of the snickerdoodle. The puppy snatched at his near edge. They met in the center in a stalemate, but the puppy slid past and the cookie split right down the middle.

As each combatant devoured their shared portions of cookie, the crumbs flew around them in the carnage of the spoils of war. In the end there were no clear winners and winners all around. It was the cookie that suffered the dogs of war.