surface

MFFFC — Above and Below

Fandango14 Comments

The water was cold and dark, but as it enveloped Carol, it felt like a velvet blanket, keeping her warm and muffling the world above into silence. She drifted downwards, her knees folded and her eyes closed, as if she had surrendered to a dream rather than to gravity.

It was the noise, the ceaseless clamor of voices, expectations, and demands pressing against her that drove her into the water. It beckoned her, an escape from the questions she was expected to answer, the role she was expected to fill. All she sensed now was the rhythm of her heartbeat echoing in her chest and the rise of bubbles slipping free from her lips.

As she sank deeper, the tug of panic began as Carol’s body started its natural clamoring for breath. But she willed herself to hold still. She wanted to feel the edge between control and surrender, the razor’s line where time slowed and choices blurred.

A part of her knew she could push upward, break the surface, inhale the sharp air again. Another part wondered what would happen if she didn’t. If she just let herself give in and dissolve into this blue silence entirely.

Then, in the shimmering dark, Carol saw a flicker of light appearing above. It wasn’t just the surface, but something else. A promise, perhaps. Her hand rose toward it, fingers trembling in the water. She wasn’t ready to vanish. Not yet.

With a sudden kick, she broke the stillness, rising through the liquid night toward breath, toward life, and toward the fragile hope of something different waiting for her just above the water‘s surface.

Written for Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge. Photo credit: Engin Akyurt on Pexels.

MFFFC — Beneath the Surface

Fandango10 Comments

It’s a lesson I learned the hard way. From all outward appearances, you were everything in a woman I ever wanted. Good looking, smart, sensitive, caring, sensual. I gave myself entirely to you, believing everything you said to me, and that you were as devoted to me as I was to you.

But in time, you revealed yourself to be a very different person beneath the surface than what you allowed people — most especially me — to experience. Beneath your attractive and compelling facade lurks a dark monster of hidden truths and buried emotions.

Written for Melissa’s Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge. Image credit: intographics at Pixabay.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — May 20th

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Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Friday Flashback post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (the 20th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on May 20, 2018

Sunday Photo Fiction — The New Earth

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They did everything they could to make it seem natural. Artificial light shining through the windows along the long hallway provided the illusion of sunlight. The opening at the end of the corridor led into a vast open area with high ceilings, green plants and trees, and a large pond fed by a waterfall. All artificial, but very realistic. It helped to make us all feel as if we were still living on the surface.

It was difficult to remember that people once lived on the surface. I was born here in the catacombs and all I knew of the old world I learned from my parents, who learned from their parents. And from books that had been salvaged, although it was hard to distinguish anymore between fiction and non-fiction.

Fortunately, those with foresight saw what was coming and began to construct these elaborate catacombs deep beneath the surface of the planet. But they could accommodate only about 100,000 of the planet’s nine billion inhabitants. A lottery was devised and my grandfather was one of the lucky winners.

Severe storms and catastrophic floods destroyed those left behind. But we are the lucky ones who must carry on.

Or are we?

(199 words)

Written for today’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt. Photo credit: Susan Spaulding.

Sunday Photo Fiction — The New Earth

Fandango18 Comments

img_1400They did everything they could to make it seem natural. Artificial light shining through the windows along the long hallway provided the illusion of sunlight. The opening at the end of the corridor led into a vast open area with high ceilings, green plants and trees, and a large pond fed by a waterfall. All artificial, but very realistic. It helped to make us all feel as if we were still living on the surface.

It was difficult to remember that people once lived on the surface. I was born here in the catacombs and all I knew of the old world I learned from my parents, who learned from their parents. And from books that had been salvaged, although it was hard to distinguish anymore between fiction and non-fiction.

Fortunately, those with foresight saw what was coming and began to construct these elaborate catacombs deep beneath the surface of the planet. But they could accommodate only about 100,000 of the planet’s nine billion inhabitants. A lottery was devised and my grandfather was one of the lucky winners.

Severe storms and catastrophic floods destroyed those left behind. But we are the lucky ones who must carry on.

Or are we?

(199 words)

Written for today’s Sunday Photo Fiction prompt. Photo credit: Susan Spaulding.