Another experiment in flash fiction, this little piece started with the first sentence at the starting gate of a timed writing exercise. I just start typing and let it rip. I quickly realized it changed from flash fiction to fan fic about the second sentence in. With that said I guess it can’t truly be flash, as in all fan fic you have some idea about events and characters before you start. Still, I do like what came out of the exercise and so I thought I’d share it. Hope you enjoy 🙂
“Waiting For The Cyclone”
She stands in the middle of the dirt road, the old farmhouse off to the left, the wide expanse of the prairie to her right. A hot afternoon breeze blows through her long brown hair. The hem of her gingham dress swirls around her legs, blown about by the same rhythmic wind that signals the coming cyclone. She has waited for this since childhood, keeping her lonely vigil, hoping the one that swept her away once before will return. They have told she is mad, perhaps “tetched in tha head”, but she knows her own experience as if it were written in a book or seen at the movies. It had swept her away before, far from the dying corn rows and starving animals of her Uncle’s farm. And though that had been years ago in childhood, as a young woman she longs for a similar adventure again, something to make her come alive and feel the impossible possibilities of youth. She has missed her friends from long ago, and has found herself unable to make new ones. She feels as if she is dying here, or will die alone at an old age always dreaming of something better, something more wonderful than any wizard could grant. What she needed was one more wicked witch and one less day of wasting away in her own longings. And so she waits for the cyclone, always on the horizon, yet never arriving, still hoping to find that “no place like home” kind of feeling.
Paul Writes 