The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 300 words and post it to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.
They say disappointment doesn’t hurt if it isn’t ‘real;’ if one shouldn’t have expected more from the beginning. If those words sounds bitter, they are. I’ve lived a long line of disappointments that, according to folks around, I shouldn’t have expected to go any other way. Can’t depend on other folks, they said, sadly shaking their mop-heads. Seems I continue to disappoint, just as they disappoint me. Who’d of thought this world was such a wash of disappointment?
Started when I was a child. Ma and Pa never much cared for me or my sisters. Grew up poor, stuck in the backwater of the hills, hungry most every day. Don’t take me wrong. I never hated my upbringing, nor the fact we was hungry. I just hated the lies.
‘We might be poor, son, but we’re too proud to take from them more better off than us.’
‘Don’t you know your Pop is doing the best he can? Ain’t easy life isn’t. Takes a lot from a man.’
‘Your Ma’s a religious woman, son. Just like an angel.’
Well, no. We might have been poor but it was cause Pa spent his time and money drinking. Never did the best lessin he couldn’t help it. The less you do, the better, was his motto. Besides, why work when the government will take care of you?
And Ma? Angel from Hell maybe. It was her strong with the strap, not Pa. I feared her more than I ever feared anybody else. She killed Tash. Might just as well, anyway, cause she wouldn’t give her no food. We tried to sneaking in, but Ma always caught us. Strapped us bad. Her feeling was every child gone left more food or the rest of us, meaning her.
Left home at 12, figuring I’d do better on my own. Worked hard, took my punches, my disappointments, kept moving. The one right thing I did – never going home again.
“Nolan Briar Tate.”
I rose, walking up the steps and across the stage. President Monroe held out his hand and we shook.
“Congratulations, Nolan,” he said then moved to his seat.
For a moment, I stood there, staring out over the thousands of faces watching me. Susan was there, front row, cheering louder than all the others. Hers were the only cheers I heard.
Stepping up, I lay my hands on the wood of the podium, cleared my throat. “I’ve been thinking about disappointment lately; how we let our lives disappoint us, blame others for our hurts, when we’re the ones responsible for shaping the life we want. If you learn to trust yourself, trust those who love you, disappointment no longer has any power over you… It is, after all, just another word for fear…..”
Solitude didn’t bother him, that wasn’t it, but his brother, Silence, was a different story. Nights when he was the only person alive and the vast silent expanse of the sky cupped over him like a giant’s hand. Those nights he curled up in his blankets and shivered, eyes tight closed, not wanting to see the Nightly Things creeping up on him. If he didn’t see them, they couldn’t see him, no matter how close they crept. Nightly Things couldn’t peer inside closed eyelids, that was the rule.
The Doctor didn’t look over at Mrs. Marshall as he spoke. “As you can see, he hasn’t gotten any better.”
“Do you know why?”
“The workings of the mind are still mostly a mystery. There is so much we don’t know about mental illness.”
“He isn’t mentally ill.”
“Look at him, Mrs. Marshall. He has no connection nor concept of the world.” He paused, feigning sympathy and patience. “He isn’t going to get better. The best thing for him is to put him into an institution so he gets the care he needs…” Droning on until his words turned into blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Care for him yes, but not love him. Not like a mother.
Mrs. Marshall stared through the window at her son. She knew so little about him, his world, but one thing she did know was he was not mentally ill. Those words he scribbling over and over – Nightly Things – scared her. What did he mean? What was he trying to tell her, his mother, the one person who loved him unconditionally?
She thought his words were a cry for help, for protection; to be heard. Something somewhere terrified him. Something, real or not, chased him in his silent world.
On the drive home, she thought about being a mother. Mothers didn’t give up. They didn’t leave their child behind. She stroked his hair, silky even at ten. Mothers protected against Nightly Things, whatever they were. Mothers loved. Mothers listened even to the silence.
Mothers didn’t walk away.
The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 300 words and post it to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.
Mr. Binks shivered against my leg as I crouched behind the tombstone carved with the name Harry Hat. Somebody got screwed on that one. Mr. Binks is tiny and short-haired, so I made myself believe he was cold, at least for the moment. Then he began to growl.
I glanced right and left, to Holly and Susan, huddled behind neighboring tombstones. Could dead people have neighbors? Did they think of the person in the next grave as just living one house over? Or did it matter?
Of course, it didn’t matter. I’m 12. I don’t believe in ghosts anymore. At least in the daylight. Nighttime… I’m not quite so sure.
Jonny said the ghosts rose at midnight, dancing around the grave of a witch. Sounded fishy to me. Some of those dead folks had to have more smarts than that. Pretty stupid to rise out of the grave just to do-wop around another stone. I could think of much better things to do…. like scare the pants off Jonny Brown.
Boys!
My eyes rolled of their own accord; my automatic response whenever the subject arose. On the other hand, they did have their uses. Sometimes.
I heard a sound. Not a happy kind of sound; more like the creaking of an old door opening….. Did graves have doors?
Holly cried something and I glanced over her way. The dog crept over and huddled beside her. She’d always been a scary-cat. Susan, on the other hand, was just as curious as me.
Faint music started, coming from a distance and growing louder. I glimpsed white forms gathering about twenty yards away. Pulling back, I looked over at Susan and made wavy-arms motions. Ghosts didn’t look like bed sheets, not unless they are on Charlie Brown. We both nodded and looked round our headstones. The ghostly forms danced around a tombstone, bopping up and down like really bad dancers.
Susan and I locked eyes. I motioned for her to go round the other side of her stone, while I did the same with mine, good old Harry Hat watching my backside. Ducking stone to stone, we easily reached the far side of the dancers; they were so into their dance they didn’t bother to look around. Pulling on the sheets we’d hidden earlier, I mouthed, ‘One, two, three…’ We jumped up, whooing up a storm.
The ghosts stopped dead in their tracks then ran screaming, sheets streaming off to hang round tombstones like flags. Holly and I fell to the ground, laughing.
Boys… that’ll teach them.
The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 300 words and post it to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.
DEADLINE IS:
23:59 EST (New York Time) Wednesday. (700)
Using the prompt of ‘A Friend Shows Up‘ create a scene. This scene about a friend arriving at an embarrassing or perfect time. It could be, if a series is being written, a new friend we haven’t met before that changes the dynamic of the story.
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He came with flowers and a smile, moving immediately to give her a kiss, to fuss about, before he looked around and saw me. Instantly, his face changed, darkened, pretending dangerous.
Not that I was afraid. I remained standing before the window, arms akimbo, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses.
“What,” he asked, “are you doing here?”
“Actually,” I replied, “I ought to be asking you that question. Friend.”
He laid the flowers down on the tray table. “I am here,” he replied, “for Sarah. My friend.” He took a step closer. “It’s you, friend,” he continued, an ugliness in his voice I had never heard before, “who shouldn’t be here.”
“You mean, here like you’ve been for the last ten years? Or here like you are because it’s near the end and you don’t want to miss the drama?”
His face drew rigid with anger. “How dare you,” he hissed, moving towards me. And then reconsidering and stopping in the middle of the room.
“Everyone knows,” I continued, “you left because Sarah couldn’t give you what you wanted so you didn’t need her. Now when she’s dying, now you have a chance to dwell in the drama, now you have a chance to get something from her….”
I didn’t say the rest. He’d know.
He shifted from foot to foot, unsure what to do. I’d beat the crap out of him if he pushed and he knew it. Or maybe he didn’t know me now as well as he thought. He knew what my size and build said and that was enough for him to assume nothing had changed.
Abruptly, he turned back to the bed, murmuring endearments to Sarah, so still and thin and pale, a shadow of mixed memories. Sarah had never stopped waiting for him to come home.
Not when I’d left and come back. Not when I left my career and got a job, bought a house for her, took her off the street, and handled her bills and doctors and medicine. Bathed her, wiped her, fed her when she was too weak to feed herself.
None of this mattered in the end. It was him for whom she had waited, from the moment he left, dreaming and wishing and hoping he would come back as promised. Even as the years passed, she never lost hope.
And now he was back, the third of a friendship we’d never imagined would shatter. Children never believe in death. Their lives are magical, little Peter Pans, never thinking childhood will end. But it ended when he left. I wasn’t strong enough to watch her pine her life away so I’d joined the military, traveled the world, forgot her, forgot him, forgot the little corner of our world where we’d believed we would always be safe.
He sat by the bed, holding her hand, stroking her face, his the first face she saw when she woke. The joy in her eyes hurt me. If it had been possible, it would have broken me.
“Hush, darling, I’m here,” he whispered. “I’m here to take care of everything.” He smoothed her brow. “Just sleep, darling. Everything will be all right now.”
From that moment on, I was invisible. The next day…
I was gone.
The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 300 words and post it to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.
BY ATHLING2001
“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”
― William Golding, Lord of the Flies
If I asked a hundred different people, I suspect I would get a hundred different answers to Mr Golding’s question. Pretty scary, if you ask me.
The real scary part is the fact a child is asking the question. So why, when they did everything they’d seem the adults around them do, wasn’t it working? If you haven’t read Lord of the Flies, you definitely should. Then again, I can’t imagine anybody who hasn’t read the book – or maybe it’s me being the William Golding fan I am.
What could possibly go wrong when children struggle to create their own society? How about everything.
The failure is not theirs. It is ours, the adults. Society is broken. I know many of you might not agree with this statement, but I can’t look at the world around me without knowing we are broken. How did we lose so many people into nothingness? Into drugs or gambling or drinking or any other activity meant to dull the mind and body against the world. Where are we that these things are necessary to dull the world? Where are we when it is acceptable for people to starve?
I’m not one of those ‘good ole days’ people. I know society has been breaking for as long as we’ve had a society. Or, to put it another way, society has been broken ever since one human raised hand against another.
War breaks society. Hatred breaks society. Drugs and gambling and drinking break society. Children beaten and abused break society. Women raped; beaten. Millions of dollars spent on wars and elections instead of housing the homeless, feeding the starving. One neighbor killing another over a sliver of land. One child killing another over shoes.
So, let’s not blame the children. Lord of the Flies shows the creation and breakdown of a society. Look at the long haul. It’s truth.
Society is broken because the first somebody, somewhere, raised a hand in jealousy or hatred or fear. And it continues to break because we can’t undo the cycle. So where do we start?
We start with the children. We don’t hate them or hit them or starve them or abandon them. We feed them, body and soul. Above all else, we love them. We teach them empathy. We teach them love and compassion and understanding. We teach them hate is wrong. Jealously is wrong. Killing is wrong.
Most of all we teach them they are loved. They are valued and valuable to the world. We teach them that, no matter what color or creed or race or gender, they matter.
I don’t know if this will solve the problem, but I know we have to try.
The JSW Challenge is open to anybody who wishes to participate. Using the writing prompt, write a flash fiction no longer than 300 words and post it to your page. The Challenge starts on Monday and runs through Sunday each week. Please remember to link your story back to this post so everyone can read your entry.
A Writer's Life 
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