Saturday, November 8, 2014

Flash! Friday: Long Train Running Away

by Michael Seese

Another creepy entry from me for Flash! Friday. This week's winner in "Finish That Thought" used a second-person POV. (And I've used it once before, in a short story.) So I thought I would try it here, as that perspective can be quite effective.

We needed to work off this picture.


















But we've been encouraged to think outside the box and not use the photo literally. So here is "Long Train Running Away."


You look at the train cascading away into infinity and have only one thought. Escape. Escape from life, from this life. Escape from the future, the future you dread, but whose script already has been penned. In blood.

You look at your past. Town to town to town. Mistake to mistake to mistake. You wish you could get on the right track. But that train derailed long ago.

You look at the gallery of faces radiant, expectant. They beam like suns. You see only an eclipse. Look happy. They came to see a wedding, not a funeral. They’ll see a funeral soon enough.

You look at your maid of honoryour latest maid of honorwith your face of detachment as she gathers your ironically white train and gushes, "You look beautiful." Perhaps, some day, her too.

You look at your next victim, blissfully naive on this, the happiest day of his life, and tell him, “I do.”



Brrrrrr! Agree?

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to write 100 words for Janet Reid.


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