Friday Flash Fiction 41
Filed under Friday Flash Fiction • 01-08-2008 •
No tags for this post.THREE THINGS HE REMEMBERED ON HIS DEATH BED
By Gareth L Powell1.
When he was sixteen, he almost drowned. He lost control of his kayak at the head of the rapids at Symonds Yat, overbalancing where the green river water met the first black rocks.
2.
He saw his first dead body at the age of twenty-two. He was working in a pet food shop in Gloucester. He heard a noise outside. When he went to investigate, he saw there had been an accident in the street. It was a hot summer’s day. People were lying smashed and bloodied in the dust.
3.
He was in the kitchen of a friend’s house with Lisa, fetching the dessert. He was forty years old. She had offered to give him a hand. The other guests (including her husband) were drinking wine around the dining table on the patio.‘I want you,’ he whispered.
She squeezed his hand. ‘I really want you too. But you know if we do this, we can never, ever tell anyone.’
Interesting piece, Gareth! I’m guessing from the lean, sparse prose that the links to Wikipedia are intended to fulfil the contextual and descriptive roles that the prose has mostly eschewed here? I like the idea – not sure how effective it is in terms of story, but as a sort of metatextual commentary I like it rather a lot.
Just off to look up ‘metatextual’, but also agree it’s an intriguing idea.
It’s an interesting idea.
I liked the artful sprinkling of detail such as “where the green river water met the first black rocks”.
Nice one.