Category: Friday Fiction

by Smitty

The volcano erupted and slew the loudly weeping forest with fire. Moot was the point that the victim was a rainforest, and featured a lake. The water’s indifference to the inferno on the hill could not have been more placid.

That was, until the earthquake. The ravaged trees had their revenge against the volcano as the ground, hearing the lament of the pine forest, separated. The land bade the placid lake sacrifice itself to quench the angry heart of the volcano.

It was a three-way murder scene as volcano killed forest and lake killed volcano.

But the earth abideth forever.
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

Riesling.
He knew.
The dinner was torment. Every word said fraught with double entendre, silent condemnation beneath pleasantness.
He was a surf and turf man, washed down with cabernet sauvignon.
But for this dinner, in front of parents and children, it was chicken cordon bleu, a below-the-radar reference to her colleague, John Riesling.
As all professional women must, she managed her reaction flawlessly, never meeting his eyes, or letting her voice crack.
Later, her mother commented that Pete seemed happier and livlier than she had seen him in the last decade.
The papers from his lawyer arrived the next morning.
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

The wizened old man in a land antique,
Sat in the shade before a market ruined.
He hailed to me: “Man, what do you seek,
In the Fair Trade Bazaar of Xanaxind?”
“Some cold water, since English you speak,
If one can such in this ancient rubble find.
How must the former sights have been unique,
When time to this place was less unkind.”

“What, then? This place is glorious,
For hundreds of years a Socialist paradise.
Rectifying at a pace most furious,
That steep, unpayable capitalist price.”
“Socialist works, a despair so tortuous,
Mighty often bring with their ‘nice’.”

—
via Darleen

by Smitty

Look at the young “family”.
“We frome Venezuela,” says the “father”, haggard. Woman carrying one baby and with a small, thin waif clinging to a leg.
Shove off the wall, walk toward the large sedan.
Rooftop lookout signals safety with the laser pointer. Open the door, in they go.
Guy’d been a Department Head at the Uni in Caracas. Wife, perhaps lovely with another 20 pounds on her; oil baron’s daughter.
Near a gated location some distance from Vegas, where these “lucky” ones will “enjoy” avoiding starvation, heat and ICE. Stop.
Butler opens door. Cargo tumbles out.
Wasn’t paid to talk.
—
via Darleen

by Smitty

They walked down the path toward her favorite spot.

Roger could not understand why, the closer they got, the slower dad walked, the more heavy his sighs became, the more freely his tears flowed. Somehow he felt guilty.
“I’m so sorry, daddy.”
Daddy was sobbing by the time they got to the tree where she awaited them, marked by the simple cross that bore her name: Janet Green 1987-2011.
“Oh Roger, you must never blame yourself. You’re the least *sob* guilty person of all.”
Daddy was on his knees. Instinctively Roger hugged him fiercly.
“I’m just glad you survived the crash.”

via Darleen

by Smitty

He looked at the youthful photo his sister had taken.
He recalled staring into the lamp at dusk, prayerfully pondering Providence.

* * *
The recruiter had come swiftly, taking him off to join the military.
War; carnage; promotion followed.
Decades later, nominally the same but radically altered, he stood in that field, peering back at his youthful self.
“You’ve acquitted yourself well,” the rock did not say.
“Striving for the good,
mercy where you should,
peace where you could,
strength where evil stood.
Now you know that rarest thing for a warrior: rest.”
Long after his memory passed, that rock would remain.

via Darleen

by Smitty

He turned with his camera and snapped the picture. Previewing it on the screen, he saw that she’d brought the Looney Tunes float, swallowed, and managed a teary chuckle at her triumph.

Their last trip to Chincoteague had been seven years ago, when their son Brian was a laughing toddler, full of joy, innocent.

Brian’s leukemia had devastated them both. He thought at points that Brian might take his mother with him to Heaven during dark days last Winter.

Their eyes met. She dropped the float on the sand, Brian’s presence radiating.

“Can we try again?” one of them asked.

via Darleen

by Smitty

He leaned back against the tree with his sister and just laughed.
Nearby, the neighbor kids had gathered the November leaves from the lawn into a vast heap below the old oak. They were taking turns on the rope swing, carefully gauging the release, to fly through the air and land in the leaves on a lovely Long Island Wednesday afternoon.
Glancing left, he saw his aunt with the camera, and he smiled for the picture: “Aunt Sam, can I have a turn with the others?”
He was too young to notice the puffy panda eyes on Samantha Power. “Sure.”

via Darleen, thinking of this.