Waiting.
Photo by Abigail Keenan.
What was she doing out there on the open road, riding straight down the middle? She had three kids at home, waiting on her wake-up call. A husband waiting for an early-morning chat.
Now they will keep waiting.
Plane.
Photo by Paul Green.
Maren and James sat in front, honeymooners to France with locked fingers and lips that met every few minutes. The plane shuddered and straightened. They smiled. And then, suddenly, it stopped, hovering, turning its nose to the ground.
Someone screamed.
Picture.
Photo by London Scout.
It’s the last picture I have of them together. Darcy in her skeleton shoes, Lana in her heels. Taken outside my building, where they dropped me off after a lunch date.
On their way back to the car, they disappeared.
For more Fiction in Forty, visit my store, where my two latest books, Speak and Speak Again (compilations of Fiction in Forty) are available for free.
Snow.
When the sun came up that day we were ready for it. We weren’t ready for the snow, though. We did not have the proper gear. They came, and all we could do was slip, slide and try to survive.
Ongoing challenge: Find (or take) a picture. Write exactly 40 words about it. Post.
(Great practice for brevity.)
Face.
They promised me things, see? Fame. Fortune. A name for myself. So I posed and starved and let them take pictures, let them sell little pieces of me, and for what?
Nothing, it turns out. Nothing but another pretty face.
Ongoing challenge: Find (or take) a picture. Write exactly 40 words about it. Post.
(Great practice for brevity.)
Tunnel.
They say that tunnel was haunted. They say you could see faces in its black, bodies, walkers who shouldn’t be walking. They say you could hear the screams of the boy who never came back out.
He was my brother.
Ongoing challenge: Find (or take) a picture. Write exactly 40 words about it. Post.
(Great practice for brevity.)
