Aug 30, 2016 Friday Fictioneers, Original Flash Fiction
Word Count: 100 words
Genre: Paranormal romance
Ghost-Boat
©August 30th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Every evening, Saras goes down to the banks of the river flowing near her house.
A dark boat emerges silently from the gloaming. Saras steps on board. Sitting back, she sighs. The boat moves. No oars break the water’s surface.
Long ago, she’d loved the boatman.
A bamboo flute breathes desire and despair into the air. Saras sings with it. And she waits, calmly, without hope.
Now, Saras hears a question. Her dead lover’s shimmering form emerges. Saras says softly, “What took you so long to ask?” then, dissolves into tears.
When the boat returns to shore, it is empty.
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.I was away on vacation this past week. Catching up is hard to do. I thought I’d post this before the next FF prompt showed up.
This is a serious addiction.
Thanks to Rochelle, our beloved Fairy Blog-Mother, for hosting Friday Fictioneers. Her stories always inspire and move me.
Thanks to Georgia Koch for that mysterious photograph!
Tags: #FridayFictioneers, #Love and Death, #Original 100-word Flash Fiction based on a photo-prompt, #Supernatural
Oct 22, 2013 Original Short Stories
Straightening Up — A Short Love Story
©By Vijaya Sundaram
October 22nd, 2013
The day had been bad. A butterfly fluttered in her breast feebly, the last throes of love.
She stumbled up to her apartment, fumbling with the keys, turning the lock, opening the door, shutting it, falling to the floor.
How much feeling is too much?
Her breathing shallow, she took a few steps into her kitchen.
All around her, the evening hummed. Street noises floated up. Somewhere, the elevator groaned and shuddered to a halt. Somewhere, far below, a truck snorted and lurched, tires skidding. Somewhere, ocean waves crashed against escarpments. An acrid smell pierced the air, heavy with smoke and sunset.
She leaned over the sink, her vision blurred and moist. Reaching into her cupboard, she picked the china mug which she had bought many moons ago in the company of the person she had just left. It had pretty patterns all around it — and it reminded her of being a young girl who went for pretty, inconsequential things, simply because they pleased her. She turned on the tap, and filled the mug, then sat down at her little kitchen table and stared through the tall glass kitchen window down at the street below.
The clock steadily ticked one eternity after another. It echoed in her head and made her neck stiffen, and made her grit her teeth.
Everything in her life spelled futility and despair. With two brothers and a sister firmly ensconced in upper-middle-class mobility and self-assuredness, she knew she was doomed. No one seemed to understand that she saw through all of the illusions around her.
Wherever she went, she saw hollow bodies filled with dreams that had turned sour, and where they weren’t, because they were children, she saw what might come.
Because they all pointed to death.
Yes, yes, true, there might be meaning, and there might be hope, and there might be love and laughter and light and all the rest of it, but that’s not what she saw. She didn’t see the face of it all. She saw the back of it all.
And then, she saw it all topple into an endless black hole, into the spinning space inside the event horizon.
Her head was a hollow place. She longed to forget. What did the poet write in his over-dramatic hysterical piece about a bird that had wandered into his home? Ah, yes, respite, respite and nepenthe. That was what she craved.
She downed the water, and walked into her bedroom. Ah, the familiar mess — clothes on the bed, clothes piled high on the armchair, clothes in danger of creating life forms on the floor. Despite herself, she smiled grimly. Despair and futility was all very well, but there was one unassailable fact that was always true in her life — laundry that awaited her.
It doesn’t do to be untidy. Being in despair and being in a mess shouldn’t be synonymous, she thought.
She set about folding the clean clothes and putting them away in neat stacks in her dresser. She piled the dirty clothes into the laundry hamper. She picked up books (in stacks under the clothes) and placed them lovingly and attentively back on the shelf. She picked up a bowl of congealed oatmeal which she’d left in a hurry in her bedroom that morning before setting off to her editorial desk at work. She made a face at the cold mess of oatmeal, ate it anyway, then rinsed the bowl and placed it in the dishwasher. She rinsed the stacks of dirty dishes in the sink before placing them in the dishwasher. Adding the dish-washing liquid, she started the dishwasher. The hum of it soothed her and straightened her back a little. Humming tunelessly along with it, she walked around, picking up things, cleaning surfaces, running the vacuum lightly over everything. She went into the bathroom, and scrubbed the sink and wiped the floor with a mop. She picked up bits of hair and put them in the dustbin. She straightened up all her bits and pieces of toiletry. She cleaned the toilet till it sparkled. She scrubbed the tub till it gleamed like a newly whitened tooth.
She straightened her bedroom, and turned on the lights one by one. She lit a delicately scented candle (not overwhelming, just a hint of lemongrass and perhaps, lavender), and turned to the big picture window.
She saluted the world ironically.
Then, she went back to her bathroom, drew a hot bath, and stepped into it, luxuriating in the warmth. At least I can wallow in despair while I wallow in comfort and warmth, she thought emptily.
She toweled herself dry, while listening to the strangled gurgling of the bath-water as it swirled down into the underworld. Musical, though unfocused, thought her critical mind. She rinsed and wiped down the tub, washed her hands, sprayed some rose-water around her in a mist, dried her hair, and put on a robe of pale yellow silk.
The whole time, her mind stayed empty. She tried not to think of anyone, least of all, a certain person whom she had resolutely not thought about the whole day.
Then, after putting on a CD of Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny titled “Beyond the Missouri Sky,” she made her bed with clean and fresh sheets. She piled the contents of the laundry hamper into the washer, added detergent and turned it on. While she waited for the clothes to wash, she made some phone calls, canceling services. She went over her bills carefully, and made online payments on all of them. She checked her bank-account, and transferred all of her money to her mother’s account.
The washer stopped. Good. She took her clothes, put them into the dryer, and set it for one hour.
Then, she rummaged in her work-bag, and checked to make sure that she had a certain letter she had typed earlier in the day in her presentation folder. She had it. She looked it over for errors. Damn! There was one. She took a blue pencil and circled it, and wrote one word over it – Sorry. She placed the letter in an envelope, and sealed it neatly, propping it between the salt and pepper shakers.
She took out a book by her favorite author and started to read. An hour in, she heard the horrendous squawk of the dryer signaling the end of the cycle. She sighed, put the book down and went to get the clothes. She folded the last of them and put them away neatly.
Her mind was completely empty. Somewhere, a butterfly fluttered within her, but she felt quite distant from it.
She went to the bathroom, found some pills that she had set aside, and washed them down with water.
Then, she went and lay down in her bed, covering herself to stay warm. She craved warmth. It was all that remained in her now-diminished list of needs. There was one more.
She hesitated. Came to a decision. Made one last phone call.
A voice answered, somewhat cranky and tired. She said, “Hello? Goodbye. Thank you. Sorry.” Then, she hung up, and laid her head on the pillow. She was comfortable. She had eaten and drunk. She had put away her stuff, and had cancelled her services. She had taken care of any debts. She was done.
She closed her eyes and waited for tears to come. None came. Good, she thought, no regrets.
How much feeling is too much?
A butterfly fluttered into the stars and burst into a million points of light.
Darkness spread its wings and flapped hard, and covered everything, but the points smashed their heads against it, as they struggled to break through, finally streaking out like lines of escape, carrying with it the smothered scream of a butterfly trying to breathe.
And so, her love struggled, frail and brittle, against the huge, crashing wave of doubt and despair, as everything drowned in its wake.
Some of the dust from the disaster floated around her, supernovae of sadness.
“I loved you,” whispered the dust.
The darkness answered, “But not enough.”
Suddenly, the telephone rang. It rang and rang and rang. A little while later, a door opened.
There was a fluttering in the room. The candle still burned.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tags: #Life, #Love and Death, #Original Short Story, despair and hope, love and life