Welcome to a piece of Wednesday Word’s flash fiction on Darkling Dreams!
A good friend of mine, P.T. Wyant, is doing a blog post every Wednesday called Wednesday Words with a new prompt for a bit of flash fiction writing, just to get in the habit of writing something, anything. (Even if said flash fiction is complete garbage at the time. Garbage is better than nothing though, right?) If you’re looking for some inspiration yourself or just something to aimlessly write, then go check out her blog for this week’s prompt!
With that being said, I am going to share what I came up with for this week’s flash fiction prompt based off a three word combination prompt. So here is my very rough around the edges minute of inspiration based off her prompt. I’d love to hear what you guys think of it!
(Please excuse any errors you may see, I said it was rough around the edges.)
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Graveyard Ballad
Desmona leaned her elbow on her desk, propping her cheek in her hand as she stared out the window to her side. Her feet kicked back and forth lazily, starting to tune out the teacher up front. The dreary morning had left a fog to settle over the land, obscuring the headstones of the graveyard that rested beside her school.
Black iron gates rose towards the sky around the sacred ground, foreboding in a way, but also comforting. As if they kept the souls in as much as they served to keep trespassers out. The thick fog rolled over the old cemetery in a dance almost, rushing around headstones, cascading together in plumes, swirling. She watched it move across the decaying grass, mesmerized.
Her thoughts started to drift, the sounds of the classroom around her fading into the background. After some time she found herself humming a tune from Sleeping Beauty, Once Upon A Dream. Only, it didn’t have the upbeat nature to it like the children’s movie did, instead it took on the dark quality of the real people version, Maleficent.
The longer she hummed and watched the fog curl, the more eerie the outside world became. The fog grew thicker yet until she started to see shapes forming out of the swirling patterns. Shapes that lengthened out in height and grew it size, floating an inch above the ground. Spots of color began to dot them like splashes of paint. When the shapes had taken enough form she saw a host of souls dancing around in partners to some unknown ballad of music, their forms half painted with color.
It seemed like a ballroom sort of dance, reminding her further of the movies.
Flowing dresses of mist swirled as male souls twirled their partners. Tailcoats ruffled with the movements. The fog moved around the dancing images like weaving children playing. Partners changed in tune to each other, bowing, stepping together.
She smiled almost wistfully to herself as she watched the souls dancing in the graveyard, not realizing her eerie humming was growing in volume. One of her classmates leaned over and elbowed her, the entire group of students watching her.
“Desmona?” her teacher called once more, sounding concerned.
Her attention was finally pulled away from the dancing souls and she looked to her teacher. “Hmm?”
“Are you alright, dear? Please, do pay attention to the lesson.”
“Yes, Mrs. Baker,” she replied.
She watched her teacher glance out the window towards the graveyard then started up her instruction again. After a few moments, Desmona looked back out the window herself. To her dismay, the dancing souls were gone, the fog crawling over the ground aimlessly again. The only sign of life now was a lone squirrel that sat upon the iron fence, tail twitching as it chattered away. For a moment, she swore it was staring right at her with a strange gleam to its eyes before it hopped off the fence and scurried away into the graveyard out of sight.
Now you can find this flash fiction work and others on my profile on Wattpad! Click here for my profile and go dive into a sea of Shards of Imagination!
Also, as I work to play catch up from my latest computer crash, I will be posting the Shards of a prompt I missed from May and June directly to Wattpad each week. That means two Shards every week! Those old prompts will not be posted to my blog so if you wish to see the old one of the week, you’ll have to hop on over to my profile on Wattpad.
The final two Shards from playing catch up have finally gone live on Wattpad! Ouija and Moon Swing went up over the weekend! That’s it, no more catch up Shards, I’m back to one a week here.
Darkling Dreams 