It’s time for my weekly exercises. These pieces of flash fiction are part chance to practice my craft, part oppurtunity to get reader feedback on what’s scary and what’s not, and part shameless marketing ploy to get people interested in my published work. Remember, these exercises depend on reader feedback, so please give me your thoughts, good or bad, on the piece below.
The sky turned black as midnight. Everyone stared towards the heavens and the inky blackness. A moment ago the sky had been bright and blue, the sun still high above at four in the afternoon. But then it had turned pitch-black, like looking into an inkpot. No moon, no stars. Not a single source of light burned in the sky, and not even street lamps sensitive to changes in light could dispel away the darkness.
Family huddled together in fear. Lovers held each other, comforting each other in order to forget their disorientation and confusion. People left their offices, homes, and stores just to stare at the impossibly-black sky. For maybe five minutes, nothing changed and nobody moved, just looking at the sky in terrified wonderment.
And then a giant, skeletal hand appeared from the inky blackness and reached down as if to grab them all and take them away. Maybe that was its purpose. And the people who saw the hand and the long arm attached to it screamed.
Rami Ungar The Writer 
Great start to a story. The word “away” is superflous in the last sentence of the first passage. What happens next?
Well, it’s flash fiction, so really that was the ending. But hey, if I want to expand it into a short story, I’ll let you know.