Tag: loss
-
A. L. Kaplan Wins Another Flash Fiction Challenge
A. L. Kaplan is the Readers’ Choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. The winning entry is decided by the popular vote and rewarded with a special feature on Indies Unlimited.Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter so you don’t miss out on special deals and announcements.
-
PORTAL
Papa?”
Davis looked at the child. Her pale face smiled as she lay in the hospital bed. Dark smudges surrounded her eyes, eyes bereft of lashes. Tubes and wires stretched from her to the bank of monitors that bleeped, dripped, and ticked. Each sound a symbol of what life had become. His baby girl, barely starting life only to have it cruelly yanked away.
Eyes clamped shut; he sucked air through a constricted throat. He couldn’t watch anymore; couldn’t bear any more pain. The doorway shimmered behind him. He’d turned away from it during the war and when his wife died. Living through life’s adversities was the best teacher, but what was there to learn from watching a death like this? One step through the portal and this experience would be left behind. He could escape the grief. But if he passed it by again would it return?
“Where’s that door go, Papa?”
His eyes sprang open. If she could see it her life was at a brink, teetering; waiting for her choice. It meant she was like him in more ways than he thought.
“It leads away, Ariel, around the pain. But it makes you forget who you were.”
She pursed her lips a moment, thinking. “I think I’d rather stay here.”
He stroked her skeletal hand. The taut, yellowed skin felt dry. So frail, so young. All he had left. He couldn’t leave her. Every second was worth the pain. Maybe this treatment would be the cure….
-
There’s A Hole In My Soul
There is a hole in my soul.
An empty place where my friends once played.
Stolen, ripped out by a stranger with a gun.
Why?
How could this happen?
Innocent eyes, trusting, closed forever.
I don’t understand.
Grown-ups, once pillars of stone, tremble and hold us close.
They are anxious, shaken.
So am I.
Insecure.
Lonely.
Empty.
-
Love and Devotion
Smooth gray stones burn the pads of my feet and the sun sears from above. My tongue hangs loosely from my mouth as I pant, but it’s dry and cracked, granting me no relief. I long for some shade or damp sand to cool my burning paws, but there is only the dry creek bed and blinding light.
Days ago a stranger took me from my home and left me at the odd den with noisy animals. They took me away from the girl, my girl with the long curls and misshapen paws that feel so soothing as they stroke. The angry man hurt her, hurt our pack, but he’s felt my fangs and can’t harm anyone again. She lay so still when the strangers came and hid her under a sheet. I must find her, keep her safe from others. It’s what keeps me moving past the hunger and thirst.
I close my eyes and picture her smiling face and warm hugs. I remember also my nighttime escape over the chain link fence to find her.
A sudden coolness brushes me. Opening my eyes I see a trickle of water running under my toes and through the stones. The feeling sends shivers all the way to the tip of my tail. I don’t notice the roar until it crashes into me. As I am tossed in the water I know I will never see my girl again.
Yet I feel her arms embrace me as darkness encompasses.
