Day 7 of Photography101 and the theme is ‘Landmark’.
Memento.
I bent down and picked up a handful of sand. His stone eyes watched me as I let the grains fall through my fingers and into the black cylinder that had contained a fresh 35mm film cassette just seconds ago. I snapped the grey lid shut, and placed my very own piece of the Sahara in my pocket.
Today I was given the task of rewriting a set story from the perspective of a 12 year old sat across the street. So again I am curtailing my lengthy words and sentences for something simpler….
Pig.
I thought it was strange that she wasn’t crying. Those pigs turned up at her door with their blue flashing lights and their noisy sirens, almost bursting my eardrum. It’s my dad that calls them pigs. He might’ve even oinked at them once when they knocked on our door. He doesn’t get into trouble anymore, he just doesn’t much like them.
Her door didn’t take much of a kicking. It’d been off its hinges for weeks. She hadn’t left the house so she probably didn’t even notice. I used to catch her sometimes when I was hiding in the bush in our front garden. She’d be looking out the window and holding onto something tight on her chest. I’d been sat here a lot lately on account of the shouting inside, it is all too deafening for me.
One of Mrs Pauley’s sons had brought me orange squash when he was last here. We sat and talked about my shouting parents, about his dead Dad. He loosened his tie and took off his black jacket and rolled up his sleeves, then he started making daisy chains in the mud. I thought he was a bit old to be making daisy chains, but I remembered playing Nintendo with him when he lived with his Mum so I helped him. Maybe he was going to give it to her to cheer her up, on account of her husband being dead. They usually make tea when things like that happen around here.
I recognised the man standing behind the pigs. He turned up at our door one summer when Dad was locked up. His face was twisted and snarling, he shouted for hours and hours about money. He stayed the night, luckily he didn’t seem so angry over Rice Krispies in the morning.
They were putting her in their car, hands behind her back. The man standing behind was shaking his head at her. I tried to wave when they drove away, she was in the back seat but she didn’t even look up. She must not have seen me. She was still carrying that jumper, her face was buried in it. I think I recognised it now from when Mr Pauley was alive.
Today’s task is one of perspectives… “A man and a woman walk through the park together, holding hands. They pass an old woman sitting on a bench. The old woman is knitting a small, red sweater. The man begins to cry. Write this scene from three different points of view.”
I’ve answered this with three separate stories of flash fiction, which also sit together as a whole…
Red.
His hand shuddered upon her touch.
Seeing red was his daily hell.
For the last time, she knitted.
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