Snowed under

(100 word flash fiction)

Her eye sockets are filled with snow. She can feel it dripping into her empty cranium where once had pulsated red-hot rages and electric aliveness. Once. Long ago.

Sliding down her spine, past the throat that had sung arias and screamed with equal intensity. Once.

Through an empty ribcage where her heart had often wanted to burst its bars and explode. Once.

Past a vanished solar plexus that had blazed like a sun. Once.

It collects in her pelvis, where a tiny half-formed skeleton lies, surrounding it like amniotic fluid.

He had not known it was there. Her husband / murderer.

~~~

This story just wrote itself. 🙂 So I have to post another FF for this week FF prompt –

PHOTO © Dee Lovering

 

The Christmas present

(100 word flash fiction)

Santa has to walk. The Taliban have killed the reindeer. The elves have managed to escape. But, funding for the arms industry has made them redundant.

Mercifully, the kids nowadays only ask for iPhones.

He approaches the secluded house half covered in snow. In the dawn almost-light, he sees the boy outside the door only when he is up close.

“Merry Christmas, young man!”

He reaches into his bag, retrieves a slim case and holds it out to him.

The boy does not move. A sneer distorts his face.

“This is for babies. What I want is a real gun.”

~~~

Story for Friday Fictioneers, the flash-fiction group led by the lovely Rochelle. For the photo-prompt –

PHOTO © Dee Lovering

 

 

 

The other side of nightmare

(100-word flash fiction)

She has the same dream again. Tiled roofs. Walking under stately arches. Cycling through cobbled streets. Waves of happiness surge through her, rising in a crest of joy until it explodes in a burst of euphoria so great, it shakes her awake and sitting bolt upright in bed.

Only, there is no bed. Just a torn mat on a bare floor. Around her, sleeping bodies. Mice in the corners. Cold drafts seeping in through the refugee shelter’s broken windows.

Holes, where the city used to be. Where the bombs fell. The biggest hole inside her where home used to be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Entry for Friday Fictioneers, the lovely Rochelle’s awesome gathering where we meet once a week to create fiction to a photo prompt –

PHOTO PROMPT- © Sandra Crook

Girl, gone

(100 word flash fiction)

She opened her eyes to blackness. No slivers of moonlight peeking through chinks in curtains. Gone were the digital clock numerals. Even the teddy with the glowing, neon eyes was eyeless.

She thought she should feel terror but where her body used to be, there was nothing.

So, she shut her eyes. Light poured down on her through a hole in the blackness. And something else, clumps of earth. A spade flashed in and out of view. She tried to shriek. No sound came. Her throat was full of mud.

She opened her eyes again. The nothingness was more bearable.

~~~

Entry for Friday Fictioneers, the amazing group shepherded by Rochelle. Photo prompt below –

PHOTO PROMPT © Stephen Baum