Thursday 1 October 2020

Here's a bit of flash fiction!

 


This piece was written in a flash - ten minutes during a meeting of the Uxbridge Writers' Circle

The prompt was "Children in a Tree" by the artist Alex Colville (sorry, the image above is obviously not that picture!). 

Lewis has always contended that being left stranded in the large, leafy oak tree caused him permanent damage. It wasn't so much the broken leg that he suffered when he finally tumbled to the ground, but the sense of abandonment. He'd thought that his older brother, nine years old at the time, loved him, or at the very least cared about him. He believed they had fun playing together, laughing together, chasing the dog together. To find out, in such a hurtful way, that he was completely and utterly wrong, shattered him. His legs had trembled and the tears flowed, seemingly unstoppable, as he'd tried to climb down. Losing his grip, he'd landed on the acorn-covered ground and heard someone screaming - it had been him. 

     Several years later, he enrolled in the same university his brother was attending. He'd managed to keep his distance, somehow, all that time after the oak tree incident, but their father had decided that they were to share an apartment, and wouldn't hear of anything different. Neither boy, or young man now, wanted to live in close proximity to the other. 

     Lewis moved in first, followed the next day by Bret, who didn't say a word. But after a couple of beers, Bret told him that their father had caned him for leaving Lewis in the tree and he still had the scars. 

     They talked at last. 

Vicky Earle copyright 2020