It’s time for another Flash Fiction challenge! This week ask for you to write a 250 word piece based on the following photo and prompt. Please provide you entries in the comments section below. We look forward to reading you entries. Enjoy!
Even in the most unlikely conditions, beauty can thrive. Send us a story about adversity and either overcoming it, or giving in.
Placing her number two pencil on her desk and closing the test booklet, she looked at the clock hanging on the wall over the dusty chalk board – thirty-two minutes to spare. She didn’t know what her score would be, but the warm confidence stirring in her gut told her that the cycle was broken, that the hours of late night homework, the days attending classes of continually decreasing in size, the staying home when others went out in search of midnight thrills had finally paid off. Soon she would be the girl that got away, the one who made it out, the example to other hopeful kids of what is possible. She smiled, stretched, stood, and took her first step into her bright future.
The pistol landed with a thud, shattering the ceramic tile. He forced his trembling hands up to wipe the tears from his eyes. “What the fuck am I doing?” he asked himself. Still on his knees, he carefully picked up and fumbled open the revolver. He dumped out the single round he had loaded an hour ago. The brass and lead .357 cartridge clinked and rolled across the bathroom’s cold tiles. Slowly and with purpose, he pushed the six-shot cylinder back into place and gently laid the massive Smith and Wesson on the edge of the tub. He tried to stand, but his legs could not comply. The last hour spent kneeling on the floor sent his legs ahead of him; to that place he had wanted so desperately to go. He’d suffered through years of seeing and reliving all the terrible things he had done in his life. The fear and anguish it all caused him was more than he thought he could handle. But it was what he saw on this cold November morning that finally snatched him out of that pine, front-row box-seat of eternity. He glimpsed nothing and chose to walk away from it. Anything, everything, all of it was better than the nothing he saw.
The book titled Gravity hit the pavement with a thud as Vic stumbled over the curb. All his Advanced Placement physics notes, scrawled on loose-leaf, spread out along the sidewalk. “Dammit,” he muttered, as he bent down to collect them. “Perfect example of the Second Law,” he thought. “Entropy – story of my life!”
Then Vic noticed an odd figure huddled under the streetlight just up ahead. It seemed to be covered with dusty, feathery material, and looked quite ragged and dark. The moth-creature spoke to him. “What are you doing?” it asked in a gravelly voice.
“I’m on my way back from the library,” Vic stammered. “I’m studying the laws of thermodynamics.” The creature made a sort of scoffing noise.
“No laws,” it said.
Vic gathered up his courage, and said, “Of course there are laws. What about Newton?”
“No, you are wrong,” the moth-creature declared. “The only thing that governs our world is…” it paused. “Dance!”
And suddenly, Vic could hear strange and beautiful violin music. He was compelled to step towards the moth creature. It wrapped its dusty wings around him, and they danced for a good two minutes, a sort of waltz or was it a tango? Vic was uncertain. Then just abruptly as it had started, the music stopped, and the creature rose up like some dark angel. It just disappeared into the clouds and stars.
Vic grabbed his Gravity book and hurried home, feeling a lightness he could not quite explain.
I had grown used to tilting my face ever so slightly away whenever someone was looking at me; it came automatically. I avoided mirrors. I couldn’t bear to go to the hairdresser’s, instead let my hair grow long and straggly down my face, to hide it.
But with the corners of my eyes I would secretly devour other people’s faces. I fixated on the texture of their skin, its colour, any tiny or innocent blemishes, my envy boring into its very cells. And deep down I felt that I could never truly love or trust someone whose face was smooth, someone who didn’t know, as I did, the shame of disfigurement.
So when Peter, for the first time, took my hair in his hand and thoughtfully, deliberately, drew it back, gazing into my face and smiling, I could not breathe. It was as if he had opened a curtain on my soul, and the light blinded me.
“How did you get this scar?” he asked, gently.
“I was burned with a cigarette.”
I had never spoken those words before. Even in the doctor’s office, age six, I had simply nodded at my stepmother’s explanation that it was an accident with a party sparkler. Peter was not horrified. He did not recoil. He kissed my scar, and told me that it was beautiful, like the north star.
Now of course I know that not all scars are visible. But love can make them beautiful, shining like constellations in the night.
Look to the Weed
You wonder alone in the abandoned industrial area. The surroundings match your mood. Bleak, desolate. Misery loves company. As usual your attention is drawn to the only colour in this barren place – a single yellow flowered weed. It’s persistence mesmerises you. Doesn’t it know that all is lost, that the world is a horrible meaningless place? Ever since she left you’ve felt bereft. No beauty or joy anymore. But then you think – should I follow the weeds lead? What have you got to lose? You’ll get hurt again, but so what? You can revel in it – it’s what you love. It’s your favourite pass time. You said so yourself – everything means nothing. So why not choose to embrace life and all it has to offer? You could even go back on your medication. You always have options. Maybe you could be happy. Isn’t that what life’s all about? You could find someone else. Maybe the love of your life, or at least, a distraction. Fodder for your novel that you keep dreaming of writing one day. It’s all just stuff, and stuff is better than nothing. Look to the weed – maybe that could be your next motto. Maybe the next girl will actually like you? Stranger things have happened. Look to the weed.
It was no surprise to Lucy Adler that she ended up in her current predicament —lying face down in a field with a bullet lodged in her spine. It did strike her as ironic, that the place where she and Dobbs pledged their undying love for each other, would be the place where she would die.
Lucy thought there was something romantic about committing crimes with Dobbs Grayson; nothing romantic about getting shot. But Mr. Carver wasn’t supposed to be at the pawn shop that late; and before Lucy and Dobbs knew what was happening, the man pulled out his 45, and began shooting helter skelter in their general direction. Lucy fell, and Dobbs had to carry her to the getaway car.
This is what happens with a corrosive kind of love; it destroys everything it touches. Lucy allowed it to ruin every relationship she’d ever had, ignoring the warnings of anyone who told her that the Grayson’s were nothing but trouble. But Lucy believed Dobbs was different, smart, and he would give her the finer things in life. All she got for her troubles was a bullet to the back.
The grass was dewy underneath Lucy, soaking through her sweater, and causing her to shiver. Dobbs left her in the field and ran —she shouldn’t have been surprised. All Lucy Adler hoped was that her mother would be able to forgive her. Then she closed her eyes for the last time.