55 Fiction

For those who don't know, 55 Fiction is a style of storywriting using only 55 words to tell a story. I've always been a fan of constrained styles of writing, so I thought I'd give it a go. It's always nice to blur the tenuous divide between poetry and prose. I thought I'd make it in a sci-fi style; I think it's pretty existentialist.

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Riker left the Quasarbar, and took a drag on his photon cigarette. Polaris-beta was seething with off-worlders this time of the solar cycle. “Buy Zzkzzon's!” the billboard opposite screamed. Bio-flies hovered, scintillating in the Phosphos. Ash settling fast, he sighed, breath hanging in heavy atmosphere. Life was better when the humans were still alive.