Slowly, the sun takes center stage, rising from the inky water where it has slumbered overnight. A ring of light herds stars westward and gilds a stranger’s face on the pillow beside me.
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The above is my entry for this weekend’s Trifextra: Week Seventy-Seven challenge. They supplied three words (ring, stage, water) and asked us to contribute another thirty of our own, making a grand total of thirty-three words.
While the rest of the house slept, she silently sipped her coffee and eyeballed the bag waiting by the door. Mentally, she inventoried its contents as she crossed the kitchen; she hoped she had not forgotten anything vitally important.
She grabbed the pen and notepad off the fridge and padded barefoot to the old pine table where she hastily scribbled a goodbye note to her family. Normally, she was the one left behind, as one by one as they departed each day for school and work. But today she was the one leaving.
The kids were old enough—they’d be fine on their own. Her husband—well, he had his work and he’d never even notice her absence.
She anchored the note to the table with a box of corn flakes, rinsed her cup in the sink, scratched the cat’s ears one last time. Opening the back door a crack, she drank deeply of the warm late-August air and prayed that this was the right decision, that in finally considering her own needs she was not neglecting those of her loved ones.
She stepped into her shoes, reciting a silent mantra: “You can do this, you deserve this.” Grabbing her bag from the floor and the car keys from the counter, she squared her shoulders and stepped out into the early morning, a sense of freedom and empowerment replacing doubt as she closed the door quietly behind her.
Today, she knew, would be the hardest. New starts were never easy, but surely if she could make it through today, the days ahead would get easier. Just as her children had each survived their first days of elementary then middle then high school, she reassured herself that, as a grown woman, she could survive this, her first day of college.
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Today’s flash fiction inspiration comes from Trifecta: Week Eighty-Six, a challenge to use the third definition of the word crack in a piece of 33 to 333 words (mine is 299).
3a : a narrow break : fissure <a crack in the ice>
b : a narrow opening <leave the door open a crack><cracks between floorboards> —used figuratively in phrases like fall through the cracks to describe one that has been improperly or inadvertently ignored or left out <a player who fell through the cracks in the college draft> <children slipping through the cracks of available youth services>
Today’s photo, other than the fact that it IS a crack, has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. I took the picture on my walk yesterday, oblivious to Trifecta’s challenge, because I was frankly stunned that after all the rain we had between April 2012 and April 2013 the fields could possibly be dry enough to crack so deeply. Guess that’s clay soil for you.
I am frantically trying to get the house ready for the movers who are coming next week, so I could do with a bit of simplicity about now. This week, Ailsa’s photo challenge on her blog Where’s my backpack? is all about clean, simple photographs. Here are a few that I think fit the bill…
No sudden moves.This weekend, for Trifextra: Week Seventy Six, the folks at Trifecta have asked us to sum up our writing process using only three words, a prompt inspired by the reply given by Neil Gaiman when asked the same: “Glare. Drink tea.”
Photo provided by Lisa McCourt Hollar
Numbly I lay the obituary page next to the only family photo to survive the inferno that consumed Mom and Dad’s retirement villa three nights ago.
Why do we look like we’re about to invade this house? Who caught us on film? Tell me the story…
Voiceless ashes cruelly mock the gaps in my biography.
This story is exactly 55 words in response to a photo prompt by Lisa McCourt Hollar, who sponsors the weekly 55 Word Challenge on Jezri’s Nightmares. Unfortunately, it’s a 24-hour contest, opening Wednesday at noon Eastern time. I’m a day (plus an hour) late to actually participate in the challenge this week because I didn’t read the fine print till just now.
The sunset flight had been her birthday gift to him last week, and his face had lit up at the thought of crossing one more thing off his bucket list; he really needed to start adding to the list so as not to be bored senseless in his old age.
She had perused customer reviews on the balloon company’s website and studied ten years of meteorological data, trying to find a window of opportunity when cancellation due to weather was least likely, then finally just closed her eyes and pointed to a random square on the calendar.
She’d regretted her impulsive selection process when the sound of rain pattering against the windows awakened her before the alarm this morning, but the showers had passed before she’d even reached the bottom of her ritual mug of Earl Grey and the balloon pilot had rung at lunchtime to confirm their flight would depart as scheduled.
As they drifted silently above a breathtaking patchwork of carefully tended fields, bisected by an undulating ribbon of sparkling gold, the pilot gave a slight nod and she raised her glass of complementary champagne to toast the dwindling bucket list.
Then, with only a moment’s hesitation, she turned her face into the sun and tipped her husband over the side of the wicker basket, a new widow’s tear-choked prayers following his ashes as they billowed out in the balloon’s wake.
“Five Sentence Fiction is about packing a powerful punch in a tiny fist,” says Lillie as she offers up her weekly challenge on Lillie McFerrin Writes. The word she chose for this week’s inspiration was ‘flight’.
Ailsa Prideaux-Mooney at Where’s My Backpack? provided the photo challenge for this week’s Sunday Best. Thanks to being frequently on the go myself, I’ve been able to capture lots of motion with my camera…
Things I See and Know 