Jun 17, 2013

Exhibition

Visual Dare #24
Mastermind




“Somebody help him please!”

I struggled to keep the screeching desperation from my voice, but as each stranger passed panic tightened its grip. The station was chaos, suits swerving erratically around us until everything blurred to a broiling mass, their apathy was chilling.

“Please Charlie come back to me, just come back.” I whispered into his chest, needing it to rise, needing to rest upon his heartbeat and melt into that warmth.  Instead his life was threatening to spill through my fingers, and I felt what little stability I had left crumble as he became dead weight in my arms.

I watched the passers-by, looking into each of their eyes with such pleading until my gaze crossed one man's that tore my heart. Standing at the edge of the crowd, lips pursed with that slight sneer he seemed to draw pride on, he made a show of turning to observe the great brass clock face behind him before disappearing into the sea of grey.

Staring upward into the muted light I felt the pulse leave my fingertips. All at once the tension mounted, the pressure was too much. Falling back I cried out my anguish, releasing the tenuous hold on control and pressing shaking hands to my face, smothering the hot tears with blood soaked sleeves.

I had run out of time.

As the crimson spread from his body they cried with me. Their terror rang off the walls in astounding volume, the crowd exploding like sheep who have found the wolf among them, as each mindless creature saw the life surge from his body.

I waited beside him, my tears chasing his blood across the stone; he shouldn't be alone in this.


how a rewrite transforms,
from sjp.

Tunes
Sleepwalking - Bring Me The Horizon
Can You Feel My Heart - Bring Me The Horizon
Deathbed - Bring Me The Horizon

4 comments:

  1. WOW. Strong tension, mystery, and sparse yet chilling description. Well crafted, my friend!! I have so many questions about this --- but entirely in a good way. Would love to know more about how he died, and why the crowd seems so immune to the violence happening under their noses...

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  2. I agree with Angela... there's a tension and mystery and intensity to this story that makes a reader charge ahead in reading it and leaves the reader with questions about what else has happened.

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  3. Yes very strong imagery and we are left with a lot of questions.. but I quite like that in flash fiction.

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  4. Wow. Just... wow. Although I don't have a strong sense of what's going on, the emotion and imagery is enough to carry the piece.

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