Deluge – Five Sentence Fiction

Falling_rain_in_mexico-804x1024

Photo source

The raindrops pelt my hair, my face, my arms, my hands until I am drenched.

I stand in the empty street, arms outstretched, palms turned upwards, embracing the clouds above.

I know eyes are watching me from behind nets, behind doors held slightly ajar and deep in the shadows just out of reach of the streetlight’s glare.

I know they are whispering behind hands and underneath raised eyebrows – to them I am the woman who has lost her mind with grief, for nobody sane stands in the street, in the rain, in her nightgown.

But I do – it is a relief to feel something other than the weight of profound loss – it is a relief to feel so refreshed.

Mercury

They say that we worshipped the sun once –

bared our skin and lay for hours, motionless

except to turn and baste, baste, baste

like hog-roasts rotating on spits,

English rose complexions transformed to copper.

 

They say that we feared the winter then –

covered our bodies in chemically engineered layers,

refusing to let the crisp air penetrate,

wishing the dark days away,

as if time was ours to discard

with no consequences.

 

They say all this.

The world must have been different then.

———

Inspiration

‘Snow can lift my heart in a way that sunshine never could.

I have waited, and you have come
Martine McDonagh

———-

This week, on dVerse Poetics, Mary asks us to write poetry inspired by quotations – or by a photo, or by a headline in a newspaper, or, or, or… let’s get inspired!

I have used a quotation from one of my favourite dystopian novels, ‘I have waited, and you have come’ by Martine McDonagh. I highly recommend it! My poem is set in a future where the sun is to be feared, not welcomed…

Please pop over to dVerse to see how others have risen to the challenge!

 

 

Eyes Right – Friday Fictioneers

Here is my latest entry into the weekly challenge brought to us by the lovely Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

Here are the rules: Use the photo as inspiration, write a hundred(ish) words – and share! Here goes my offering for this week – and I welcome your comments again!

I walk across London Bridge to work each morning, and some days, the bridge and all beyond is shrouded in fog or mist. It has crossed my mind that we are so trusting, to expect that the bridge, and everything on the other side, is indeed, still there….

sheep-and-car

Copyright – Sandra Crook

– Eyes Right –

They follow one another like lambs.

Fog. It had descended in the night hours when Death beckons. I had been awake in my glass-encased penthouse, Scotch swirling in lead crystal. It had struck me as vaguely curious, but then I turned my back, returned to my dealings, turned on by money.

There were no footsteps on London Bridge – which my subconscious expected. I returned to the window. The fog rose. London Bridge was gone, and all that remained of those sheep was their detritus bobbing on the Thames below.

It pays to have your wits about you in the City.

—-

Click on the blue froggy below to read others’ offerings!