Last Letter
Dear Mother, I only have time for a few lines. After all these years, I look forward to finally meeting again.
I’d very much like to see Father and you under different circumstances, but times are sad and the war rages in Europe. Lillian and I would like both of you to join us and return with us to America, where we will be able to live safely.
As this letter reaches you we will be one day from reaching Liverpool. Our arrival is expected on the eighth day of May on board the Lusitania.
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This is my entry for the Weekly Writing Exercise: September 28-October 4, 2015 at the Writer’s Discussion Group in Google+.
This week moderator Amy Knepper gave us an extra challenge: we had to use only 100 words. I’ve tried that before, and it’s extremely difficult to pack a whole story in such a short space. However, the entries we had were magnificent.
Regarding my entry, I just love how it came out. However, even though I edited it carefully, the double use of “arrive” in the last sentence is there, signalling how I missed it through all the editing. Damn.
Bonus: An unexpected side effect I experienced was that, while struggling for the perfect story, I came up with another two, which I present here. The first one is a (not that good) reflection on the first things that came through my mind when i saw the prompt. The second one is pure fiction, and I found that it was quite similar to the one which won this week.
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Writing Challenge
When the writer saw the picture prompt, he felt exhilarated. The image was evocative and enticing: it pictured the marine bacteria-ridden skeleton of the bridge of a sunken ship.
But then he read the word limit: 100 words. How was that possible? The writer had been taking part, for the last week, in a parallel challenge in his mother tongue. A 100-word challenge. Thus he knew how difficult such a fiction piece could be, especially compared to the comfortable length of 600 words he was used to.
He had no choice but to sit down and write.
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Drowning
He falls, falls. Down the water, the currents pulling at him as the anchor’s weight yanks him down. Air leaving his lungs, the pressure builds up and he feels his eardrums burn. His eyes would fill with tears, were he not underwater.
He cannot breath, not any longer.
He gives up, and lets the salty water rush up into his mouth, embracing death.
Instead, there is light. A flash, and, impossible as it is, he can breathe again. And he sees her coming, swimming at him in powerful yet graceful strokes.
She grabs his hand, and they leave.
