Barnacles, an adventure in nanofiction

Prior to coming to Hive (𝗂.𝖾., 𝗍𝗁𝖾 "𝗅𝖾𝗀𝖺𝖼𝗒" 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗂𝗇), I was on another site where I learned of "nanofiction." Different people define "nanofiction" in various ways — some say it must be 50 words, some say 55, etc., but it falls into the category of "microfiction" or "flash fiction." The point of nanofiction is to challenge the author to write as succinctly as possible, and express a story with few words. Those who were longtime users of X/Twitter might remember the original 140-character limit, and how we were challenged to "keep it brief" and carefully craft our tweets to make them fit the allotted space; nanofiction is similar!

^{~ image by React v3 AI, courtesy of PEAKD, pastel processing by me~}

Someone on Discord was talking a while back about his boat and the barnacles that have to be periodically removed. That inspired me to write the following 50-word nanofiction:

My old boat was lifted out of the water by a large crane and suspended over the dock. I spent the afternoon carefully and laboriously scraping the barnacles from her hull. There were many. Then, I returned home to scrape my own barnacles. They say cleanliness is next to godliness.

Nanofiction (55-word fiction) © thekittygirl

So, on that other site I mentioned prior to my coming here, there was a lady who occasionally posted prompts as challenges for us to use in writing nanofiction. Fortunately, I saved some of my favorites to my computer, as the site is now defunct. 😢 I shared them a while back in TheTerminal Discord, and now they're being shared here on my blog. I hope my readers will enjoy them as much I did writing them!

🔸 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎: 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚝𝚒𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝.

I carefully set the date on the Time Capsule control pad to September 18, 1965, and dialed-in the proper longitude and latitude for the beach. When I arrived, I carefully searched until I found the beautiful, antique, long-necked bottle and held it very closely. This is such an epic day! Jeannie is mine!

🔸 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎: 𝚊 𝚟𝚊𝚐𝚞𝚎𝚕𝚢 𝚖𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚎𝚟𝚊𝚕 𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚜𝚢 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚊 𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚜𝚎𝚕𝚏 𝚠𝚑𝚘 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚜 𝚊𝚜 𝚊 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚐 𝚌𝚑𝚒𝚕𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚛𝚒𝚜𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚘 𝚙𝚛𝚘𝚖𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚗𝚌𝚎.

I sat, crosslegged, in deep grass at the schoolyard's edge as if in meditation. The teachers realized I disappeared, so they combed the schoolyard, searching. They screamed in horror when they found me, sitting quietly with ants crawling all over, so many that flesh and clothing were hidden under them. I was their queen now.

🔸 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎: 𝚆𝚑𝚊𝚝 𝚒𝚏 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚞𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚎 𝚠𝚎 𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚌𝚎𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚍 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛 𝚞𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚎?

Horton, Horton, heard a Who,
But didn't quite know what to do.
And what if I were Wendy Who,
Looking up into sky so blue?
Would I see old Horton's trunk?
And if so, what would I have thunk?
I think I'd be quite mystified
At that big schnoz my eyes have spied!
Oh, my!

🔸 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎: 𝙱𝚞𝚒𝚕𝚍 𝚊 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢 𝚞𝚜𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍𝚜: 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚝, 𝚜𝚞𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗, 𝙷𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚒𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚗, 𝚗𝚘, 𝚜𝚙𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐, 𝚐𝚊𝚕𝚘𝚛𝚎, 𝚕𝚘𝚟𝚎, 𝚏𝚞𝚌𝚔, 𝚋𝚕𝚞𝚋𝚋𝚎𝚛, 𝚖𝚘𝚒𝚜𝚝, 𝚙𝚎𝚌𝚞𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚛, 𝚟𝚞𝚕𝚐𝚊𝚛

His teeth left a moist spot on my skin. I winced and yelled, "Fuck!" He drank, then kissed my vulgar little mouth. We made love galore that night, no stopping us, broke a spring on the mattress. His susurrations of affection made me blubber. Peculiar, my newfound taste for fresh blood. Respect the hineininterpretieren.

This is the first time I've used the built-in AI-image generation feature in PEAKD, but I did so because I was curious about it. I thought it was worth 0.05 HBD to test it. There were so many "Model" choices and I had no clue which to choose (Recraft V3, FLUX 1.1 Pro, FLUX 1.1 Pro Ultra, FLUX Dev, FLUX Schnell, Ideogram V2, Ideogram V2 Turbo, SD 3.5 Lg, SD 3.5 Lg Turbo, and others...), so I stuck with the default first-choice. 😂

I didn't spent much time on the prompt, either: "a person scrapes barnacles from a boat hull suspended out of the water." That's exactly what I wanted, and what I got. I know some people who spend much time carefully crafting prompts with great detail, akin to: draw a picture of a young adult woman wearing a raspberry-colored jacket, blue pants, and tan boots, using a blue-handled scraper to remove ocean barnacles from her boat, which is suspended out of the water with scaffolding and ropes. She is standing on a wooden dock constructed of light brown timbers, and a pile of barnacles lies at her feet. The water beneath the dock is blue. In the distance, another dock and buildings can be seen..." Such detailed prompts might be necessary in some instances, but was definitely overkill in this case.

Once the pic came out of the AI-generator, I ran it through my image editing software (PaintShopPro™) to add the "pastel" effect and the mark with the Recraft logo at lower-left to indicate it is an AI-generated image. I was pleased with the results and will consider using the AI-generation feature in PEAKD again sometime, when I am lacking my own photo of "barnacle removal" or some other unusual topic. So, well done, @peakd • @asgarth • @jarvie 😎