Flash Fiction – Page 3 – Laurel Luehmann

After years of procrastination, he opened the door. The room would not empty itself.

His breath caught as he peered in at expressions of her wild glory. Bed unmade, the quilt carelessly crumpled. Bookshelves cluttered, their overflow strewn on the floor. Dresser drawers protruding, socks and jeans pouring out.

She had not readied the room for death.

He shut the door behind him, staring with vision already blurred. Where to start?

He stooped and began to gather the mementos of life she’d left scattered on the carpet. He turned over a chocolate wrapper and stared at the white paper lining. Her scrawl was smudged with chocolate. funny looking at times open loud very blunt

What in the world? A corner of his mouth twisted upwards, and he folded the wrapper carefully. A few pennies, note cards, and dirty socks later, the floor was clean. Clean was relative. She never vacuumed.

The corner of a notebook peeked from underneath the bed. He pawed at it and cradled it in his hands. The same handwriting that made the candy wrapper priceless labeled this cover July 24th, 2016 –

2016 – Eternity.

He flipped it open and paged through. Records of schoolwork. Stormy friendships. A recital and her first trip by plane. Some of the pages bore wrinkled bumps. Tear stains, he guessed. The brown spots had to be spilled coffee.

The last entry – written under a date that was seared into his heart – caught his eye and held it.

I’ve just got this feeling… it’s gonna be a great day.

It certainly was, he thought…

For you.

Photo by Martin Castro on Unsplash

Finally… I’m sharing some fiction here! Let me know if you want more.:)

The sun had long since set, but the terror of darkness was absorbed by the new-fallen snow. Soft and silent, winter’s cloak sat still and listened to the crunch of boots.

Their tread was ponderous… slow and ever slowing. At last it stopped, and the boots stood silent in the snow.

Their owner paused and cast a searching glance across the whitened fields. She couldn’t see the line where the sky should have met the snow. She could discern no variation in the color, shape or shadow.

Empty.

At last she was alone with her thoughts – no distractions, no interruptions. No one to tell her that her trials weren’t fierce. That her burdens weren’t heavy. No one to tell her that her dreams were not important.

And so she poured them out, a stream of words that rushed into the night. They spread upon the snow and melted in, scared and trembling.

She breathed in deep the frozen air, and held it in her lungs. It stung and burned, but still she held it close.

At last she let it go, a misty, frozen cloud. She smiled at its beauty. For a touch of a moment, it lingered in the air… then crept away on silence.

She turned and left her pain, her breath, to shiver in the cold.

Photo by Damian McCoig on Unsplash

Category: Flash Fiction

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