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
Jan 1, 2016 Friday Fictioneers, Original Flash Fiction
Word Count: 100 words of text, exactly
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Forgiveness On A Coffee Date
©January 1st, 2016By Vijaya Sundaram
We looked at each other over that promised coffee. It was tepid. A lemony sun shone in the sludgy sky. Outside, a few timid flowers bloomed. The doorway glowed resplendently, its rising sun emitting caffeinated steam-clouds.
“Look, I am sorry.”
“I said stop! but you didn’t,” I snarled, face throbbing from having fallen on it, when I’d tried to avoid his arm on my shoulder, and stumbled.
Rummaging in his messenger bag, he found some Advil. “I’m ashamed. I was too familiar. I was wrong,” he said quietly, holding out his hand which held two pills.
I took his hand.
____________________________________________________
Thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, our Fairy Blog-Mother, for hosting Friday Fictioneers, where fiction writers from around the world congregate and share amazing stories! And thanks to Jean L. Hays for the great photograph-prompt!
Tags: #Forgiveness, Coffee date, Original short story based on photo-prompt
Nov 15, 2015 Friday Fictioneers, Original Flash Fiction
PHOTO PROMPT – © J Hardy Carroll
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
© November 15th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Genre: Realistic Fantasy Death-Fiction
Word Count: 100 words of text exactly
So much sorrow in the world, so much war, so many dead! All that waste, all those fathers gone, those flowers with their heads in the dust make me thirst for life.
I sit day after day in this cemetery, not because I love death, but because I mourn life. I tend to the graves of those whose families have forgotten them. That woman and her child over there come every day. They are beautiful, enshrouded in mystery.
The woman looks up, sees me, pales.
I try to send reassurance her way. My scythe gleams.
_________________________________________________________
With thanks, as always, to our Fairy Blog-Mother, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, for being a lovely host to all of us who write as Friday Fictioneers, and to J. Hardy Carroll for that touching photograph.
I type this at my brother’s home in New Delhi, India. I’ll be leaving to go back to Pune, India, where my mother lives, to spend the rest of the following week there. Back in the US on the 23rd. Missing you all. Sorry about not being able to comment much — Internet connectivity is an issue.
Tags: #Death, #Life, #Peace, 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, War, Where have all the flowers gone?
Nov 5, 2015 Friday Fictioneers, Original Flash Fiction
Wife-Earth-Mother
©November 5th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
I walked in her footsteps.
Grace had tended our arid acre of land, pouring her spirit into it. That which was infertile, she’d made fertile, and that which had died, she’d made live. For twenty years she grew corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers – enough for our family of three. Her love fed and nourished us.
I had gone to work in the coal fields, and my lungs rattled and hissed.
My son had died in a war begun by evil politicians. Then, Grace died, heartbroken. With her gone, the land died. I was alone.
I picked up a shovel.
______________________________________________________________________________
(P.S. Thanks to Rochelle, our beloved Fairy Blog-Mother as I dubbed her, for hosting Friday Fictioneers each week. Thanks, also, to Connie Gayer …(Mrs. Russell) for her evocative and sombre photograph.)
(P.P.S I’m heading off to India tomorrow morning via Emirates, so I may not be able to read people’s posts today, unless I can find a few minutes (haven’t packed yet!). Please know that I will check out your stories, and respond to anyone who makes a comment at some point before next Wednesday!
Love to all, Vijaya)
______________________________________________________________________________
Tags: #Death, #Dirty Energy, #Life, #Loss, #Love, Climate Change, Original short story based on photo-prompt, Politics, War
Oct 22, 2015 Friday Fictioneers, Original Flash Fiction
PHOTO PROMPT © Ron Pruitt
Genre: Vehicular Fantasy
Word Count: 100 words of text exactly
Jefferson’s Big Day
©October 22nd, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Jefferson was waiting. He was bored. And he felt mischievous.
Waiting was irksome. It wasn’t his forte. He felt positively homicidal.
After an age, there were streams of passengers, appearing out of nowhere — large, small, dumpy, attractive. Jefferson eyed them surreptitiously, formulating his plans, while they boarded him.
Among them was a little old man with sky-colored eyes and ancient wrinkles who gave Jefferson a conspiratorial wink. Jefferson ignored him studiously, but knew in his piston-pumping heart that today was the big day.
Then, with a lurch, he took off into the air. Screams followed.
Couldn’t people take a joke?
________________________________________________________________________
With thanks, as always, to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields, whom I have dubbed our Fairy Blog-Mother, for hosting us for THREE years! What a paragon of graciousness, generosity and creativity you are, Rochelle! Here’s to many more years of your gentle, but firm, steering of the Friday Fictioneers ship! And I love so many writers who contribute to this site — all of them thoughtful, kind, and creative (and occasionally hilarious)! Thank you all for being so supportive to one another, and for making me feel welcome. Thanks, also, to Ron Pruitt, for the charming photo-prompt!
Tags: 100-word original short story based on a photo prompt, Bus Fantasy story
Sep 15, 2015 Original Flash Fiction, Writing 101
“What hath night to do with sleep?”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost
Solve for C
A very short Short Story about Flying and Angles
©September 15th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every night, Clara came awake with a start. Sleep fled into the darkness, sounding like the rustle of wings, a sigh of regret. She sat up in bed, turned to look at the profile of her sleeping dog in the pale moonlight flooding the room, and blinked.
For a few minutes, she didn’t know who she was or where she was.
She passed her right hand over her shoulder blades, which were aching, and remembered that something had been there.
She looked again at her dog. Bella, her dog lay on her back, legs limply in the air, smiling in her sleep. Such relaxation emanated from her that it calmed Clara down.
Then, she looked at the clock. 3:45 a.m. Again? Memory flooded back. She awoke at 3:45 a.m. every single night, from a dream where she had been dancing on the edge of a sheer cliff.
And in every one of those, she was looking down that cliff which ended on a narrow rocky ledge, and then, into the crashing ocean below. And her shoulders ached unbearably.
Clara closed her eyes, and a little exhale came from deep within her. In her dream, she thought she knew what was going to happen next, and her heart hammered with fear.
In minutes, she fell asleep again.
And she was falling, falling … but not straight down. And something was steadying her fall. She felt the whoosh of great wings heaving up and down behind her. Her wings!
And she seemed to be gliding down at an angle, a slide, almost.
Before she reached the ocean, she took off into the sky, and looked down.
A glittering right-angled triangle shimmered in the moonlight below her — from the cliff to the level sands, and the gliding slide she had angled down.
Great squares of light arose from the cliff face, the ocean, and her long, transparent air-slide. Her wings glowed like the sun.
All around her were glittering shapes, transparent and shimmering angles, beings of light. She drank in the air and light. She was at peace here. Then, after a long while, a sound reached her, and she knew there was something she had to do.
In the morning, Bella the dog had awoken to find herself completely alone. Her neighbor, Anjali, heard Bella’s doleful howling, which seemed to go on for a full five minutes, before it became suddenly still.
Something was wrong. Pulling on a robe, and agitated, Anjali called Clara on the phone. No answer. She grabbed the spare key that Clara had left her in case of emergencies, and let herself into Clara’s home, calling out her name and Bella’s all the while, but there was no answer, no pitter-patter of paws on the tiles in the kitchen, so clattering on the wood floor.
When she entered the bedroom, she saw two triangular indentations on the bed, one larger than the other. The hair on the nape of her neck rose.
The air in the room was electric with exultation and light.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Tags: Day 7
Jun 3, 2015 Original Flash Fiction
Dolphinium
©June 3rd, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram
The last time the dolphins came for me, they didn’t fare well. I persuaded the rest not to beach themselves. They obeyed, but reluctantly.
I spoke their tongue. I couldn’t help it. Sometime after my fourteenth birthday, I found this out. When I walked the lonely two-mile stretch of beach where I spent my summer that year, I would sing loudly without fear of people laughing at me. I loved singing, but even I had to admit that I didn’t sound remotely human. Anyway, I saw them swimming closer and closer to the beach, so I got alarmed, and stopped. Later that summer, I tried again, and two of them beached themselves in their eagerness to hear me better. I managed to push them into the waves with the help of a passerby, who was much taller and stronger than I.
I tried to thank her, but she scolded me, saying, “What are you doing here all by yourself? You should know better than to walk on a beach alone, and you, a girl!”
That made me mad. I said, “Well, you’re a fine one to talk, aren’t you? Or is it just that you’re so tough and muscular that no one will mess with you?”
That didn’t go over well. She gave me a dirty look, and went her way, muttering dark things.
People didn’t really like me. I was told at school that I was “weird” and “strange,” but I didn’t think it was weird to close my eyes in maths class and make clicking sounds and long hoots. I felt lonely, sometimes, but mostly, I liked being alone.
In time, I learned to hide well. I passed for normal.
But my life was barren.
So, this time, when I was at the beach, I let myself go. And I saw them cresting the waves. I knew what would happen, and I was overcome with remorse.
No, no, I said, please go.
They kept coming towards me. We want to be with you they whistled.
What could I do? I jumped into the sea, and swam far from the shore, whistling and squeaking. They turned and followed me.
It was the last time I saw the shore. I barely gave a thought to my mom and dad. They wouldn’t miss me. In any case, they had my more normal brother, who played baseball and football, and had many friends, and they could keep him.
And as I swam farther out to sea, with a whole pod of dolphins behind and alongside me, I clicked and whistled, and the air filled my lungs, and the sea sang in my blood, and my heartbeat felt warm and sweet.
I was home at last.
__________________________________________
Tags: #Magic Realism, Dolphin story