The Unicorn Challenge.
A magical new weekly writing opportunity from her – Jenne Gray – and me.
Visit her blog every Friday to see the photo prompt, and post your amazing story in her comments section.
Or on your own blog, and stick the link down in her comments.
The rules are:
Maximum of 250 words.
Based on photo prompt.
That’s it.
To hear me read my story, just click here:
Lies
The funny thing is, sweetheart, that I didn’t believe you.
In spite of the fact that, when you said you had never lied to me, I believed you.
And, when you promised that you never would lie to me, I believed you.
And yet, I didn’t believe you this time.
It just seemed so out of character for you, just not the sort of thing you’d do.
Not to me.
We’d been through so much together, over the years, good times and bad.
We hiked Scotland’s West Highlands, France’s Juras, and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
We visited San Francisco, Venice and Sydney, New Orleans, Amsterdam and Prague.
We saw, live in concert, Dylan and the Stones, Bowie and Springsteen, Willie Nelson and, by far your favourite, Leonard Cohen, the man whose voice reduced you to tears, and a torrent of passion.
We loved with dangerous intensity and argued with ferocious humour.
Until, towards the end, when the love became less fevered, and the humour just dwindled daily.
I still didn’t believe you.
You knew how much I needed you, and that I loved you even more than that, and yet you were utterly inflexible.
I have to, you told me, with your sad but gentle smile, and a barely visible shake of your lovely head.
And so you abandoned me.
I sit beside your empty chair, hating every laughing couple, every hand-holding pair, everyone in the world.
Because they’re alive.
I still don’t believe that you’re not.
Now, who was betrayed here? Or did he just betray himself and love’s warm wearing down to soft flannel over time?
That such rich experiences and close bonds could end in such a way does indeed seem inconceivable. You’ve isolated a key aspect of grief – the difficulty of comprehending the loss of a loved one. Some deep logic within us refuses to accept the reality of death. So movingly portrayed here.
Thank you, Margaret, you have grasped exactly what I tried to say.
The narrator refused to believe her before her death,and now, afterwards, cannot cope with the reality.
A heartbreaker, CE.
Deeply personal voice.
Lovely read.
Thank you, Nancy, it’s rewarding when a piece touches a reader.
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yow
(and my brain is seeking the cool greco-roman term of the rhetorical device with which urgency (and, imo, therefore the Reader’s investments in the story) through a repeating pattern. very cool
very poignant
I’ll happily accept ‘yow’ and ‘very poignant’ and skip over the bit in the middle!
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Those lies will do it every time. I don’t know why but I’ve been working on a solution about lies for weeks before your piece about lies appeared. Seemed like the right time to post it.
I think I can maybe guess why lies have been on your mind recently, dear Lady.
Something to do with a vile rapist who wouldn’t recognise the truth if it bit him on his sagging buttock, but who half your population has decided is a fit leader for your country?
Oh, my! (which, you have to admit, is far different than my usual “Yikes” response to your stories). My heart breaks for him — perhaps because I know him and have dinner with him nearly every night and hear stories of their adventures to all those different places and see — in real life — how much he misses her.
How sad, Sally.
We all lose people we love, it’s the tragedy of life.
What a rich and full life they shared, so vividly described.
Ah but…
It seems he’s one to give a whole new meaning to ‘a love that’s dead’…
And a delicious chill down the spine of readers everywhere.
Now, now, Jenne, the title was the only misdirection this week!
The truth he wouldn’t believe is that her illness is/was terminal.
He had me fooled! And then I read the comments…
Oh, so sad at the end.
Life sometimes is, Chris.