Flash Fiction Prompt by: Paranormal
Paranormal Prompts: Prompt 24 - Picture Prompt
❤ WINNER! ❤

Prompt

(2,000 characters or less)

My Entry
(1,502 characters)

It feels like drowning... like being submerged beneath the wavering ocean surface as raindrops tap dance above me. I wish I could feel their crisp pebbles crash and pour over my skin, but everything down here is... so calm.

I feel nothing.

I look around, and I wish I could see the colorful flora of marine gardens, or maybe swim alongside a magnificent manta ray whose fins are gliding through the water like graceful wings.

But I cannot.

It is dark.

And there is nothing here.

As they lower my wife's casket into the earth, I light up a cigarette, shielding its burn from an overbearing wind, and take one long, purposeful drag.

"Uncle Leo, I thought you quit that stuff," Jacob says. He is my wife's nine-year-old nephew, with red hair, ruddy cheeks, an Avengers tee, and grass stains on his jeans. "Auntie Monica hates when you do that."

"Yeah," I mumble, bouncing the cigarette between my lips, "well, your Auntie Monica isn't here."

Jacob's mother glares at me, tugging her son's elbows as if to shield him from an overbearing me. She doesn't understand why I'm not crying. She thinks I'm being insensitive. Or maybe, she thinks I never loved her sister at all.

"That stuff'll kill ya," Jacob says, eyes transfixed on the swirling puffs of smoke. Perhaps he too seeks a distraction from today's service.

I smile. "Yeah, kid. That's the idea."

Like drowning...

My lungs are burning.

And I can't wait to drift to sleep, fall into the black bottomless abyss of the ocean, and welcome Death's dark and cold embrace.