Submissions aren’t the only way writers get to be creative on NITH. We asked Jason this question, check out his response below.

Question: You are sitting in an expensive restaurant with a group of friends, enjoying a classy meal. The room is packed, the waiters are busy, yet the mood is sombre. In one corner a string quartet plays dutifully over the culinary din.

A waiter brings over your entrée, mushrooms stuffed with cheese and red pepper. As your fork pierces the fungal skin the door opens and a woman enters. She is barefoot and wears an overcoat. Her hair is auburn. She crosses the room near to where you are sitting and disrobes. Beneath she is nude.

Deftly, she climbs into the lobster tank and begins to swim with the crustaceans. The room is silent. The quartet has stopped playing. At another table a waiter over pours a bottle of wine and the spillage spreads a red stain over the bleached tablecloth.

What happens next?

I blinked.  Or I would have, if I had eyelids.
 
I had been resigned to my fate.  I wasn’t an idiot, none of us were.  Our claws were useless against the big squishy things that took us from our homes.  Mostly useless, I manage to grab hold of one of their digits & didn’t let go until I felt a satisfying snap.
 
Contrary to what the Big Squishies believe, we are a species based on thought and intellect.   Our days are spent dreaming to each other, thinking about the vast reaches of space and time.  We are nothing, if not thought.  We are individuals, but we are not for we are a part of a massive complex of interwoven, intimately connected mind that allows us to experience life and love and introspection on a massive scale.
 
For us, there is no dissonant cognition, because we can harmonize.  The cacophony of thought is not a cacophony for us, it is a symphony.
 
We are not builders, we are thinkers. We may not have opposable anything, but this doesn’t stop us from dancing out little cognition dance.
 
Which is why, when the Big Squishy with the pink skin started doing precisely the same dance, I would have blinked.  The way she moved in the water, the forms she used – they were neat, precise and knowing.  We were able to dream to her, to include her in our grand cognizance.  She became a part of us, and through us she learned, and through her, we learned.
 
This was the day everything changed.
Jason has a short listed submission right now for Flash Comp 300. Check it out here