Tag: flash fiction

Growth

Peg watched by the open door overlooking the deck where her container gardens stood in the moonlight. A cool spring breeze touched the young plant leaves as it passed. She pulled her sweater closer, sipped her tea, worried that the night air might prove too chilly. She thought of the time and care she spent…

By Lisa May 15, 2020 Off

Nightly Routine

Nearly every night after a mostly-quiet dinner, Nora and Vern assumed their usual positions seated in identical armchairs situated on either side of the fireplace that hadn’t hosted flames since the last Christmas any of the children were home during the holidays. His chair angled ever so slightly toward the television set on the other…

By Lisa May 7, 2020 Off

A Different Angle

“It’s all about perspective, Aunt Jane,” said her niece. “Try looking at it from a different angle and you might feel more positive about it.” “There is no way I can feel positive about living in a silly apartment and giving up the home I have built and loved for so many years.” They were…

By Lisa May 1, 2020 Off

Bridge into Darkness

The bridge ended exactly where the trees began. Although a few splashes of sunlight still played at the very edge of the woods, it was clear that these would be the last traces of light to grace the afternoon. Immediate darkness waited just beyond the final board, and yet I did not want to return…

By Lisa April 24, 2020 Off

Crazy Day

It was a Monday kind of Tuesday.  Ellis sat on the bus with hat in his hands and briefcase on his lap as he did on any other normal Tuesday. But this Tuesday was about to get as unnormal as it possibly could.  Ellis waited patiently for his stop. Standing silently when it was his…

By Lisa April 21, 2020 Off

Circling

It was a perfectly good day for vultures. When the sun is high and the wind just right, vultures like to play in the warmth just as any of us would. On a day as fine as this, the committee leaves their post on top of the neighbor’s garage and takes to the air, swirling,…

By Lisa April 17, 2020 Off

Beaten

Carla stepped into the sunlight as she had on a hundred other Monday mornings. The bright beauty of the day was stark contrast to the terror she would experience once she completed the journey from school bus to classroom. The brutality was relentless. She suffered in silence, no one aware of the battle scars she…

By Lisa April 15, 2020 Off

Decision

Leslie grabbed her head in her hands, tugging at her own hair as she tried to think. The noise inside her head was deafening – a million words crashed through her brain, each one clamoring to emerge as the clear answer in her mind. “What part of ‘for better or worse’ is so damn hard…

By Lisa April 2, 2020 Off

Unsettled

Leslie turned her mug in her hands several times, exhaled a long, slow breath, then added her mug to the table beside Peter’s. “I’d want a guarantee, I guess,” she said, shifting her focus toward repeated unsuccessful attempts to secure some wayward strands of hair behind her ear. Leslie knew it was not in her…

By Lisa March 28, 2020 Off

Rabbit Run

Liz stared hard into the darkness. There was that familiar sound, just enough like someone walking in the attic space above that it made her start. Every time. Probably a squirrel or a bat or the pair of mourning doves who lived in the neighbor’s tree. Still, the sound frightened her. Not because Liz believed…

By Lisa March 25, 2020 Off