Flash Club May Flash Club 2020

[Barbara]

Hi all

New month, new prompt. I hope everyone is safe and well, and (just as importantly) still writing.

Prompt: He throws a stone.

Word Count: 200

As always, use the writing prompt as well as the word limit given to write a piece of flash fiction. Entry is open to all members. Feel free to enter more than one. The only rule here: we ask you not to critique any of the entries.

To take part in the competition, simply post your entry below.

Towards the end of the month, I will close the thread and open a poll so you can vote for the winner.

That's it. Any questions, PM me.

See you next month.

 

[Salma Eljahrani]

Another sight.
He put down his phone and curled up in a ball.
He's missing her already. He knew it.
As he lifted his head, he felt the tears falling along his cheeks.
It was a cold February evening. The setting sun seemed to him like his broken heart. And he knew he wouldn't be sleeping that night, neither would she.
They both knew it.
They were still in love.
But they also knew they wouldn't go on that path; They couldn't continue.
Maybe if they talked a bit earlier, they wouldn't be avoiding each other the next day. They wouldn't be looking for something to fill up the emptiness each of them left in the other's life.
If they didn't care about what others said, and if there wasn't that stupid misunderstanding, they would be chatting as they had always done.
He stood up, carried a big stone, threw it with his full strength toward the river then shouted in despair; He was like a wolf craving for the seen of the moon.
She was his moon.
As he was about to head back home, he picked up his phone and checked if she had sent a reconciliation message. There was none.

 

[Emily]

(A clochán (pronounced: clock-AWN) pl: clocháin, also known as beehive huts, because of their beehive structure and corballed roof, built without mortar. Found on isolated mountains and islands on the west coast of Ireland, ascetic monks built them to contemplate the nature of God and subsist on berries, sips of rainwater and the occasional lentil. Parts of the 2017 film Star Wars: The Last Jedi, was filmed using the beehive huts on the island of Skellig Michael in Kerry )





He bends his head,

passing under the clochán’s heavy lintel;

stands in the murky morning light,

bare feet resting on scrubby earth

not yet warmed by the sun.



He throws a stone,

Hears the chink as it bounces off shale,

double hopping,

it runs with the rushing,

shushing of pebbles,

Gathering velocity on the steep decline.

Grizzle and grit

sliding over sheets of slate;

limestone blues and greys,

collaborate now in the downward descent,

gaining traction.

A flicker of quartz and flint,

the prolapse of strata a thundering gallop;

rumbling, throbbing:

A hail of earth and dust,

And booming reverberation;

Mountain metamorphosed.



The monk closes his eyes,

throws his prayer into the ether.

 

[Rich.]

Love Haze


"You know Fizz threw a stone?" Maggs leans forward as she says it.

"Bollocks he did," says Charlie. He takes a long drag and then passes Maggs the joint. Who gives a toss what Fizz has done? Why is she even talking about him? He plucks a paper and starts crumbling hash.

Maggs waves the joint like it's a flagpole. "We haven't finished this one."

He shrugs. "Where did he throw it?"

"What?"

"Where did he throw his stone?"

"Very funny."

He chuckles. And then stops before it runs away from him. Two deep breaths. Focus on the hash. But the laugh is still there, under the surface, pressing to escape. Maggs is not amused.

"You're an arse, Charlie. A stone is proper commitment. Losing weight is hard." She inhales. The tip of the joint glows red. Stop right there.

"Sorry," he mumbles, wondering what burns green.

She makes an O with her lips, exhales.

"Maggs…?"

"Yeah?"

I love you, Maggs. I love you and I want you. I want you so badly I think I might scream.

"Nothin'."

Maggs shakes her head. "A stone is nothing to be sneezed at. Dieting's a bitch."

He winces. Why is she talking about Fizz?

 

[David Y]

“Heathrow's a stone hurl from Windsor Castle, Ma'am. Shall I send for the catapult?” says Edmund.
“Perhaps Your Majesty would prefer Sidewinder surface-to-air missiles to knock out approaching aircraft?” says 007. “Amazon has a deal this week.” He throws a stone at the diorama in the dungeon come bunker where MAMBA’s top brass meets the inner triangle.
Queenie curses. One simply cannot get drones by royal appointment these days. Can't nonagenarians enjoy a moment's peace?
Baldrick takes a break from scratching lice from his hair. “I have a cunning plan to shut the airport.”
“I’m listening. Money’s no object.”
“Not that again, Balders,” says Edmund. “It will cripple the economy.”
“The PM’s not Churchill,” adds the heir apparent, doubtfully. “He might not recover. What if I got it?”
His first-born looks to the camera, thinking as a parent himself. Our dynasty, that’s what matters. “I’d never have voted for Brexit.”

“The public will never buy it.”
The director scowls. “Would you rather they know the truth? Do I have to remind you it's Netflix that pays our wages? We're The Crown, not them. We make history. We'll codename the episode 'He throws a stone' and schedule it for Series 19.”

 

[Steve C]

A Day to Remember.

What was that noise, music? Ayala looked out from her hut at the empty square, a jug of water in her hand ready to thin the soup, make it last another day. War had taken their food and given only slashing swords and biting axes in return. The Elah Valley below normally groaned with agony, but it sounded more like a party coming up the hill. No food, but the men were banging their drums and blowing their trumpets. Had they caught a goat? Perhaps a wild deer?

As they came into view, she saw her son surfing a sea of shoulders, cresting the waves, a hero of sorts. But where was the food?
Not a carcass in sight, only flagons and laughing faces supping wine between cheers for her boy.

Angry, she stood on the threshold, hands-on-hips, ready to lash them with her tongue.
Useless men partying while their women worked to feed them.

The music died twenty feet from her door and the village headman came forward and he did a strange thing.
He dropped to one knee, removed his hat and bowed to her. The crowd hushed.

‘Mother,’ he said. ‘We thank you for giving us a saviour. Today your David threw a stone and killed our enemy.
The war is over, Goliath is dead.’

 

[mjahkal]

A man sits on a hill at the end of all things. The game is over, and too late he has realized that there is no winner, no loser, there is only the end. So much effort expended, so much strain and hardship endured, and what does he have to show for it? Stones are piled at his feet. All of his accolades and accomplishments reduced to this. They used to seem to much more impressive, alive with their own light and meaning. Were they always just stones?



He picks one up, and rubs at the grimy rock. A name appears, and he nods with remembrance. This was his first business. He remembers unlocking the door before the sun rose and locking it long after darkness had fallen. He remembers toiling with every waking moment to make it successful, and it had worked, but he hadn’t realized then that it was just a stone. Just another useless rock here at the end of all things.



Once, long ago, someone had offered him something else. It had shone and shimmered with a brilliance he had never seen since. Too long ago now. He throws a stone, and waits for the end.

 

[CageSage]

Foresight
The garden needed a wall, a big wall to hold out the hordes. Fruit hung low on the trees, chickens clucked their way through the compost heap. Life was easy, life was good. It was. Until ... well, he didn't need to think about that now. He needed to protect his garden from the looters and vagabonds, the loners and the losers who were too afraid to show their faces in daylight to ask for help.
They came in the night, broke gates, snapped branches, knocked over the stakes that held the vines. They took his food.
Two choices remained. Build the wall, or remove temptation. If he picked every piece of food, hid the chooks in the laundry at night, would that stop them? Or would they then break into his house and steal everything?
He threw a stone, a last river-stone, the only remaining stone in the garden he'd spent years clearing of every rock so he could grow his own food and not suffer the allergies that came from sprays and numbers and poisons.

 

[Matthew Snoding]

An ordinary man

He was just an ordinary man. Not a terrorist, nor a monster, and certainly not any kind of messiah. He was just a pissed off man, fed up with the state of things, and wanting to make his frustration known. He didn’t have hundreds and thousands of followers, that shit’s been made up, embellished, photoshopped, deep faked in some bot factory in Ukraine or China. He was just a man, standing on the sidewalk as the parade went past, thinking he should do something.

So he threw a stone. It hit the President and the President’s men shot him dead. That was it. And everything else which followed seems, I suppose now, to have been inevitable. You can only take people so far before something like this happens and people have a new idol to rally around, a new cause, a new direction. And everything changes from then on. Maybe for the best, maybe not. We won’t know for a while, although it’ll probably all turn to shit again, it generally does.

And when it does, it’ll be a question of who’ll be brave enough to throw the first stone. Someone has to.

Tell me. Would you?

 

[Matthew Snoding]

Underlying

It turns out that I had an underlying health condition. Not something I was officially aware of – well, perhaps I suspected – I’d been a little out of breath here and there, my heart doing things from time to time that the heart of a fifty year old ordinarily shouldn’t be doing, but I thought it was nothing serious. You don’t do you? Then it hit, big time, and there I was, in hospital, and they there all were, in their PPE, doing what they could for me, but I could have told them, if it were possible, I could have told them it was useless. I could have told them I didn’t want to go back, not after everything that had passed. Back to what? Everything had slipped away because the one wrong decision so many years ago – there was a promise made that wasn’t kept, the whisper of another life, and a door quietly closed in front of me before I could step through, and another behind me before I could step back.

I see him, my son, my boy, seventeen and lost. He throws a stone into the river and it sinks without a trace.

 

[gbhunt]

“Something’s happening with Godfrey.”

Philipp looked up. “Really?”

Artie’s green eyes shimmered as she cleaned her stethoscope. “I just checked on him. Poor thing, he’s been through so much, and he was such a cute kid. I think he might be about to,” she glanced at the waiting room door and her voice fell to a whisper, “pass—”

“Finally!” With great relief, Philipp returned to his medical records.

“Do you want to go back and look?”

“I’ve done everything I can. You’ve given his painkiller?”

“Of course.”

Philipp clicked on a patient file. “I’ll check in half an hour. It should be over by then, and I’ll give Rachel the news.”

“She hated leaving him. Really, she should just let us do our job.” Artie cleaned the examination table with brisk strokes that suggested she had Godfrey’s mum in mind. “I hope she’s kinder today than she was after Billy.”

“She doesn’t mean any harm,” Philipp said.

“She called you an uncaring excuse for a quack. And you’re not a quack.”

“Thanks—”

A loud bleat echoed from the kennel room.

Moments later, Philipp dialled Rachel. “He’s fine. He threw another kidney stone. I know, that’s goats for you.”

 

[Salma Eljahrani]

Feelings' nap

From the ashes of a broken peony
Had bloomed a lonely symphony
That kiss of wind of harmony
Was what kept her company

The warm tears upon her cheeks
The sweet breeze when she speaks
Her mythical scent is what it takes
A second from her life was what he seeks

He threw a stone, alone
In the river of the unknown
He knew now, nothing can be done
Cause she's gone

Since now and then, he'll be sad
Playing on the life's piano that same serenade
For the cinders of their last memories, he will be glad
'After all', he said, 'a feelings' nap wouldn't be bad'

 

[J Babo]

I am a stepfather. As such, I have been advised, told, and even urged, to hold back. I am to be friendly—a male role model to do fun stuff, instead of taking him to task. So, I bit my tongue when he began lying.

‘He threw a stone. He’s a bully,' the teachers said—I had to be quiet.

He turns on his mother, screams at her, and calls her names. I watch him stoning her heart in silence. I do what is my only power. I hold her in my arms and say; ‘all will be well’.

All is not well. He is now threatening to move in with his father. I fade into the background, terrified for his mother.

He is ugly and foul. I watch him as he spits his bile. She keeps crying.

I can no longer be a shadow, and my rage scares him … all too briefly. He hardens, and with eyes full of contempt, shouts:

“You are not my father!”

He moved out afterwards, and my wife left me out of resentment.

I was a stepfather, and I am left wondering—should I have stepped in sooner, or stayed silent?

 

[Jonny]

Skimming Stones

The stone skimmed the surface ten times before running out of momentum, then seeming to flounder for a split second it sank into the dark pool as ripples radiated outwards.

"A tenner, Dad. Beat that," said Sean.

"Hah, easy," I scoffed.

I scanned the riverbank immediately spotting a perfect "skimmer". A small piece of ancient slate, grey and roughly-splintered along its edges. Perfect for the job. Made for it. This was going to be too easy. I already estimated it was good fifteener at the very least.

"Last go, Dad. If you don't make eleven I'm the winner."

I smiled. He was actually enjoying skimming stones. A proper game that didn't require a screen or console. Amazing.

"Watch this," I said.

I stood back from the bank, hunkered down a little preparing to take my throw. The slate was definitely my trump card and yet... at the crucial moment I just sensed something might go wrong. I faltered as I threw. The slate hit the pool's surface heavily and only managed six hops.

"Hopeless. Six. I win." Sean was delighted.

"Well done. You beat me fair and square. Just like I beat Granddad right here forty years ago," I said.

hat-tip to @Emily

 

[Barbara]

The winner of May's Flash Club is:

Jonny!!

Well done @Jonny. A round or applause is in order here.