Friday Flash Fiction 31
Filed under Flash Fiction • Friday Flash Fiction • 07-03-2008 •
No tags for this post.LIFE GOES WRONG
By Gareth L PowellI remember Ken describing a dream he’d had. It was a hot afternoon and we were sitting on the steps of a war memorial in the town square of a coastal tourist trap whose name escapes me. In the dream, he had been a fish in a soupy prehistoric ocean.
“One day,” he said, “I stretched out of the water, wet and new and glistening like a rainbow in the empty sky. Slowly, I clawed my way toward the sun, enjoying the freedom but having to swim like buggery to stay airborne.”
He paused and flicked ash off his roll-up. “But like a bonfire in a trash can, the heat of my new energy made the surrounding shell brittle and flaky and I felt my scales shedding between the clouds until all that was left of me was wind…”
He closed his eyes and we were both silent for a long time, enjoying the warmth of the stone memorial on our backs, the rattle of the waves on the pebble beach. We were both hungry; we had nowhere to go and nowhere to sleep. There were broken bottles in the dust at our feet and, across the square, on the rusty shutters of an abandoned amusement arcade, someone had spray painted ‘life goes wrong’ in wobbly pink letters.
Your subconscious mind is a strange and peculiar place, Gareth.
Still, some really vivid images here. And I like the sense of melancholy.
I can certainly relate to this one. Not the dream, but the mood. Nice piece, Gareth.
What Shaun said, I thought it was very effective.
“Life goes wrong” sums up the piece. And a fish crawling out of the water to only be nothing more than wind captures the life of these two characters. A good, tight piece of writing.
Thanks folks. I guess we’ve all had days like this…
Sorry I’m late to the party, but I really love this. You’ve really captured a moment here Gareth, and I feel inspired to try some flash fiction myself – something I’ve never done before.
Thanks Brian, glad to have you aboard!