Final Friday Flash Fiction #3

It's that time of the month again, y'all! I get the opportunity to write a piece of flash fiction based off a prompt you give to me. If you want to find out how you can inspire my next FF, read on to the bottom of the post!

This month's winner is Lisa! Her prompt is this:

"if you cut me, I suppose I would bleed the colors of the evening stars"
-- fr. Technicolor Phase by OwlCity

This is the first time I've written a FF based on lyrics. I'm super excited to give it a try. Let me know how you think it went over.

~He Died for the Real Me~

I hit the ground. Masks scattered across the floor. I gasped and looked up at the crowd. They murmured and backed away from me. Tears threatened to overflow as I took their expressions in.

A man shoved his family behind him and looked at me like I was a monster. “What are you?”

I held up my hands to look at them. They shook. My eyes gazed at the masks, which grinned up at me with their lifeless stare, then at the mirror on the wall. “I’m me.” I choked. “I’m just me.”

“What a freak.” One mother whispered to her children. “Doesn’t she know how horrid she is? All that crying makes her weak. She should smile more.”

A man laughed to his friends, pointing a finger at me. “How ugly and shallow. She’ll never get anywhere with her uptightness.” He shook his head and turned away, adding with a mutter: “worthless.” He and his friends walked out of the room. The windows shook as the door slammed.

I stood, my legs shaking like reeds. The crowd backed even further away. I kept my head down. They were right, weren’t they? I was worthless. Without those masks to smile for me, what was I? I could never live up to their standards without them.

I felt a tug on my shirt. I looked down. The child of the very woman who criticized me earlier smiled up at me. She wagged a finger, indicating for me to lean down. I knelt down. Cupping her hands, she leaned near to my ear. “I think you’re beautiful.” She whispered. “I think you’re so beautiful from the inside out that even if someone cut you, you’d bleed the colors of the night sky.”

I placed a hand over my mouth to keep myself from letting her see my crying. She couldn’t see me weak. My other hand fumbled around the floor. Where was my happy mask? 

She hugged me. “It’s okay to cry. It doesn’t mean you’re weak or unhappy. It means you feel for those who are hurting. You'll be all right afterward. Little girls like me need you. We need to know that we’re beautiful too, no matter how we feel at the time. We need to know that even in our brokenness, we can still help make someone else’s day whole.” She turned to look at her mother, who stared at her daughter with a furious expression. “Don’t let their stabs kill you. If we let their wounds kill us, we become them—the real monsters. The ones who hurt others by our words and actions. We mustn’t become them.”

“No one can love me.” I protest. “Not the real me.”

She shook her head. “I love the real you. And even if I didn’t, I know someone else who does.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “Yes, I know he loves you. He made you. More than that, he died for you. He died for the real you.” She pointed at the masks. “You don’t need those.”

“But I might cry if I don’t have those. People want me to smile all the time. I have to be happy all the time.”

She laughed. “That’s not what he says. He says for all of us to weep with those who weep. Why would he say that if we couldn’t cry?” She patted my face. “I’ll cry with you if you want me to.”

I did cry. She cried with me as we held each other close. But they were tears of joy and healing, not sorrow. Someone loved the real me. I didn’t have to be suffocated by those masks anymore. He died for the real me. I could be me. The one who feels. The one who cries. The one who smiles brighter than the sun because she is allowed to break down beforehand. Those masks with their freakish smiles could burn. I was free from the world's standards. 

~Your Opportunity to Inspire!~

As always, you all get the opportunity to sign up for the chance to give me a prompt! You have until Friday, January 5 at noon to sign up. I'll email the winner that afternoon. I do ask that the person who won the previous month take one month off to allow others the chance to win. You can go back to signing up next month!

What did you all think? Are there times where you feel like you're told to smile when you need to cry? You're beautiful no matter what! It's okay to cry. Remember that weeping may last for a nighttime, but joy comes in the morning.