Flash fiction (26): The chill

Written for JD Mader's 2minutesgo website. If you fancy writing or just reading, head over there this weekend.  This one took longer than 2 minutes! :) Cheers

The chill

Rain. Drained. Time chimed. It spoke, but it didn’t. It flew, but it stayed low. He felt it and yet it didn’t move him. He couldn’t say that it really did. Rain. The chill of it seeped into his skin, even though he watched it from a place of warmth. It spied into the insides he kept hidden, protected, even a mystery to himself, fearing he couldn’t feel anything.

Perhaps when he was a child. That might have been the last time. Him and Keith would take their bikes up the steepest hills, trudging up panting, so tired at the top that they’d collapse, leaning forwards on the handlebars desperate for a breath. But the view. The view was always worth it. Always worth the silent trudge. There was no breath to spare for speech. And then the reward. Over much too fast. Seconds really, if they counted it.

They didn’t. They never counted it once. The reward was enough. Whizzing down so fast that your throat ate your heart and you didn’t die. That adrenalin rush was something he’d never been able to capture since, although he’d damn well tried. Even the lines of Keith’s body, sighing slightly as it slept, didn’t rustle up the same rapture in him. His mother had been right all along. Make the best of your childhood because things are never the same. You grow up, and you have to grow up fast or you’ll get left behind.

And he always felt left behind. In his career, his painting, even his pace, which had shuffled down to a crawl. Even if he’d wanted to take his bike all the way up that grand old hill, he’d have collapsed halfway. And laughed, probably. Well, Keith would have laughed. He’d suck the whole seriousness out of it, spit it out without a toffee coating, and keep things as they really were, no embroidery, no exaggeration.

“Can’t you sleep?”

Ben twitched and leaned behind him. “No, I was thinking about bikes.”

“You don’t have a bike.”

“When we was boys. The Bridges Hill. Down by the school.”

It was Keith’s turn to laugh, pulling the covers as he turned over, wrapping himself up like a sausage. “You always beat me up that bloody hill.”

“I sure wouldn’t now. Huffing like an old man.”

“It’ll pass. It’s a big thing, surgery. You need to give yourself a break. You know that, don’t you? You’re not Superman.”

“But you are,” said Ben. “You always were.”

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, April 3, 2020

Flash fiction (20): The aftermath

This one was written for Dan Mader's 2minutesgo writing exercise – the only thing managing to kick my butt into writing lately. 

This week I injured a finger. I touch-type and I'm never taking that for granted again. Typing with one hand is kind of slooooow. This took forever! I guess this is an ode to little fingers!

The aftermath

So the thing was said in two words when speech wasn’t needed, the reply losing itself upon the wind whistling through his brain. In the darkness in which he wrapped himself these things he came to see: the arch of her back, the light dancing in her eyes, the red flecks in her hair. But it hadn’t always been that way. In the past they always sat in rooms, silent; the back of her head the only thing given freely. The monotone answer of her voice stagnant water, the tapping echo of her pencil tip an irritation he could never scratch. She was always good at sums, able to add up anything. Numbers were her thing. And dates. Birthdays, weddings, appointments, anything – some so random as to be inconsequential. And anniversaries. He breathed in the smoke. His one downfall the pitiful memory he inherited from his father, no matter what they say about most chromosomes being inherited from your mother. How he wished. The woman filed memories like an elephant. He stubbed out the cigarette butt on the step and gazed down at Layla’s soft, brown eyes beneath him. She barked and cocked her head to one side. He nodded and stood. It would be a while before it was safe to venture back inside anyway.

Copyright Vickie Johnstone, Dec 22, 2017

A Poem a Day (33) - Disparate Worlds

Here is a poem I wrote last night. I was about to nod off to sleep and started thinking about a woman sitting under a tree, watching a rainbow that seemed to contain all her hopes.

Disparate Worlds

She sits below the leap of the rainbow rising

While he hesitates alone in the drizzling rain

She wanders between the lines so tightly drawn,

Fielding the shadows fleeting beyond her vision;

Without a care in the world, she loves to dance

In the midst of faces, colours and the happening

He knows from whence the echoes slither and slide,

Creating from this clay these forms in his fertile mind;

Watering the tiny seedlings in order for them to grow,

Springing into the giants of which he seeks to preach

Under the boughs she carves her old name anew,

Muttering small nothings that echo on the breeze,

Her every word uplifted on the autumnal leaves;

Their reds suit her, tangling in her escaping hair

Where he follows, he seeks to own her privacy,

Relishing the fit of his boot in her peaceful steps;

While she sits, idly wishing on an idle dream,

He frowns, conjuring a whole secret life for her

Where she exists the fullest is in her imaginings,

Skipping down a hillside littered with musical notes;

Fresh dew speckled on a bluebell nods her way,

The slightest touch fearing to destroy its symmetry

A black beetle scuttling where the gutter waters swirl,

Ploughing through, so chaotic, snapping and bending,

He seeks to slice her confidence, on a par with his,

Watching while she sleeps, so unaware and trusting

In this waking life she steps far inside these mirrors,

Seeking the way that eels beyond this dimmed reality;

One of her creation, designed when she was needful,

Yet now the rainbow soars, she desires to be free

The man hesitates in the rain, stumbling in the darkness;

In contrast, she glides beneath the waking of a dream

Copyright Vickie Johnstone