Mar 4, 2016 Original Flash Fiction

Your Photo Prompt for Week #10 – 2016

 

Genre:  Historical Fiction/Greek Mythology
Word Count:  200 words of text, exactly
(for Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner)

The Triangle*
©March 4thm, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

[Smiling, Clotho regarded the spark in her cave in the dark mists of time, a spark shaped like a girl.  Clotho spun out her thread.]

The warp and weft of her life brought Hannah to the Factory.  The sough and grate of sewing-machines filled her days.  At fourteen, under-nourished and overwhelmed, she had found hell. 

First:  There was the manager, whose coming was presaged by his paunch and much puffing.  Rumors about his behavior with the older girls abounded.  Hannah was growing up.

[Measuring out the cloth, Lakhesis said,  “I know it’s only been three weeks.”  Her sister sighed.  “It cannot be undone, Clotho,”said Lakhesis.]

Second:  There were the latrines.  Hannah would hold it in as long as she could, because she would have to leave the building to go.  That meant a wage-cut. 

[At the far end of their cave, stood their sister, Atropos, shears in hand.]

Third:  The fire began around 4:40 p.m.  Hannah and the others crowded into the rickety elevator.  “Yit’gadal v’yit’kadash sh’mei raba,”** Hannah cried, smoke choking her words.

[Atropos cut the cloth.]

The spark, now a conflagration, arose again in the cave.

“Why did you do that to me?” stormed the child. 

[The Fates*** wept.]

________________________________________________________

*See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

**See Kaddish

*** See The Three Sisters, the Fates, the Fatae, the Moerae/Moirai, the Parcae

Thanks to Roger Shipp, our kindly host of Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner!  This is my first entry for FFftPP.

Tags: #ChildLabour, #Flash Fiction for the Purposeful Practitioner, #Moerae, #Moirai, #Original Short Story by Vijaya Sundaram, Atropos, Clotho, Historical Fiction, Lachesis, Original 200-word flash fiction based on a photograph prompt, The Three Fates, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory

Mar 4, 2016 Uncategorized

Descent
©March 4th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram

First comes desire, an urgent
Pressing need to do:
I want this, I want to do this.

Next comes resistance:
No, I don’t!
I won’t!  I cannot!

Then comes stasis.
And the minutes tick away
Lifetimes slide past,
Looking sorrowfully
Out of the corners of their
Eyes, moist with promise.

And grey ghosts crowd at the door.
Beckoning through the wood.
(They can see through it, you understand.)
And one says, “Do you practise?
Do you practise your literature?”
Practise my literature?
What sort of question is that, Dad?

A dream nudges memory:
Carrying a third of an appalam
To Appa, lying on the floor above.
He smiles, pale and alive.
But he’s dead, don’t you remember?
Been dead a few years!

Dust on the floor makes faces
Faces gleam through air and mist.
Faces gibber and point in mirrors.
Faces emerge from bones in dreams.
I like this one best!

Fingers trace patterns on coverlet.
Geometric ones, beautiful,
But gone forever, air-molecules
Carrying away pictures
Into the dustbin of time.

And the music stays on
And on, and on, like madness,
Like a tap that someone forgot to
Turn off.

Turn it off!
Turn it all off!

String together this lute.
Play it on the edge of a cliff.
Start singing to the sun.
Let the song grow.

Get UP!
Descend the stairs.
They never end.

 

Tags: #Contradictions, #Original Poetry, Descent, Resistance and need