Flash! Friday Fiction: This Isn’t A Fairy Tale

Fairy walking bridge, Huangshang, China. Photo by Jesse Varner.
Fairy walking bridge, Huangshang, China. Photo by Jesse Varner.

Nobody knew how the bridge had gotten there, how whoever built it had managed to lay the stones without falling into the abyss below. Maybe they had. Nobody knew who’d built it, even – Slaves? An army? Merchants desperate to spread trading routes? Nobody knew when it had been built. It seemed timeless, eternal in its stone-faced presence. Nobody knew its secrets.

I knew one, though. I knew, as I watched from my narrow window in this tall tower, that no one would ever rescue me. I’d watched them try – watched them storm out of the blackness of that cave, all mad fury and hopeful hungering, only to be stopped time and again by the flames from the dragon’s mouth. I’d heard them wailing as they fell, burning, to their deaths. I knew. I knew this bridge connects nothing but men to failure, and me to lifetimes of solitude.

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This week’s challenge was to write 150 words, exactly. What do you think? See the other contest entries at Flash! Friday Fiction.

 

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