D. Doug Mains is the Readers’ Choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. The winning entry is decided by the popular vote and rewarded with a special feature here today. (In the case of a tie, the writer who submitted an entry first is the winner per our rules.)
Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Shadows
by D. Doug Mains
A coolness settles on the top layer of my pale skin. I feel blood pulsing throughout my body, but it’s not enough to warm. The sun sears, but I only ever get the leftovers from radiation. It is an unforgiving and ambiguous coolness-the depressive chill of a shadow, where warmth is near but never enough.
Mama and Papa, with the Shadow’s other founding fathers and mothers escaped to the caves of the Jagged Rock before I was born. A spring with a stone roof became the water hole, and they chiseled homes in surrounding orange rock. Population grew and grew. People die but never leave.
Papa says the Shadow is all there is; “We’re lone survivors of an abominable world.” Papa says, “Don’t ever climb to the Light, you hear?”
Papa is strong, burly, wise. He loves me with a belt, but he loves me. He loved my brother with a belt too, but Dror didn’t understand. Mama called Dror her little sparrow.
Dror climbed the Jagged Rock eleven months ago. He never came back, of course. Papa says he died, likely shriveled up in the fiery sun. Papa says no one survives the Light; the Shadow is our only home. Papa says no funerals for suicides making Mama cry.
“We’re meant for more than this chill, Maura,” Dror once said.
I don’t want to die-if I do I want a funeral-so I’ll stick with Papa. But I don’t want this chill anymore, and for that, I dream about climbing.
Congratulations, Doug. Excellent story.
Thanks Alyssa!
Congratulations, Doug. You wrote a fine story.
Appreciate it Deanie!
Love the imagery. Reminds me of The Road
My respect- good story.