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WRITING PROMPTS | FLASH FICTION
End of the Line
A First Line Fiction prompted short story
Come stretch your imagination and feast your fingers on the keyboard with First Line Fiction where, you guessed it, the first line is the prompt!
The train lurched forward and pulled away, carrying with it his dreams as it rolled out of sight. His exhale was a deflation; it came from a bottom inside him he hadn’t felt since childhood. Or maybe it had always been there, and he had spent his life carefully sidestepping the chasm. Either way, the emptiness was the same: a complete hollowing of his soul.
The silence after the roar and howl of the iron dragon’s departure was just as deafening. Becoming a father was the easiest thing, but staying one was so much harder. He looked after the train; even though it was far beyond sight, he wished he could have gotten on with them and taken it back in time. I’m never going to get them back. I had it all but couldn’t see it.
He tried to get them on his plane; his pilot would have flown them anywhere they’d wanted to go, but she wouldn’t have it. His ex-wife, he reminded himself yet again, had always been stubborn. It amazed him; her strength, conviction and determination to see a decision through to its end, no matter how right or wrong, simple or complicated it might be. He wondered where it came from, that mightiness, the rock-solid anchor. She was such a tiny woman, but every inch of her was stoked with spirit, love and fire. Of course, it was those things that drew him to her, and she alone had been the one person who had always steadied him.
“Baby,” he tried pleading, “You’re going to be sick of that train in a few hours, and you want to rock and rattle in that tin can for how many days? Six? Let Max fly you and Yisa anywhere you want to go. Hell, you can keep the plane on call. Go to Disneyland, then New York. Or Paris. Or Rome.”
Cilla listened to him while she finished packing, letting him get all his words out, not…
