I think this one has a slightly misogynistic tone to it. Sorry. I hope the photo balances that out

First Line Friday

His smile was like some kind of magic

and me. A tragic

Waiting for Him to cast His spell

and to lightly sell

me a line that i could tightly hold

and allow Him to mould

me into the shape

of His desire

and texture of

His pleasure

forever

for Him to admire

as treasure.

I think I have it right this time. 99 words. But one needs to mentally transpose the image onto a slightly different backdrop.

April 26 Flash Fiction Challenge

We stood there together on the edge of the world. Before our eyes the waves announced their arrival from beyond the horizon with suicidal assaults on the rock ledge below and created a salty curtain of mist that you could taste.

“This looks like the place,” he had said, laying down the rods. He imagined that I had been lured there with tales of wild fish and of tortured line and of aching arms. But I was there just for this moment. To be with him.

We stood side by side and my head reached almost to his shoulders.

It would seem that I have too much time on my hands today. I stumbled across this little story on my computer and thought that I should give it some air. Perhaps I have already done so in the past. I apologise if that is the case. I am beginning to go a little senile and tend to forget things.

The Football Season
It was a cold June Saturday morning in the kitchen when my father broke the news. He was looking me up and down as I stood in a singlet, new football boots, socks and shorts attempting to warm myself by the oven. I felt ridiculous and more than a little scared about what was to come.
“There’s nothing wrong with being dumb you know,” he said, by way of a soft opening, “Hell, I’m no genius, myself. Your sister is stupid. And your mother….. Christ, your mother, bless her, is as thick as two planks.”
“Oh,” I said.
“So,” he continued, “it’s a simple matter of genetics. You’re dumb too.”
“Oh,” I said again, “thanks for that.” But the sarcasm passed right through him. He just looked at me.
“Dumb as shit,” he added, to make it clear.
There was an obvious flaw in the genetics argument and I leapt upon it. “What about Uncle Wally and Uncle Stephen?” I asked, referring to my mother’s siblings, “they’re both doctors.”
“Your mother was adopted.”
This was a disturbing revelation. The sudden unveiling of a family secret was not provided for educational purposes. Clearly there was sinister intent. Secondly, and more importantly, it dispelled forever my optimistic half-belief that it was I who had been adopted. And, of course, it added to the mounting body of evidence pointing to my own stupidity. “Oh,” I said once more, “so that’s it then.”
But he had not finished.
“So let’s just hope that you’re half decent at football.”
He looked me up and down again as I stood, white knees shivering before him. And we both knew then. That there could never have been any such hope.

****

That one season of football was predictably awful. In the beginning things weren’t too bad – the coach was reasonably patient with my ineptitude and, to my surprise, even some of the other boys were there with an occasional comforting pat on the back when I made some dreadful error. The second worst player in the team welcomed my involvement with open arms.
And, early on, we actually won a couple of games.
I spent most of my time on the bench, of course, to limit the damage, but when, at my father’s insistence, a rule was introduced requiring that all boys be given at least ten minutes on the field per half the losses began to mount. My twenty minutes per game seemed to coincide with crucial shifts in the momentum of play. I am not sure what position I played – I think it varied quite a bit, but wherever that place was was quickly identified as an attacking opportunity by opposing sides. And as all hopes of a semi-final appearance began to fade my teammates began to look for somewhere to place the blame. I was the obvious choice.
One day late in the season after a particularly inglorious loss the coach’s son suggested (in front of my father) that I try my luck at netball.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you’re a fat fucking girlie spastic,” he said. Whether this was an attack on just me or whether he also had issues with women’s sport and the disabled was unclear at the time. I think he was just expressing his frustration over lost opportunities.
My father saw it as an opportunity to express his frustrations as well. He broke the boy’s nose.
This was at a time when assault charges were not so commonly laid and my father, on this occasion at least, escaped arrest. But we were not welcome back at the football club and I never again laced up a football boot.

I was interested in producing something for a braveandreckless Challenge and had already jotted down a few ideas before returning to her post and realizing that I had not really read it at all and had stepped well outside the guidelines (had never really stepped in them in fact). I encourage you all to have a look at it and have a go. It is a request for blatant plagiarism – so that has to be give us all some chance of a strong voice.

In the mean time I thought I would post the thing I started, since it doesn’t count. The stolen words come from ‘Haunted’ by Shane McGowan, ‘A Fairytale of New York’, also by Shane McGowan and ‘Just Like Fire Would’ by Chris Bailey. I connect them all in that they share a somewhat melancholy view of the past.

As do I.

Haunted.

She had called to me through the snow. To say goodbye. And so I knew that soon the world would be covered with ice.
I sat beside her bed that night in the motel room. Her eyes were closed and mine were cast like steel. I drank the wine she had left on the table and I tried to think of yesterday.
Because I knew tomorrow was too far.
I looked down at her and let my hand brush gently over her cold skin. “Do you remember that sunny day,” I asked, “somewhere in New York in the middle of nowhere?”
Her eyes opened just for just a second as if to take in the memory and when she spoke her voice was as it had been all those years ago. “Didn’t have nothing to do that day,” she whispered, “didn’t wanna do nothing anyway.”
And I remembered. We had walked and talked and turned ourselves into what each other wanted. “You were so cool you could have put out Vietnam.” I said.
“Sinatra was swinging,” she remembered too, “all the drunks they were singing.”
We had kissed on a corner then danced through the night as the boys of the NYPD choir were singing ‘Galway Bay’.
And bells were ringing out.
It was Christmas Day.
“You were handsome,” she lied, but her voice was barely audible.
“You were pretty,” I assured her, “Queen of New York City.”

*****

But now it was a different time and as she lay there I could see the life slipping away from her. “Go back to sleep,” I told her, “you were dreaming.”
She weakly shook her head. “I wasn’t dreaming. You took my dreams from me when I first found you.”
My hand was now locked on hers. Our fingers intertwined. “Your dreams?” I replied. “I kept them with me babe. I put them with my own.”

And I know that I can’t make it all alone. I’ve built my dreams around you.

And then she was gone. I heard her last breath escape and I tried to inhale it. I had nowhere to go. So I sat there where she had been. I smoked my last pack of foreign cigarettes. I stayed there only to survive. I touched her then but we would never touch again.

And the ice is covering the ground.