Final Friday Flash Fiction #1

Welcome to the last Friday of the month, y'all! I'm going to (hopefully) start a new series featuring one of my favorite writing styles: flash fiction. I'm going to call it (as you can probably already guess from the post title) Final Friday Flash Fiction.

If you haven't heard of this style already, it's a story with 1000 words or less. Kind of challenging to write at times, but I enjoy it a lot. It's helped me pack a lot more into my novel chapters, just by knowing how much emotion I can cram into a couple thousand words. So anyway, here's this month's FF. I was inspired by the picture above. I hope you enjoy it.

~Welcome to the Road~

“Welcome to the Road,” A nurse exclaimed when I was born. Now, as I sling my bag onto my shoulder and stare down the twisted road, I wonder if her enthusiasm was warranted. Did the road ahead hold any promise? Surely the path, blackened by the shadows of the trees, couldn’t prove to be good. Why would someone welcome me here if all it held was torture?

I take one step. The stones crunch under my foot. With each step, my shoes change. Winter boots. Lightweight shoes. Sandals. Mud boots. You imagine it, I wore it. All around me the trees change. With each blink of the eye, they changed from skeletons, to giants’ bouquets, to green towers, to a world on fire, and back to skeletons again. Days flutter away without as much as a goodbye. I shrug. Perhaps the world isn’t so gloomy after all.

But I turn the corner and the road goes up. I must strain my neck to get a glimpse of the top. It stretches on as far as the eye can see. I look back, hoping I can avoid this, but the road disappeared. There’s no going back.

I climb. And climb. And climb. My heart grows numb from the exertion. My body burns. When will it ever end? This pain, this suffering. If I let go, I can make it end. One brief fall and this will all be but a bad memory. My hand slips away from the edge, only to find it caught by something else. I fight, but I’m pulled to a ledge. “Keep going,” a voice says. “I won’t let you fall.”

I pant. I cry. I don’t want to face that hill. Why would that hand save me? There couldn’t possibly be good in this world. But a gentle prodding in my heart pushes me onwards. I climb and I climb. I didn’t plan this hill. Yet here I was, made to climb it.

At last, my hand grabs the top and I pull myself upwards. My heart caught in my throat at the sight of it. A bright horizon. A green valley. Sunshine. Water tumbling headlong to the ground below. I close my eyes to take it all in. My head spins at the thought that, if I had fallen, the climb would have been all but a bad memory. But if I wasn’t pulled up, this valley would never have been a hopeful future. I thank the voice, the strong arm, the victor for pulling me upwards.

I traipse on, eager to experience all that the valley had to offer. Beauty surrounds me on every side. I marvel at the wonder, so much so that I didn’t see the chasm ahead of me. I fall headlong into the pit. A hand, once again, catches me and I gasp in relief. I look down. A fiery pit roars up at me. I choke with fear. Not again. I close my eyes against the terror and try to summon up memories of the green valley. I want to go back to the green valley. Would I ever see its beauty again? Will this hand pull me out again? It did last time, but would it do it again?

“Please don’t let me fall,” I beg. I cry. I don’t want to want to let go again. I tasted the fall. It was tempting. But at the end of it all, I saw the beauty beyond the climb. I wanted to go back to the beauty.

I’m pulled back up. I kneel on the ground, a sobbing mess. “Thank you,” I exclaim.

“Keep going," The voice says. "I won’t let you fall.”

I stand up, quivering and covered in filth. I look around. The valley is gone. I scream in frustration. 

After all my perseverance, the only thing I find beautiful is taken away from me? Why?

But, instead, a river appears in front of me, choppy yet calm. In the distance, a city grows bright and beautiful. More lovely than the valley. I weep as I take in the sight. Tears of joy, not sadness. After all the years of hardship and travel, after all my failures and shortcomings, after all my scars and pains, I can finally say I’m almost home. It was worth it all.

~Question~

Actually, I have two questions.

1. Did you enjoy this? Would you like me to continue this series?

2. If y'all enjoyed it, I was thinking it would be cool to host a raffle in the future installments for someone to win the chance to give me a prompt. Would this be something you're interested in? I think it would be fun and I would get to stretch my flash fiction abilities.

Thanks for letting me share my stories here. I hope you enjoyed it.