Category Love

Last Chance Saloon – Trifecta Week 90

freyathewriter 38 Comments

Below is my offering for Trifecta’s week 90 challenge word, which is ‘grasp’. As you will see from the Trifecta blog post, the challenge is to write between 33 and 333 words of fiction, non-fiction, poetry or prose, based on the 3rd definition from the Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary. This week the 3rd definition of ‘grasp’ is:

– to lay hold of with the mind : COMPREHEND

Here’s my offering below – I hope you like it! Please check here for the other entries!

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– Last Chance Saloon –

Once in a while you see your life for what it really is. Mine’s crappy – that’s me bein’ polite. I could use worse, but them kids are always listenin’.

Tallulah brought me to my senses. I wanted to marry her, back when we were kids. But she kept on sayin’ “You’re such a good friend, Billy” and I would die inside. You don’t marry your friend.

So, I kept shtum, too sappy to open my mouth. It got so that just seein’ her drove me damn near crazy. So, I moved away. Got a job in the mines, made a new life for myself, kinda.

I got paid plenty for the danger and all. Didn’t really care what happened to me, to tell the truth. I was careless, had an accident, got my pal Sammy killed too. I carried that burden around, along with my bad leg. They gave me a job in the manager’s office, I married Sammy’s widow Cally, even took on the kids. Then she died last year havin’ my kid, the mine closed and here we are, just them and me. No money, no future. I just couldn’t grasp the state we were in, how we’d got there. So I did nothin’. Like always.

Then Tallulah appears, like she blew in on the wind. She looks me up and down as I’m huddled over my Scotch, takes two steps and smacks me in the cheek. It damn well hurt – she was a lady, but not lily-livered.

“Billy, I could kill you, but you’ve near enough killed yourself already. Why in hell have you let things get this bad?”

I looked at her, all fine and fragrant and healthy looking, like I used to be. Then I looked at myself in the mirror slung up behind the bar. I looked crappy, like I had nothing to lose. Which I didn’t.

“Will you marry me, Tallulah?”

“What took you so long, Billy?”

I’m guessin’ that’s a yes.

Copyright - Freya

Copyright – Freya

 

Interwoven – (not quite) Trifecta Week 88

freyathewriter 21 Comments

Below would have been my offering for week 88′s Trifecta challenge word, which is ‘band’ except I didn’t use it as a verb – whoops! Too much rushing, not enough time and reading on a smartphone! As you will see from the relevant blog post, the challenge is to write between 33 and 333 words of fiction, non-fiction, poetry or prose, based on the 3rd definition from the Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary. This week the 3rd definition of ‘band’ is:

– to gather together: unite <banded themselves together for protection>

Here’s my offering below – I hope you like it! Please check here for the other entries!

I’m going to leave this piece as it is though, since it means a lot to me.

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– Interwoven –

The sisters stood, arms slung around one another’s waists, motionless in the soporific heat of the summer dusk.

They had done it. They had reached the end of a day which at its start, none of them had secretly thought they would achieve – not without falling by the wayside, not without splintering with exhaustion and despair.

In the middle of the triumvirate stood the eldest, uniting them all. Battered by the implosion that had threatened to shred them all to pieces, she felt old, so very old, as the sun drowned itself in the evening sky. She knew that grey hairs had silvered her dark mop in the past few weeks, that new lines had etched her once-smooth forehead.

Badges of honour, she thought.

Despite everything, despite the tearing at their flesh as they had said their goodbyes, she felt a tiny glint of happiness deep in her chest. She had regained her sister after all these years. She had found a bond with a step-sister she had hardly known, not until recent weeks.

She imagined a band of bright steel, sparkling in the now violet gloom, linking the three of them together. Their separate pasts had made them who they are. Their united futures would honour the man they had each loved in their own, unique ways.

She raised her eyes to the stars above, grasping the lifeline of her sisters a little closer.

Thank you, Dad.

Trifecta

On Top of the World – Alastair’s Photo Fiction

freyathewriter 20 Comments

Here is my offering for Alastair’s Photo Fiction this week, inspired by the photo below.  Why not take part? And why not visit his photography and writing blog to take a look at his other photos…?

18-07-july-28th-2013

– On Top of the World –

I stand on the swaying platform. The wind is scratching at my cheeks, clawing tears from my eyes. For a second, I remember a hiking trip in the Cambrian mountains…

My heart jumps in my chest with fear and laughter as I slip-slide backwards, my feet losing their grip on the scree skittering far below. The echoes of our joy career all around as you and I collapse safely at the top, lungs burning, chests heaving with the effort. Life is rainbow-hued.

Now, everything is fear. I inch forward to the edge of the platform, scanning the seas as they boil below. I see the top of The Shard cutting through the oily waves, and the summit of Heron Tower in the distance. London is gone. You are lost to me, flotsam and jetsam – somewhere.

I steel myself, zip up my diving gear, check my oxygen tanks and mask. The time has come.

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For non-Londoners, and non-Brits, here is information on The Shard and Heron Tower…

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