Some flash fiction I knocked up for last week’s Quickfic challenge.

Red For Safety.

It was so close she could see their faces, but the cries were torn away by the sea. She felt the same old dual perspective, seeing the shore, being there on the shore.

This was how the dream repeated, the timbers being wrenched apart, she feeling oddly calm. There was always someone on the beach, a young woman in red. An immobile figure, not capable of helping, but unable to look away.

Which had been first? Was it the story or the dream? The bay had taken a thousand lives or more, tales of the wrecks were common. Which ship was this? She’d never known its name. Stood on the deck as it broke up around her, it seemed hardly a ship at all. Who was it standing there beside her? That changed, sometimes it was someone from school, other times it was a face she’d seen on the bus. The dream was quite calming, an old friend. ‘ I cannot go down with the ship’ she thought ‘I am there alive on the shore.’

She came to the bay as often as she could, but that was annually now. Her father was gone and her mother barely knew her. The sea might be calm or furious. It had not ceased from claiming souls.

Call it a superstition if you will, she had always worn red to come here. ‘For safety’ she said. She waved, she’d never done that before. Then she turned away and went off to face another year.

 

The Quickfic challenge had a photo of a person in a red coat looking out to sea. In keeping with the Drifter’s house rules, here’s one of my own photos of the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland.