Flash fiction - Almost The Last Letter

I am just in time for the deadline over at Studio 30+ this week, with this bit of flash fiction using a prompt from Katy's writing last week: "chills". See what you think. Thanks for reading! Click on the icon below to read more entries. 

Almost The Last Letter

Dear Editor, 

My whole professional life I have been bound by ethics and cloaked in my own trustworthiness. 

But now I am not. I want to reveal those I have harboured in the name of my profession, in the name of science, in the name of what's right. 

For it has been brutally wrong. 

Joanne Cardew, Patient 3682, is a bully. She has systematically emotionally trampled each one of her children so they are mere shadows strewn across our streets. I know this because she came to me in the guise of bettering herself. All she wanted was excuses to stitch into her so on her own deathbed she could say it wasn't her fault. To her children I say, it was. Your mother was never right. Let her vanish and, please, come into the sun. 

Reginald Cross, Patient 0081, should be in prison. A long time ago he was party to something so cruel I get chills thinking about it even now. And he does too, let it be known. But that does not escape the fact that every deed he does trying to undo that fateful day gets him no further away from the tragedy that pumps through his veins. His only completion is justice, and regrettably it is only now, with this letter, I can offer it from whoever is out there that can make it happen. 

Jemima Anne Forsythe, Patient 2003, is a liar. Everything she does, everything she says, simply builds up her house of cards. If you are in her life, you are not alone. There are hundreds like you, being used, discarded, reinvented. She feels nothing except for the tales that spin off her wickedly shiny tongue. One day, hopefully soon, it will all come tumbling down and she will be swallowed by her own vicious inventions, trodden into nothing because when there is not even one truth to cling to, there is no real existence. 

I have more but my writing wavers and I am tired. As our maker knocks soon on my own door, I will save my energy and write again tomorrow. 

Very best, 

Dr Virginia Whiticker.

Haikus - Dandelions

In the early morning when my baby just wants to play by himself and laugh at the fact his hands are attached to him and can find things, I sit half asleep and write some lines for the writers' posse over at Studio 30 Plus. Ideas pour, but I am tired, so I will just leave these two poems, using one of the prompts this week: dandelions. View more by others by clicking on the icon below. Thanks for reading.

Soldiers

They stand poised but burnt,
Like old dandelions, war
Scarred in a new world.

Untrodden

A summer moon hangs
On fields of dandelions
Where no one has stepped.

Flash fiction - Afterwards

Time has changed its meaning for me recently. This time, right now, is precious because I don't know when I'll get it again. So, get those words on the page (furiously! furiously!) and on we go. Here's this week's write for the wonders over at Studio 30+ who kindly used my writing from last week - Newborn - to source their prompts: 'chamber of secrets' and/or 'stars'. I went for the double whammy this time. 

Afterwards

“When we are old, will we still love each other?”

“Of course, only more.”

They were sixteen when they had had that conversation, laying in the sand dunes, under the stars, high on life. Now, some sixty-odd years later, they held hands against her life’s setting sun and she asked him again.

He looked over at her. Her eyes were still roaming and sparkling and as curious as they had been at birth. His friend. His confident. Later, his lover, his love. His wife. Mother of his children, grandmother of their children. He briefly wondered how much more wonderful could a person be before answering,

“Of course, only more.”

Despite the enormous pressure of the pain from all corners of her body, she grinned, wildly and openly. Laughing hurt, but smiles could be a good measure of their time. One more smile. He always had that to go for.

“Darling, what do you think will happen. Afterwards?”

He looked out over the fields stretching past their bedroom window. He thought of his return to the world out there, alone. Though this room had been stifling at times during the past weeks, it was their last space together, their comfort, their chamber of secrets. Yes, it was also the end of her life, but he took great comfort in the fact it was he and he alone who was passing her on. No doctors, no smiling strangers.

“You will wait for me in a place where, when I go, I will know exactly where to find you.”

“You romantic, you.” Another smile.

“No? Then tell me, where are you going?”

“Nowhere. I’ll stay and haunt the house. I’ll be in the teacups and the bathroom taps and the pots in the shed.”

He laughed. “Still nagging me no doubt?”

The last smile. “Of course, only more.”