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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 248
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The Lob
Flash fiction. Read it and at the end I'll tell you what I was going for and you can tell me how to fix it to get the reader to come to the same conclusion.
Soft grass, green grass. Fresh blood, new blood: red, glistening. Bent grass, stiff grass, marking footsteps leading away. White tennis shoes stop then turn back, pointing toward the body: dead, with its head thrown back, eyes wide open, staring at the unseen sun, surprised. Long blonde hair fans out around the head as if carefully arranged. A halo? The woolen sweater, almost blinding in its whiteness, is ruined by the blood that has run down the front. The short white skirt that fanned out during the contest exposing all, now barely covers the matching white panties. Thank goodness!
This is not a peep show, though no doubt, many get their rocks off watching two women bound back and forth and catching occasional flashes of tightly clad buttocks, a protruding nipple every now and then. The excitement sometimes overwhelms.
Blood red spattered white shoes now point to the heavens, where no doubt the young dead woman hopes she is going, though there is no assurances of her destination. Her ankle socks are also white, with red and green piping. Unbelievable. There is so much white, so much green, so much red. Christmas in July thinks the standing white shoes.
The dead girl’s mouth is open, white teeth against red lips, tongue nowhere to be seen. The first flies begin to land, carefully probing, black flies, dull flies. Most of them hover around the neck where a contrast of white flesh and red blood mix at the site of the wound. Others circle the lake of blood congealing on the grass. Dinner is served. Short grass, nourished grass.
A bloodied knife drops to the lawn beside the standing shoes. They turn and continue their journey away. They suddenly leave the ground and land again a few feet away, toes first, cushioning as they were trained. They start walking away when several pairs of black shoes, shiny shoes, surround the pair that have small splatters of blood. After a moment of twisting and turning, all the shoes move away, tennis shoes first, followed by the black shoes, shiny shoes, reflecting the same sun that the dead eyes do not see.
Silence remains. Stunned silence. Slowly the sounds return. A shuffling of a thousand shoes, black shoes, white shoes, colored shoes and the creak of plastic as hundreds of seats are relieved of their burdens, echo round the coliseum. Most of the shoes pause, twist back if for only a moment, back toward the court. Some rise up on the toes, checking one last time to see if there has been a mistake. Some in sadness, turn, and continue their climb up the concrete stairs. Betting slips, many ripped in half, flutter to the floor, while others simply float to the ground whole. This wasn’t how the match was supposed to end. Favored girl, special girl, dead girl.
Now what I was going for is that it was a winner take all tennis match. The dead girl had been heavily favored but suffered a stunning loss.
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