The challenge: write a complete story in 500 words or less following these guidelines:

Setting: A Saints game

Genre: Underwater exploration + English mystery

Trope: Overcoming a fear of flying

Characters: Brad Pitt’s stunt double + a character dying of cancer

POV: tense: 3rd/future

The result:

Hyperion

Buddy knows this: Gods still walk among men.

“Go deeper,” Brad will tell the captain. Truth is, Buddy hates spending time in this sub. Too tight and gray. Too thin, the steel against the cold sea. Could be worse. He could be flying. Even the thought knots his guts.

Five months earlier Brad got it in his head he could solve the mystery of the Hyperion, the gold-laden galleon the Spanish King sent Elizabeth as a peace offering, which vanished off the Cornwall coast.

“You’re the only one who gets me,” he’ll tell Buddy. Under the fluorescents Brad shines, otherworldly. Buddy doesn’t know what he does to “get” Brad, other than being there, being his body, the one whose taken his bruised and glistening blows ever since Fight Club. “They think I’m a fool,” he’ll say. “But not you.”

A month later Brad surrenders the Hyperion. The documentary won’t even make Sundance. He’ll stay in England. He says he likes the rain.

They’ll sit in a Manchester arena watching the Saints square off against the Bristol Wolves. Brad moves freely; no one imagines ever encountering Brad Pitt in public; their retinas never register him. Rather it’s Buddy who gets the “you know who you look like?” Sometimes Buddy hates his own false face. Brad will sip his lager. “I still think about her,” he’ll say. The galleon or some ex, Buddy asks. Brad doesn’t answer.

When the striker scores, the crowd will rise in a delirious fury. Brad remains languid. “Buddy’s a cool name,” he’ll say. “Bet you were one tough kid.”

“My name’s really Elliott.”

Brad’s eyebrows raise. “Elliott? Seriously?”

“You’re the one who started calling me Buddy.”

Brad will humpf. “Buddy’s better.”

Finally some brave mortal will break her own enchantment. “Are you him?” she’ll ask Brad. He’ll say no, of course not. She’ll deflate.

“Everyone wishes they were Brad Pitt,” Buddy will whisper.

“Me most of all.” Brad frowns. “Hey I was thinking of flying lessons. Like George.”

Clooney. Another aging god in the pantheon. “You know that’s my achilles.”

“You gotta get over that fear, man.”

Buddy will tell him, again, how his father died in a place crash when he was twelve. Twelve. What an awful year for children. “Oh yeah, right,” Brad says. “That’s a shame.” What exactly the shame is, Buddy will never know for sure.

“I always loved Kauai,” Brad will say. “George took me when he filmed the Descendants.”

The Saints will win. Afterwards, Brad snags a pack of smokes. “I never did this,” he’ll confess. “Not much, anyway. Didn’t seem to matter, though. Not in the end.”

Buddy will know. When you surrender your body to someone else, when you take their blows, you know. After the cancer finally claims Brad, Buddy will wonder what he ever truly got from this god. But he’ll take what he can. He’ll rise above his fear, climb into a helicopter and sprinkle what’s left of Brad onto the lush churning green of Kauai.