This week's Flash! Friday prompt encouraged us to meld two very different aspects, the setting of "downtown" with the photo below — all in a 200-word (+/-10) story of course. As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts!
In The End
I froze the moment I saw him. Paint streaking his torso gave him away before my eyes even noticed the ancient artifacts cradled by his hands. I’d played with replicas when I was young, when New York was nothing more than a distant mystery, calling me away.
Skyscrapers, taxicabs, rude gestures, even the scents of the city I’d traded my soul for faded into nothing as we locked eyes. His hair was bound, but mine whipped around me in the eerie burst of air the moving bodies around me didn’t notice.
A certainty I’d never known before poured into my chest. One blink, and he would be gone.
One blink.
I knew it, feared it, prayed for it, though I doubted he would listen. My eyes watered, and then burned.
Zahabolzi gazed through me, into me, and not at me at all. Everything I’d done, and he’d still come. My knees hit pavement, sending up a spray of golden dust from home. My throat closed against the trite words that clawed at my insides. A tear slipped from my eye.
It hit the dirt together with my head, and hands pushed through the haze, shaking me as others yelled.
Forgive me.
Zahabolzi turned away.
And my eyes closed.
(208 words)
No comments
Post a Comment: