Jamie looked at the road: endlessly long, featureless, boring. Like her life. She looked down at the river. Turbid. Like her head since her mother died.
She patted her jeans back-pocket; heard the crackle of the blister pack. She patted her purse, heavy with her father’s gun. She looked over the parapet.
Which way to go? Let the traffic decide.
Red for the gun. White for the sleeping tabs, prescribed, never taken. Brown for the river.
The next car was green.
Wordcount: 81
Written for What Pegman Saw
crispina kemp 
Guess she best turn around then. None of these options were good for her.
Good one, Crispina!
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I thank you, Dale. As soon as I saw that long open road, and the river, I knew what it had to be.
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Well you did it very well.
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I than you. Oh, have I already said that? I must be stunned by the sudden silence. 🙂
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Silence brought on by wha??? 😉
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My daughter for lunch, arrived ealy, lots of chin-wagging, laughing (she brings out the comedian in me). But she had to leave early cos the fog’s closing, and freezing, and she lives the other side of the river. Not that she has to row across … 🙂
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That is wonderful – to spend time with your daughter and that she makes you laugh. Fog is a dangerous thing and glad she didn’t have to row across 😉
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Now, we’re quite modern here. We have bridges. Actually, we have two, and the government has now agreed to a third. Such extravagance. Time was we also had a ferry. But that was only a little cockly-row boat. 🙂
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No way! That is beyond modern…
Then again, there is a charm to a cockly-row-boat…
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There’s one still operating on the Blyth at Southwold (about 20 miles down the coast)
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Fun stuff!
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Not when the wind blows. I watched for a while. Then opted to walk back along the river to where there’s a footbridge. I’m not a sailor, and that ferry runs close to the river-mouth.
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No, I don’t imagine so…
It’s blowing and arctic-cold here. I’m supposed to go out but am having trouble convincing myself…
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We don’t get mega-cold (usually) though I do remember 1985 (86?) when temperature of -15 Celsius was recorded in centre of London, where heat of traffic, shops, office, people, usually keep the temperatures up. And we had mini-icebergs on Breydon Water, where the ice was breaking up further up river. (And I walked 10 miles across the marshes having been caught out in a blizzard. That wasn’t fun). Today we’ve had -5, but that is unusual. No snow. Just a crunchy-crisp frost. I feel for you in needing to go out. Though, I also must venture out tomorrow. Ho-hum.
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Jeez louise… What a difference! Right now it is -18C with a windchill making it feel like -30C!
Sigh…
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I’m happy for it not to be so cold. But we bask in the Gulf stream while you are caught in a polar vortex. I feel for you.
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That is most kind of you. But fear not, we bitch and moan but so.e of us don’t mind it that much…
Keep repeating until you believe it….
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Yep, keep repeating it, I might believe you, 🙂
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That makes one of us…
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Watching a space update on YouTube, I have just discovered that during a lunar night (which lasts a fortnight) the temperature drops to 180 degrees celcius. So count yourself lucky your greatest gig won’t be on the Dark Side of the Moon!
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Oh man! I am blessed 😁
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I’d say so. So, we won’t be signing up to settle in the Chinese Moon colony, will we. 🙂
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Not any time soon 🙂
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Nice tight little write there Crispina!!! Oooo I love it!!!
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I thank you, Violet. I’m fairly new to flash fiction. My usual write weighs in at thousands of words. But prepping the e-book, I’ve not the time for anything too long. And so, I keep it crisp.
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well you aced it!!
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🙂
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Great twist at the end, leaving us wondering what fourth option she will take. I really like the title: it has a poetic rhythm to it, and it’s one of those titles that perfectly explains the story, but only makes sense after you’ve actually read the story.
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I thank you, Joy. As you know, flash fiction isn’t my thing, but I’ve quite enjoyed the few forays I’ve made.
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It’s not my thing either, but boy, it’s nice for a change to be able to write something and have it actually *finished* all in the same day!
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All in an hour. Yea, truly. So, ‘the book/s’ is now in it’s 13th year. Maybe next year I’ll be ready to publish!
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I loved that – the last sentence, masterful!
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I thank you.
Actually, this is how my long stories start. And then I start to fill in the spaces. Next thing we know, we’re looking at 700,000 words! 🙂
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So, I’ve finally reach the “Crispina as flash fiction writer” posts. Isn’t it a weird felling, when you’re so used to writing sprawling stories? I find myself amazed when I can do it at all. And then, probably like you, I want to go in and expand it to include all sorts of things that should be said, backgrounds, explanations, psychology of the characters involved, what they ate on Tuesday, to say nothing of the dog.
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I’m surprised at my discipline. But as I said amongst those comments, I’m so tied up with edits to prep the e-books, that I really don’t have thne time to slide into exposition and descriptive prose. Yet I do want to keep my blog in my followers’ notice; nice if I add in some more. So … swings and runabouts. 🙂
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BTW, keep going, there are some even shorter stories coming up!
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