Flash Fiction Challenge 2 #OurAuthorGang

 Challenge accepted by Dawn Treacher

Flash fiction is a concise form of prose storytelling consisting of self-contained stories that may also be referred to as sudden fiction, short-short stories, micro-fiction, or micro-stories. This particular genre is highly regarded by renowned English writers for its ability to convey profound insights and timeless human emotions within a few short paragraphs.

Dawn's challenge was to write a flash fiction story of less than 500 words, based on this picture:

Waiting

By Dawn Treacher

Time. Place. It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t look behind me, spot faces in a crowd, add locks to my door or change my daily patterns. He or she was coming. If it wasn’t today then it would be tomorrow or the day after that. I only had myself to blame, I could point to a dysfunctional upbringing, but who around here didn’t have that. I could argue temptation overcame my better judgement, but I’ve never weighed risks against consequences. Life was the here and now. I grabbed opportunities, excelled in consumption of all illicit forms, revelled in civil disobedience if the goal tempted me. Only this time I did something worse. I gambled with my soul. Now a bullet had my name on, if not all that I held dear as collateral too.

I’d not lived long enough to have kids who’d miss me. I’d not have won any recommendations in any job for I never held one down more than a few months anyway. I had no certificates to frame upon my wall. Hell, I had no real place I could call home. I slipped from hostel to hostel, slept on couches in return for favours. I’d walked the streets at night when it was too cold to huddle down in a doorway. Of late, I’d earned enough to rent a room, it was little more than that. But I didn’t want to die. Not this way. I wasn’t one for ambition or goal setting, I had no great desire to strike off a bucket list of sorts either. But when you dabble with evil, well they don’t forget and they sure don’t forgive.

The street was quiet for a Wednesday night. Those that walked the pavements paid me no attention. I kept my hands in my pockets, my eyes straight ahead. In the beginning I was scared, but not any longer. When death seems certain there is no longer anything to fear. Fear is the unknown. Once you know your fate, you have time to plan, time to think.

An assassin costs money and evil has deep pockets. One shot would be all it took. But you see, I had nothing to lose, yet everything to gain. And maybe luck would be on my side. In a city that rarely slept and where eyes watched all and everything, the deed would need to be clean. No blunders. No living witness. No mess to clean up. Evil may have hearts as dark as the devil himself but those who gave the orders, bore the brunt of exposure, well, they didn’t want to be known when blood was spilled in their name.

So when I saw him walk out of the shadows, I led him into the open, walked straight towards him. I faced death, looked down the barrel of a gun. I raised my hands skywards, shouting out the words.

“O.Neilly, I saw, I coveted and I stole. May my death be your sin.”

Eyes may have seen, ears may have listened, but the bullet was silent. The rhetoric gone.

Dawn Treacher

www.dawntreacher.com

Dawn Treacher is based in North Yorkshire, England. She writes in both adult crime fiction and children's middle grade fantasy adventures. She is also an illustrator of children's fiction, an artist and plush artist. She runs both a writing critique group and a creative writing group and goes into schools to promote storytelling.