Submitted to National Flash Fiction Day : didn’t get in. Looking forward to the entries, because it’s always a special flood of great writing. Be good to see familiar names and a pleasure to meet new writers. I’m putting my entry here. It’s got a mature theme but nothing too detailed.
The crack widens. She watches it as they grunt and grind above her, into her, venting in ways they can’t to wives or partners or people they say they love. Some want to split that crack open, others try to soothe…in penance perhaps.
She grits her teeth, does what’s wanted to fulfil the contract the crunched up notes left on the table have paid for.
But that crack widens and she watches it, wondering if she needs to move the cot away from the wall or if she should keep it as some marker like those thermometers in church halls for a charitable goal. The thought makes her giggle and the man loses his already precarious rhythm.
“Something funny,” he says.
She swallows and shakes her head, pulling on his back and hooking feet more firmly around his thighs. He grunts and continues, more pointedly she notes.
She has a goal. Or hopes she still has. It’s been a while.
Too long, maybe. That crack wasn’t even there when she started and now it’s halfway across the ceiling. But that crack will move faster than the red inside that thermometer for those needed repairs because the world changes and ceilings do not. And donations won’t get her any closer to being halfway there.
“The crying was a nice touch,” he says afterwards, tightening his belt.
She frowns and touches a cheek and then smiles wider than that crack. “All part of the service.”
He grunts but she thinks he smiles back, if wryly. He pauses at the door and reaches into his wallet, throws another fiver on the pile. And somehow that’s worse: like nothing that’s hers isn’t up for sale. She curls up on the cot: spent.
Tomorrow she’ll buy some filler and paint.
295 words
Sian_ink 