Clarity: A Collection of Flash Fiction

In response to The Daily Post’s prompt, Clarity.

That Four-letter Word

As I close my eyes to the sunlight on my eyelids, the only image that comes into focus is his face. The hair as golden as the rays of the sun, the eyes that are blue to the point that they look violet. The only moment I feel is the moment he held me in a way that he was the only thing I could see, and my breath hitches the way it did at that moment.

As I let the breeze wash through me, the only things I hear are its whispers and my heartbeat, thrown off its usual rhythm by the knowledge that he is standing right next to me.

As I open my eyes and breathe in deep, so as to let the cool air around me fill me with the joy of living, I rejoice in the feeling of his hand around mine, in the certainty that I am breathing the same air as he.

It couldn’t be clearer than at that one moment.

The Move

It hurt significantly less if all the preparations were made before you were given the chance to actually understand what was going on.

When they told her to consider moving to a country she’d never been to she tensed up, and thought about it a lot, and decided to not talk about it because it felt like if she spoke it would come true. Like the scariest nightmares. She didn’t want to leave. Not with everything she’d just begun to understand.

But she couldn’t tell them that. They wanted the move for her, after all; because it would make her life better on the long run. And she didn’t want to disappoint them.

This time, though, was different. She saw the place before she knew she’d be moving there. An hour’s drive from where she now lived. No more walking home with her friends. In fact, if she continued with what she had now even after the move, she’d be spending most of her time in the car. Her friends wouldn’t be in the neighborhood anymore.

The amount of light in the new place was amazing, though.

She wished life’s choices could be as easy as the untinted windows of their car were clear.

The Suffocating Mush

It wasn’t that reading had become alien. No. He was reading the short stories just fine. It just so happened that the school textbooks felt like the very source of his ennui.

He told himself he had time. It was him against three subjects this time, unlike the ten last year. But there’s almost the same volume to intake…

It was okay. He had time. He could manage it.

As it were, he ploughed through a few pages of the textbooks every day. It was a cumbersome task, given that he barely understood what the books were talking about, and that all of these things felt partially useless to him. And then he reminded himself of his commitment; his promise of revenge on everyone who had tried at some point to throw him off track.

Flipping through yet another page full of definitions and diagrams, barely understanding what went with what, he stifled a sigh.

How long before he understood these things as clearly as he did the previous chapters before the exams?