aFa Footprints Short Story Challenge Accepted!

Recently, Frank at A Frank Angle challenged bloggers to write a short story based on the image above. It had to be 150 words or less, be posted after his entry goes live on July 10th, and bear the title “Footprints in the Sand.”

Challenge accepted! Here is Frank’s creative entry and below is my submission. I’m happy to have had the photo prompt and Frank’s encouragement. Here is where my imagination led me:

Footprints in the Sand

It was all that Magnus had left. Amy’s footprints in the sand. No more coconut aroma as she rushed up to hug him. No more circling his arms around her waist and pulling her in for a kiss. He moaned at the mental image of her soft lips coated with strawberry gloss brushing against his own.

Kneeling down, he put his hands gently over the marks left by the soles of her red runners. Amy’s words “on my own” and “growth” repeated in his head and he wondered how long he would hear the breaking of her voice as she said, “harder on me than you.”

As he drove his fist into the sand, he noticed a hint of blue to the side. Her woven bracelet. He grabbed it with a new vigor. He could drive to her house in 20 minutes. He could almost taste the strawberries again.

 

©2017 Christy Birmingham

The badge for Completing the aFa Short Story Challenge. Woohoo! Image via A Frank Angle.

Short Story Time: Folding Knives and Blue Eyes

This short story is inspired by a photo taken by Chris from the Milford Street blog. If you don’t know his photographs, I encourage you to go check them out in his posts! It was his recent Old Timers post that caught my eye, featuring the image below. Thanks again Chris for letting me use your photo for inspiration and permission to include it here.

Folding knives. So many stories to tell. Like this short story. Photo via Christopher O’Keefe, Old Timer, used with his permission.

Folding Knives and Blue Eyes

The knives folded on the table in front of Jude and, like them, she was without words. Where was the one that her grandpa had owned? None of these were calling out to help her.

She felt a dig into her left side.

“Oof,” she said, and her hands instinctively covered the sore spot. Looking over, she met intense blue eyes surrounded by wrinkles. The woman’s look was stern, and she muttered something under a breath that smelled mildly of sardines. Turning back to the table, she shoved Jude, this time with her hip.

“…my spot…”

Jude couldn’t make out any other words with so many other voices around her calling out prices and asking questions about how old was this lamp or what type of crystal was that?

Jude’s her bare arm met cold leather as her body swayed slightly to the right in response to being shoved. She noted the black leather belonged to a jacket that belonged to a man who she didn’t want to mess with. A thick gray beard was accompanied by a tattoo of a
skeleton’s body that ran down his neck and crawled under the collar of his coat.

One Leg at a Time: A Christmas Story

We recently had snow in Victoria, BC and it inspired this short story. I hope you all are having a nice December and, just think, it’s almost Christmas time!

One Leg at a Time

“Here are your pants and coat,” mom said, handing them both to me. I was eight now, and there would be none of this put on my clothes for me nonsense. It was a one leg at time routine, sure and steady, pulling up the waterproof red pants over my fleece leggings.

Now in the warm outfit, I slowly made my way to the front door as my bulky legs wouldn’t let me go at the quick pace I wanted. Mom had to help this time with putting on my boots as bending over would have thrown off my balance and sent me headfirst into the wooden shoe rack.

First, she put the plastic bags that once held loaves of bread over each socked foot, one at a time. No snow was going to dampen my feet if we could help it. Then I dove my wrapped feet into each boot held in place on the ground by my mom’s solid grip. No need to ask how I knew that grip was such a good one.

Short Story: Red Door and More

Red of the door that appears. Photo via Pixabay.

Creativity for the day. It has been a while since I shared some of my fiction here. This is my newest short story. It is called Red Door and More.

Red Door and More

Was that door new?

It hadn’t been there yesterday, this morning, two minutes ago, had it? He’d been out of bed at 5:42am and had only consumed half a mug of coffee. He wondered if  he was at the woah-my-head-is-making-crap-up stage.

Well, it looks like the latter stage was the one to play with today, thought Brian. Only he wasn’t sure if he would suit the character of the situation well enough as he was hadn’t shaved… yet. As he itched his chin, he considered how many times he’d said that to himself this week. He even pondered whether he’d said it out loud. Not that Ginger cared; she was too busy scratching at the legs of his coffee table anyway.

Another sip of coffee and a thought about the whether he had refreshed her water bowl lately, and then he was somehow down on his hands and knees on the floor. Just to the right of the kitchen counter. Hell there was even a doorknob on this red door.

Knock? He laughed to himself. Yeah, knock and shave. He laughed out loud this time. The sound of fabric being torn met his ears and he knew already Ginger was at work on her project in the living room.

He opened the door and peered through. He couldn’t fit; that was obvious. Ironic, he’d always seemed to come up short for things and now here he was too much for something. He spared himself the emptiness of laughing to a room that wouldn’t respond to him.