A/N: I have no idea where this came from. Just popped into my head.
Word Count: 143
She was made from stardust, they said
Created by the cosmos, a wonder to behold.
Ethereal? Absolutely.
Celestial? Definitely.
But was she real? Was she really, truly, flesh-and-blood real?
An actual human being?
No one knew.
Questions with no answers, with no purpose other than speculation, danced on the tongues of the townspeople.
Years passed, then centuries, and all the while the young girl continued to exist.
Some say she danced on water, as light and gentle and easy as a breeze of wind on a soft September evening.
Some say she tiptoed through the woods, weaving between the branches like silver gossamer.
People passed stories of the magical dancing girl down to their children, who then passed it to their children, and so on. An era of magic. An era of beauty.
She was older than everything in the valley below her. Well, everything alive. Harry plunked down next to her, a waft of pine hitting her nose.
“All set,” he said brightly.
“Shouldn’t you be a little less cherry about this?”
“What? No one’s lived down there for twenty years,” he said, waving a hand at the crumbling town beneath them.
“They evicted people last week.”
“Well, no one important.”
“Why do we do this,” she muttered. To herself. She knew what Harry’s answer was going to be. She turned her head on her hands and mouthed the words as he said, “For money, which can be exchanged for goods and services.”
“It’s a ghost town,” he added.
“I don’t think you can call it a ghost town when there were literally people living here last week.”
“Well, the insurers said it was empty.”
“Except for the desperate people who can’t afford the city.”
“I’d just like to remind you we have a rent payment due in two days.”
She smacked her head against her kneecaps.
“Maybe I don’t want to stay in the Bay Area.”
Harry snorted. “Everyone wants to be in the Bay Area. It’s the most desirable place in the country.”
“Yeah, constant air pollution from controlled burns August through November, lottery to get it, lottery for where to live, and criminally low-paying tech jobs. What’s not to love?”
He had that gleam in his eye again.
“Setting shit on fire,” he said, holding up the tablet with the control menu pulled up and ready to go.
Right.
She dropped her forehead back to her knees with a sigh.
“Hey, it keeps San Fran safe,” he said, with as close to a gentle and sincere tone to his voice as he was capable of.
“Yeah,” she whispered.
The wind creaked through a blackened pine above her, a gaunt warning left from the last round of natural fires. A raven settled on one of the fragile branches, a throaty croak echoing off the mountain walls.
“But what if we’re wrong?” she asked the bird. It shuffled on the branch and eyed her. Unforgiving.
“We were given a job, so we’re gonna do it.”
She stared out at the valley again, a collection of wood this and wood that. They’d walked most of the town, sitting the incendiary devices strategically. Her feet hurt, and she yet again (internally) cursed the tech overlord that had come up with the concept of gig work. Walking through the town, she had noticed little beside what was most flammable and what would require extra motivation. Too much concrete brick used in the beginning of the 21st century for her liking.
Now, she wished she’d paid more attention to the little things. Church on main street, vegan bakery on the corner. Bar with the gravel parking lot. Or something like that.
“We’re better than this.”
“You’ve gotta stop saying that.”
“Don’t you…. feel bad?”
He shrugged. “It’s all gonna burn anyway.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Yes, we do. Better that we raze it than Mother Nature. She won’t stop at the edge of the containment area.”
The dead trees creaked above her. She squinted at the lush green of new growth on the valley floor, something urgent knotting in her chest.
“Well,” Harry said, getting up and dusting himself off, “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Katrina slowly stood up to join him, the vibrancy of the valley hurting her eyes. She waited until he was distracted with the tablet and then took off into the woods.
“Katrina!”
If she moved fast enough, she could get to the first stockpile. All she had to do was take out the communications chip, removing the first domino.
Halfway down the mountain, a blind flash overwhelmed her. She ducked behind a tree, seeing the negative of everything around her, as a crack slit her eardrums and a searing wave of heat enveloped the forest, thrusting her to her knees.
Embers singed her skin as she stumbled to her feet. Coughing, she struggled a few feet up the mountain to see a pissed off Harry hacking his own lungs out.
“There.” She had to stop and try to breathe. “Has got to be something better than this.”
“That thing you want?” he said, hanging a monstrous amount of disgust on the word. “It’s fiction, streamlined and idealized to fit a narrative. It’s not real life.”
She choked on the gathering smoke, memories from her childhood in Washington state rushing back. Smoke and dust, raging fires.
Blood streaked hands.
Body bags and tired firefighters.
“We’re better than this,” she said, with a broken whisper.
He ran a hand down his face, blood trailing behind.
It’s been a hot minute since I’ve done a flash fiction friday and I thought that this prompt was perfect. I know I could have done much better with this prompt and did a lot of different things. But I figured I’d revisit my oldest WIP that I’m still trying to figure out for this one. It’s based on one of the ending that I had planned for it (but didn’t use). @flashfictionfridayofficial
200 words (exactly :0)
--
“Where are you going?” Nathaniel asked me, he leaned on the railing, watching as I stuffed my feet into my boots.
“What does it matter to you?” I responded, grabbing my coat off the hook.
“It’s below freezing out,” Nathaniel limped the rest of the way down the stairs.
“Okay, I have my coat,” I licked my lips, he stared at me unblinking.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Nathaniel grabbed my wrist, his hands were cold and it sent shivers down my spine.
“And what exactly am I trying to do?” I said, trying to pull my arm away, but his grip was surprisingly tight.
“The Johnson house. I know what you’re doing. You’re better than this Maddie,” Nathaniel’s tone was cold, the look in his eyes scared me.
“I’m only going to see something, I’ll be back in an hour at most.”
Nathaniel blinked, after a long beat, he finally released his grip, “fine. You won’t like what you’ll find though.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I furrowed my eyebrows, struggling to zip my coat.
Nathaniel didn’t say anything else but watched with a critical eye as I tromped out the front door into the cold.
Before today’s prompt drops, consider checking out your fellow writer’s pieces and give out those likes and reblogs! (And if we missed your entry, please let us know).
So go do some reading, get some inspiration, and be ready for this week’s prompt dropping at 12pm CET!!
✨The Collective✨
[FFF65 Better Than This]
worlds away. by @astralis-elysian
The End of the End Before the Beginning by @readingbooksinisrael
Better Than This by @pertinax--loculos
Deep In My Heart by @stories-by-rie
.On Her Heels. by @grimnoir-writes
Make it Better by @glitterandstarshine
I fight every day by @viawrites-andacts
Better Than This by @miriamandvictoria
LAST NIGHT OUT by @leather-snow
An Aesthete of Death by @mortallynuttyqueen
Better Than This by @incandescent-creativity
Better Than This by @random-chaos-thoughts
Better Than This by @vexed-hexed-perplexed
Better Than This by @ardawyn
Better Than This by @jewellsfrommaruss
The lid of the world cannot be opened from the inside by @storyunrelated
I wanted to be a pediatrician for about five minutes of my childhood. Then a nurse. Why the downgrade, you may ask, well, women don't aim to high in my family for very long. My mom dreamed big things too but she was a nurse’s aid. Not a bad job but, she was better then that.
Better then a man who beat her, raped her, silenced her voice. Silenced her daughters too. For the longest time. Leaving him when I was 12 helped. We could breath some. Heading back to her first home, where my grandma tried hard to undo the damage caused by my father. Maybe she would have succeeded were it not for my mom meeting my step father. Only 3 years older then myself. Doomed to fail.
She fell hard for him so the crash when it ended, was great. But before that, my mom had taught me one thing, unintended, but still very much pounded in my subconscious: you need a man to be whole, happy. So after high school, instead of accepting a scholarship to the college of my choice to study to be a nurse, for her happiness, I traveled with her, my step-dad, and younger brother, across Tennessee. We ended up homeless. We were better then that. Better then camping in public parks, better then food pantries in cities we were just supposed to be passing through.
In one of those cities, I meet the man that would take my virginity and steal my class ring. In the same, the man, old enough to be my father ( mom and I had a theme going) who would become the father of my first son. He didn’t stick around to see him born. My boy deserved better then that.
My step-dad cheated on my mom and impregnated the girl. I was a mom four times over by the time it ended. He was the only grandpa they knew, as strange as that is. Their grandma was depressed. We all deserved better. Their mom wasn’t a doctor or nurse. Their grandma wasn't a social worker. Those strong dreams were beating out of us by the men we chose and the men our mom's did.
I tried hard to be both mom and dad to them. For the times their dad wasn't around. But I was damaged. Damaged by generations of strong women being weakened by their choice in men. My boys are all grown up now. Living independently. I am proud of that. Good uncles and fathers. My grandbabies another chance to get it right. To show them, especially my granddaughter, just how much she deserves. That she can be better then the choices her matriarchs made.
If I can, all the heartache, bad decision, and abuse, will be worth it. For she is surely worth more then that, better then that.
