Category: Friday Fiction

by Smitty

The yellow crane stunned him. Now? That color here at the weekly update meant what it meant. Shaking, he sent the text.

* * *

He hoped she came today, the smoldering redhead at the arboretum the last couple of weeks. She’d sit at noon and launch a white paper crane. She was such a beauty, the gardeners said nothing. He’d point out his yellow one and start a conversation.

* * *

Parking delayed her. She seethed, arriving five minutes late. Two men gaped as she released it, one in horror; the other, lust. They heard a distant *BOOM*.

via Darleen

by Smitty

The place was a time machine. The old man sat near where he’d sat as a boy with his grandfather, near where gramps had perched high in a tree as a boy watching the carnage in that Northern Virginia field.
He was an historian. His knowledge enhanced gramp’s tale, viewing carnage of blue- and grey-clad youths hardly his elder wandering through the chaos, killing.
He’d instructed his grandson in the history. A high price had been paid to end chattel slavery, yet that old evil sought to return, rendering the sacrifices of this place moot. That simply must not be.

via Darleen

by Smitty

They finished as a study in contrast. He held out an impossibly long B♭ through circular breathing. Her fluid, gravity-mocking ballet ended with a mime’s frozen pose. He was darkness against her light; sound to her silence; a relaxed, seated posture verses her precisely posed angles.
Their magical father/daughter routine was performed weekly. Concise, at less than 20 minutes, by the same park. The audience had grown over the months, as it crystallized with increasing precision and confidence. The bucket burst with bills and coinage.
Of course, none of the onlookers knew, but momma would get her medication again.

via Darleen

by Smitty

Darleen offered a thoughtful mood set to music, and I’ll reply with a bit of verse:

Your life’s a book, brief or dense
And though we live in the present tense
Parts boring, or all suspsense
We cannot change the pacing

No, time’s the same for rich or poor
Until the pages are no more
And none remain to keep a score
Past end to which we’re racing

Prayerfully ponder passing page
Focus on love; forget the rage
In orchestra pit or on the stage
Look past the pain you’re facing

And when the final day is here
We’re scored by amount of cheer
We have brought, and also tear
We’ve dried–while end we’re chasing

via Darleen

by Smitty

Torn, bleeding, naked, the little girl managed to pull herself up the river bank, miles downstream from the wreck of the family fishing trip.

Years on, she would wonder why God had even bothered to spare her, alone, while so cruelly taking her parents and siblings.
She never had an explicit answer under the sun. But as she grew into a woman of grace and power, the fact that she had been to the brink of death meant that she never lost perspective amidst lesser adversities, and her life’s impact was arguably greater.
Didn’t bring back her family; but honored them.

via Darleen

by Smitty

God’s purposes could be mysterious, he thought, gazing at the photo of his hand in his mother’s as she passed from the trauma of bringing him into the world.
When old enough to understand, he sardonically thought it a reverse abortion.
He’d fallen in love rapidly with his darkly beautiful wife, Zorha. Their passion was intense, but mirrored by her rejection of him. In a weeping phone call, she’d confessed soul-deep guilt over an old, dark deed.
He realized the symmetry with his birth situation. He offered her forgiveness, if she could forgive him.
Elsewhere, mother’s fingers curled.

via Darleen

by Smitty

Granpda had a vision of his last look at the city. The hugest moon he’d ever seen, obscured by unnatural clouds. Bombers. A distant enemy had visited. A murder of ravens deployed from a lonely tree for the sudden necropolis.
That had been decades ago. The country hadn’t recovered from electing foolish leaders that brought ruin.

Grandpa dimly recalled references to a time when the people weren’t cowering in fear and scavenging like the ravens.

* * *

Time passed. People ceased to blame others. Instead, they looked within for strength. The ravens awaited the cycle.

via Darleen