Tag: Fiction

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Our Escape

I want to be alone… with someone who wants to be alone.

Dimitri Zaik

We rented a motel room in a city far away from our respective lives. The moment we entered, we killed our phones then sequestered them in the old drawer – charging be damned – officially going off grid.

Two chocolates and a courtesy “Hope You Enjoy Your Stay” note sat in the center of the bed. We pushed them onto the floor and stowed away under the cold covers, embracing each other for warmth and, at some primal level, a need to belong.

But when our embrace didn’t scare away the loneliness that festered within us, we resorted to kissing it away.

Our respective decomposing worlds faded into a fog, leaving us alone.

Under satin sheets
Your soft snoring in my ears
Sheltered in your warmth

Credits
Photo: Morning Blankets by Cottonbro via Pexels.
Prompt: Solitude ~ Pic and a Word Challenge #257 by Patrick Jennings via Pix to Words.
Quote: Dimitri Zaik
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“Because…the Neighborhood”

“Sorry, but we don’t deliver out there,” the woman on the other end said.

“Why not?”

“Because,” she stammered. “The neighborhood.”

Our call crackled with silence.

The neighborhood.

I stared out the tattered screen mesh that shielded my doorway from the neighborhood. My eyes met an abandoned home, probably housing squatters, across the way. An old air conditioning unit oozed black goop and white spray paint adorned the sunbaked fence out front.

Why would anyone want to come here? Not even the neighborhood’s inhabitants wanted to be here.

“I see,” I said and ended the call.

Credits

Picture: Abstract Surface by Anna Guerrero via Pexels

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Going out of Business

It takes a special person to be the failure of one’s lineage. To not only be the disappoint of ones current family, but also that of one’s distant ancestors.

Gregor would have to face all of them at the arcanum. He’ll have to stand there and let their digitalized minds know that the business they’d erected in the late 3000s and carried for a century, was going to die.

The particle wall to his office hummed to life as his robot assistant rolled in. The whirl of its inner parts were deafening. “They’re waiting for you sir,” it said.

“Here we go,” he breathed to himself.

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The Ward

There was the flap of wings and then a thud on the bench beside him. “It’s been a while,” a voice said.

Viz shrugged. “Only a few centuries, brother.”

“Because you do your job poorly,” his brother snapped. “Speaking of which, where is your ward?”

He gestured towards the woman he’d been staring at. She was sitting at a ragged park table, crying. “There.”

His brother scoffed. “At least it’s alive this time. Do you know how annoying it was to wait—what was it again—a few centuries for it to reincarnate?”

A man approach his ward. She wiped her face and stood, mumbling an apology. The man embraced her. “It’s all right,” Viz heard him say. His ward went rigid. Then, sobbed on the man’s shoulder.

His brother groaned. “Well, that’s finally done.”

“Yes. Yes, it is.”

138 words

Written for: Priceless Joy’s FFfAW Challenge – 199th, Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers

Picture by: Jodi McKinney