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The fireworks tore through the air. I lay in the grass looking up at the sky. Colorful sparks floated down over me. They don’t let spectators get this close to the fireworks, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.

Charles was supposed to meet me here. He said it was for something special, but he was late. He tried so hard to keep secrets for me. He didn’t realize that I knew everything he was up to. He was so transparent. The way the muscles around his mouth twitched whenever he told a lie and the way stuttered when he was a bit embarrassed are just a few things that always gave him away. I know all of his quirks. I also know that he plans on asking me to marry him tonight. I’m glad, because that means I really did fool him. [Read more…] about Under the Fireworks (Flash Fiction Challenge)

I stood at the back of the ferry watching the churning trail of water and thinking about what to do next. The boat rocked just enough to make me doubt my balance.

It’s hard to believe that only a few days ago my life seemed to be set. I’d just gotten promoted to senior manager. I’d moved into a brand new condo. From the outside, my life looked perfect. I was on the right track. The reality was far from that.

In the evening, I would come home for my perfect job to sit in my perfect condo and think about how nothing in my life felt quite right.

I’m good at distracting myself, but no number of nights out with my friends or expensive clothes could distract me from the feeling that my insides were caving in. I was empty. The world around me was drained of color until one Wednesday evening when my life became a neon dream. [Read more…] about Where I Need To Be (Flash Fiction Challenge)

Ernest was late. He didn’t have to check his watch to know. He was almost always late. He often felt as if the whole world was running on a much faster clock than him. Everyone was racing forward in life and he was getting left behind. Maybe that’s why he felt so alone.

He was the only one on the platform waiting for the train. That was unusual. Ernest looked at his watch. It must’ve stopped working because according to it no time hadn’t passed at all since he’d left his house. He looked up the tracks. They were empty. He walked over to the orange plastic bench against the wall and sat down.

He never did anything to pass the time. He had no newspaper to read and no smartphone to occupy these empty moments. He liked to let time pass on its own. He sat on the bench staring at the billboard on the other side of the tracks. A young man and woman stood in front of a white background with their arms folded. Ernest remembered when he was that young. He was alone in his twenties too, but at least then he had hope. He was still the naive boy who’d married his first girlfriend because he was so happy to have someone love him. He didn’t realize then how quickly love could fade. He never expected his wife to run off with the guy who mowed their neighbor’s lawn. Life didn’t go like Ernest expected. [Read more…] about Ernest’s Morning Commute

I remember the first day of snow, how it fell to the ground, light and soft like the feathers of a newly hatched chick. In the beginning it was fun. We hurried outside, sticking out our tongues letting the ice crystals land on our tongues. It stuck to our hair and eyelashes and clung to the dead grass in the orange evening light, like stars.

In the beginning, I welcomed it, a mark of the beginning of winter. We hadn’t gotten snow in so long. David who was only four at the time had never seen it, not in person at least. Both of the children were excited. Michaela started drawing pictures of snowmen as soon as the first flakes fell. One snowball on top of another on top of another with a large carrot nose and a striped scarf. They knew what snowmen were supposed to look like even if they had never built one. [Read more…] about A Snowstorm (Flash Fiction Challenge)