Flash Fiction Friday: The Tracks of my Tears

Rain (Liberia, Guanacaste, Costa Rica). CC2.0 photo by NannyDaddy.
Rain (Liberia, Guanacaste, Costa Rica). CC2.0 photo by NannyDaddy.

The Tracks of my Tears (202 words)

I can forget until it rains. Because when it rains, the red appears. Or reappears, I should say.

They claim it’s just different-colored cement. But I know better. I know it’s blood. I know who’s buried underneath.

It was a moment of rage, of insanity, of desperation, the night I killed my wife and children. Too long without a job, too long without a paycheck, too long without respect.

I’d bathed my sorrows in the last of the gin, her voice echoing around me, taunting me, goading me.

“You’re no man,” she’d screamed. “You do not do right by your family. You are killing us, with your booze and your laziness. Killing us!”

I’d needed to silence the voice, silence the condemnation.

So I had. A gun in the drawer, for self-protection, I’d always said.

I protected myself, all right.

No one saw me. No one knew. I said they’d gone on a trip to visit family, back in the Old Country, and never come home. Knowing me, my failures, my shame, everyone believed.

Only I know they are there, in the soil under the square, hidden there before this had become another vast wasteland of pavement.

Only I, and the rain.

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This week Flash Friday Fiction has us focusing on theme, namely “a fleeting moment.” Using that idea, plus the photo prompt, we were given 200 (+/-10) words to draft a story. What do you think of mine?

I hope you’ll follow the link above to read and comment on the other entries, or perhaps even submit a short (very short!) story of your own.

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