The Silence of the Night

Flash fiction for The Challenged

Photo by Debbie Ducic on Unsplash

An early response to SC Thompson's July 17 challenge for new writers to create narrative fiction — “When the Songbird Cries.” I am not new to fiction, but I decided to meet the challenge anyway!

Verde que te quiero verde…. Federico García Lorca

Guille reached the old hacienda just as the sun, its fury spent, was pouring its golden afterglow upon a limpid line of clouds that, like rumpled blankets after sex, barely covered the naked jungle below them.

He had wandered far, so far that he had forgotten the dissonance of the dusk, when the silence of the day wrestled with the silence of the night, while a cacophony of invisible performers created a symphonic suite toward an imminent end.

He once knew them all: the sopranos of the sky, the altos as they skipped from bush to bramble, the braying baritone of the mourning doves, the booming bass of the sapo conchos. And conducting from the branches, the tree frogs with their two-tone flutes: co-qui, co-qui.

He walked the trail he had walked as a boy, before the world lured him away. The salto still shoved its narrow arms across the rocks, as it danced to its death in the pond where he had once bathed. In the fading light he could see, below the waterfalls, the faces of his family, the color of moss.

He knew night. He welcomed it. His journey through day was ending. The concert was almost over. As he waded into the warm water, only the cry of a single songbird was heard. The audience of the night splashed its applause. There would be no encore.

Here is another “cheerful” story:

[embed]Now I Lay Him Down A eulogy for an ordinary manmedium.com

If you like odd stories, try this:

[embed]Tentative Tentacles, Trembling Testicles I am nothing, if not my allrcfgunkle.medium.com

Here is the link to more challenges:

[embed]I’m Jumping for Joy It’s July Why? I can still jump… not high… but lift two feet off the ground togethermedium.com