Flash Fiction: Quiet Like the Dead
Jul. 30th, 2009 03:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wordwhackerAt least once a week, I'm writing a 15 minute piece of fiction in response to a prompt of some kind, usually something from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
15_minute_fic. These won't be friends locked. Going to catch up on a few of these now, as well as a couple of longer stories that I've been working on.
---
Written for Word #117 over at15_minute_fic
Quiet Like the Dead (flash, 349 words)
When she came in that night after work, she didn't say anything to him. Nor did he turn to watch her enter, try to catch her eye or even say hello. He sat in his plush but aging recliner, feet up, the baseball game spread before him in high definition flat screen technology that he hadn't even started paying for yet. Her coming home was just a footnote, a background noise, a momentary shift in the air currents of the house.
At first she'd tried to be quiet. The key would slide into the lock and she would turn the knob and push the door as she turned the key, letting it unlatch without thunking. The door creaked when it was open full so she slid in through the smallest sliver she could manage. On hot nights she didn't even closet it again, leaving it open to the cool drafts that floated up the stairs. Then she'd creep to her room, her shoes in her hand, and slip into something more comfortable, something she could read in, because reading was quiet.
Maybe then it could partly be her fault. Maybe she had some control over his waning interest in everything she did. She could believe that it was something she actively invited.
One day she dropped a shoe. It hit the ground and made her grandmother's tin figurines jitter. Her head snapped in his direction, waiting, hoping. But his head didn't move.
She picked the shoe up and went into her room, and she cried, curled up on her bed, twisting her wedding ring around and around her finger.
Once she'd prayed for this, openly. When they'd fought every night for a week and she had gone to work every morning with sick pains in her guts, she had prayed for silence. At night she would lay awake next to him, curling away from his naked body, and wishing that the days could be so peacful, predictable.
It was dead, the thing that had brought them together. And in the quiet of the night that now seeped into every day, she could feel it rotting.
15_minute_fic. These won't be friends locked. Going to catch up on a few of these now, as well as a couple of longer stories that I've been working on.---
Written for Word #117 over at
15_minute_ficQuiet Like the Dead (flash, 349 words)
When she came in that night after work, she didn't say anything to him. Nor did he turn to watch her enter, try to catch her eye or even say hello. He sat in his plush but aging recliner, feet up, the baseball game spread before him in high definition flat screen technology that he hadn't even started paying for yet. Her coming home was just a footnote, a background noise, a momentary shift in the air currents of the house.
At first she'd tried to be quiet. The key would slide into the lock and she would turn the knob and push the door as she turned the key, letting it unlatch without thunking. The door creaked when it was open full so she slid in through the smallest sliver she could manage. On hot nights she didn't even closet it again, leaving it open to the cool drafts that floated up the stairs. Then she'd creep to her room, her shoes in her hand, and slip into something more comfortable, something she could read in, because reading was quiet.
Maybe then it could partly be her fault. Maybe she had some control over his waning interest in everything she did. She could believe that it was something she actively invited.
One day she dropped a shoe. It hit the ground and made her grandmother's tin figurines jitter. Her head snapped in his direction, waiting, hoping. But his head didn't move.
She picked the shoe up and went into her room, and she cried, curled up on her bed, twisting her wedding ring around and around her finger.
Once she'd prayed for this, openly. When they'd fought every night for a week and she had gone to work every morning with sick pains in her guts, she had prayed for silence. At night she would lay awake next to him, curling away from his naked body, and wishing that the days could be so peacful, predictable.
It was dead, the thing that had brought them together. And in the quiet of the night that now seeped into every day, she could feel it rotting.
