The inimitable Chuck Wendig just put a new fiction challenge up at his blog Terribleminds (if you’re interested in writing, publishing, horror/sf/fantasy, and/or the antics of small children, and you’re not reading him, you should be. He’s very sharp, and very funny. Oh, he swears a great deal with a kind of feverish inventiveness, so you probably shouldn’t read him if that bothers you, but you’d be missing a lot).
The challenge was to write a flash horror story in the form of a spam email. This is what my brain decided to come up with, possibly influenced by reading too many productivity blogs lately.
Autoclick
Dear Participant
Do you spend hours a day deciding what to watch? What threads to read? Who to follow? Who to ban? What to buy? What restaurant to book? Where to go on holiday? What job to apply for? Who to date? Now you can be free! Autoclick is here!
We are so convinced you will love Autoclick and all its features that it is already downloading. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do a thing. Thank you for downloading Autoclick!
Now Autoclick is installed, you will be freed from all those difficult timewasting decisions. Autoclick – your very own combination personal secretary and life coach!
Autoclick is now synced to all your other devices. And those of everyone you know, or may at any time interact with. Using our unique Quantum Forward Planning feature, it is also synced to every device you or anyone else may own at any time in any future.
Be free of unnecessary struggle. Be free of timewasting choices. You need never make another decision.
Welcome to Autoclick!
Ha – it might be reflective of my state of mind at the moment, but an Autoclick service is perhaps more attractive than it should be 🙂
Well written – stark, and the worst kind of ‘opt-out (if you can)’ you get in software right now. Its this kind of thing that means Ive got a U2 album on my iTunes.
Nicely done.
KT
Nice, this is the kind of stuff that is truly creepy because it could happen! I had thought about doing one where the email is a “once in a lifetime offer” to purchase your free will, making life easier and less stressful. I loved this challenge and I feel slightly disturbed by how easily I embraced the poor grammar and spelling I did!
I don’t know whether to be pleased or worried by these comments! Pleased, actually. Thanks.
*Chuckles*
*Checks download bar… nothing there*
*Relieved chuckles*
*resumes reading*
@Paige S: 🙂 Your comment was almost flash fiction in itself.