Wendig Challenge: the first 200 words

I'm not posting this one as my Friday Flash Fiction (or maybe I am), because with the holiday I may or may not make it to Friday.  The Wendig Challenge from here to the end of the year is to write a story, 200 words at a time.  Naturally, to keep us on our toes, we have to keep rotating--writing the next 200 words on a different story each week.

My offering for this week is

Millions of Cats

Things never worked out according to plan when there were cats involved.  I knew that, and I should have known better than to take the job.  Either don’t try to plan or stay far from cats, and I knew which would have been better for me.  But Keelan made it all sound so easy: we just had to pick up the consignment from Alpha-Centauri 4 and take them to Exilion 17.  Four days, max, and two of them in hyperspace.

“What could go wrong?”  I should really have run when Keelan said that, because you know as well as I do that anytime those words are uttered you should run, very fast, in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, we needed cash, and the cat people had it.  So we went and picked up the load of cats.

That was where the trouble first began.  They were supposed to be crated, sedated, and ready to be picked up by fork lift and stowed in the cargo hold.  But when we arrived, a team of cat-wranglers was still chasing them around a pen.  We had to wait an extra three days for all of them to be properly prepared for flight.


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This has been continued in at least two directions.  Here's part two and part three of one of those continuations.

And here's part four. And part five.