Picture Fiction Challenge #1

A fellow blogger [R.E.H. @ madmanramble.blogspot.com] started a monthly Picture Fiction Story challenge where he provides five photos representing main character, main goal, setting, a key item, and a random photo that should all be pertinent to the story. We ponder the pictures and then let our creative powers flow and see where they take us. Then, we post at the deadline and read what everyone else came up with too.

Here is the link to his site the with complete explanation: http://madmanramble.blogspot.com/2008/02/pfc-1.html

I've chosen to participate because I enjoy writing and it seems to work mind muscles that have been sagging lately. So, monthly, I will post my latest PFC achievement.
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Now, my first PFC entry/post is somewhat tragic. An entire life(lives) can be changed in half a blink...it is almost unimagineable to me. It is always hard for me to accept.

Thus, it is somewhat dark, hence the title "Tragedy." Just wanted my readers to know, it's not my typical whimsical self. (Below are the photo elements for this PFC):



I think the setting affected me most and foremost. [Deep breath.....sighhhhh] Here we go:
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"A Tragedy"

So there I was, I don’t even remember what brought me there…but I had escaped. The ugliness of what was revealed before. The beach is so free so I ran, and I ran, and…I walked at times but could not escape it all quickly enough so I ran…and ran some more…until, somehow…my mind still running at full speed…disengaged from my legs as they gave out.

So unfairly, my ill-equivalent mind pushed on. It would not “rid itself” of that word, that term they gave it. That term they gave her. I could not escape it. She was gone….those eyes that so drew me in and melted my soul….they too, were gone. Who could have known…no one is ever safe. There is always danger. There are always strangers. Like the one took her from me, a monstrous beast.

I have to return. I have to go back. I have to deal with her loss and what she left behind for me. I drag myself up tasting the sand in my mouth from my exhausted fall. I begin to walk. People are looking at me but I do not see them. They are watching and wondering. They see my clothes all painted in red. I walk….the boardwalk…..the sidewalk….they bring me to our place.

It isn’t a perfect place. But, it is “our place” we had searched for together. We had scrimped and saved our pennies to afford it. To most it is a dump of a place in a dump of a building. But, to us, it is….it was, our two storied mansion. Our castle as we would have it…and its beauty grew in our minds each time we entered the door. That was a paranormal door. Through it we entered an enchanting world – the world of us. And, we escaped the dum drum of our childhoods and the people who ruined them.

We escaped the poverty we lived in, we escaped the ugliness of the trash cluttered streets, we escaped the cold, the wet, the dreariness of this dark and hideous city. We were making plans in our new place. We were going to flee this city one day and make our future in what was it she called it? Our “blissful haven.” I don’t know if she ever realized that she was my blissful haven.

My legs have carried me back to our door. It is open but our “place” is now strewn with yellow tape. The tape they use to preserve the “event” that has happened here. I find my eyes looking around and I see that shadow box. THE LEAF. It once hung on our wall, affixed and protected by her perfected methods of preserving things.

Now I’m thanking her for preserving that leaf…that one and only “one, in a million leaf.” It is the preservation and reminder of our love. Proof of us. The leaf, and that preposterous picture of that girl “jumping in the sand.” I never quite got why she favored it so. It was just a picture she had taken for an assignment for her first Photography class. She took it the day we met, there on the beach. Maybe that’s why she liked it so much.

But still, we have other pictures, better pictures, and of us together. “But, why display this one on the wall?” I once asked her. Why not in an album, in a scrapbook? It was just a photo. She had tons of photos that seemed so much more important and none of them were adorned to our wall. And, she didn’t even know that girl. But, that’s how she was. It was somehow significant to her. She saw things with those big, seeking eyes of hers. And, whatever she saw in it…she would somehow preserve. Like, our leaf.

When all of this has gone away, I will return them both to their places on our wall. And, I will sit and stare at them. Alone, because that invader took her from me. He took her last breath. He stole it from me and then left her here, in our place slowly painting it red.

It isn’t fair, it isn’t right, I can’t possibly fathom…that she has been taken from me. By some unknown force. Who is this devil of a person to have this power over me? I had everything…and, now I have lost everything…my love, my life, my future.

Without her I will never make it to our blissful haven. Without her my future is inaccessible. I long for the past. I do not long for the future. I do not want the day, after the day, after tomorrow until the day I can finally breathe again. I do not want to breathe again, not without her.

I will somehow find a way and I know I will somehow exist because that is how life is. But, I do not want to. Without her I simply remain left behind with only her memory, a picture, and a shadow box that shelters our leaf.

Picture Fiction Challenge #1