Back Again

She’d agreed to this assignment. Put retirement on hold for one more case to smoke out a mole. The honeypot. Dumb blonde stereotype. She still had the body for it, so she gave in to their persuasive pleas. And he’d fallen for it.

Now as he snored, she quietly rolled over, about to get up and finally walk out on this life. Until a cold blade chilled the back of her neck. No sounds except her gasp of shock. There are moments caught between heart-beats. Some see their whole life flash before their eyes. She saw only what could have been.

His hand tangled itself in her hair. Jerked her head back. One last look at that god-awful bare ceiling fixture. It looked different from this angle. More sinister than when she was lying on her back. The yellowed light flickered. Then sputtered out.

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Kim is hosting Prosery Night at dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. She asks us to use the line “There are moments caught between heart-beats” from Louis MacNeice’s poem Coda in a piece of flash fiction that can be up to or exactly 144 words. Back Again is 144 words. Photo from pixabay.com. 
YES! Even though dVerse is usually poetry….this is a prompt for flash fiction, using an exact line from a particular poem.

Prosery I

She stumbled through life, nomadic in her search for meaning. Somehow alone when surrounded by others. Even more alone with the one identified by many, as her true love. She finally fled the good life in New York City, to homestead in Montana. Cleared the land, blisters budding on calloused hands. Days passed into nights and nights into days. She savored their rhythm, beginning to understand who she was. Only then did she put pen to paper . . .

. . . Please know, we never could be, even when we were. My voice was too matched to yours. I am not who you heard or saw. I never was. Do not search for me. When far away, an interrupted cry reminds you of that last night, please know that cry, from wherever it comes, is my spirit thanking you, for letting go.

Word Count: 144. Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets. Today Bjorn hosts, and begins, a new category of writing for dVerse: Prosery. Prosery is similar to Flash Fiction, but with a dVerse spin! Writers must write a piece of fiction with 144 words or less, that includes a particular line of poetry, provided by the dVerse host. For the inaugural Prosery prompt, Bjorn asks us to include the line “When far away an interruped cry” taken from the poem acquainted with the night by Robert Frost.