Some Flash Stories:
By Len Morgan
1. She is lying face down
on the damp earth. Her baby is
crying. “Shhh… little one, they are
searching for us!”
Half a mile away two
staccato cracks from an automatic echo across the sultry, war-torn rice paddies
of
“Oh please be quiet little
one…” She places her hand firmly over his nose & mouth. He struggles but goes silent. Finally, they have passed and she removes her
hand. Lying face down, her dead baby
cries no more. She cries silently.
2. She wasn’t aware that I was looking at
her. So intent was she on the letter in
her hand. The look of pleasure on her
face as she recognized the writing on the envelope increased as she tore it
open. Then she started to read and her
smile lessened, then froze on her face.
After a while, she blinked and rivulets of tears tracked down her
cheeks. Slowly at first, then she
blinked hard several times, shaking her head, balled up the letter and envelope
and threw them in the rubbish bin, shaking her head again, her silent tears
became audible, increasing in volume…
3. He picked up a suitable stone and washed it
in the stream. The blue-green soil slewed
away, the water dripped off as if it were oil, and the stone was dry. He looked closer, it was crystalline, smooth
and round, milky blue-white; it barely weighed an ounce. He had intended to skip it down the stream,
it was the perfect shape, but instead, he put it in his pocket and picked up
another. Two – three – four times it
scudded across the surface. Later
4. He smiled as he discovered a leaf pressed
between the pages of her ‘Concise Oxford English Dictionary 4th Edn. Plucked by his daughter on her 7th
birthday. She gave it to me as one of
her most treasured acquisitions; in her 37th year. One of her more lucid days. “Happy Fathers Day Dad!” She had embroidered a linen Swatch, “With all
my Love on this Special Day!” and affixed the leaf.
She is sadly no longer
with us but the memories always return on ‘fathers day’; a leaf from time…
Flash fiction is always a challenge. Had fun trying to make these stories even shorter.
ReplyDeleteQuite enjoyable, I think of them as Haiku's of prose
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