Introducing the flash for Wednesday, June 21, 2023!
“Please, let me stay longer,” a boy begged his stern aunt. She pursed her lips, glancing at the last straggler to leave the cemetery. Mist curled in from the lake beyond the winter barren trees, and shadows extended from each tombstone as the sunk sank too close to the horizon.
“Fine, but be home before nightfall.”
The boy nodded, his gaze turning back to two fresh piles of dirt, each the length of his parents.
His jaw hardened as he stared at their graves, his fingernails digging into his palms at his side. They should be here beside him. To care for him. To hug him and say how much they love him.
And yet…they were here, buried six feet under, their bodies so shredded the undertaker couldn’t patch them up. The boy hadn’t even been allowed to see them.
Slow footsteps crunched through dry grass as a wispy woman approached the double swells of fresh dirt and began to play her violin. A soft melody, melancholy and bitter, filled the still air.
Mist curled around both figures as the song progressed, and something hard and foreign built within the boy. It started in the pit of his stomach, building up his throat, choking him until a cry ripped from his chest. Tears finally fell, and the tightness in his fists relaxed.
The music forced him to feel, and when his crying ran out, his eyes burning and raw, the woman lowered her violin and disappeared into the mist.
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