Our own Chris James is the winner of the Indies Unlimited weekly Flash Fiction competition. There was a tough field of competitors this week. Congratulations to Chris, and thanks to everyone who participated – excellent entries!

The winning entry is rewarded with a special feature here today and a place in our collection of winners which will be published as an e-book at year end.

Without further ado, here’s the winning entry:

 

Photo by K.S. Brooks

Fall Morning

by Chris James

Autumnal viewed the trees about her with a familiar sadness. She knew that this scene spoke for everything she represented: the melancholy beauty of nature’s season of decay and death, but which carried with it the promise of renewal.

Autumnal could describe the essence of this beauty like no other: the changing leaf colours, which darkened as the days darkened; the returning nakedness among the branches; the crunch of the first frost in weak, yellow sunlight. But the longer nights and colder days comforted her, as they matched so well her loneliness and neglect. Autumnal waited every year, in the vain hope she would be called on and feel needed.

But instead, fall bullied and pushed his way forward, as he did every year. Autumnal felt no malice towards him, for he was a simple and blunt creature; easy to pronounce and easy to remember. Autumnal only felt a fluttering regret, like a late, tiring butterfly about to succumb to fall’s icy grip. Fall already had so many uses, so many ways in which he’d made himself needed. Autumnal wished that he could’ve left her this one scene, these few days for which she’d been created to describe so perfectly.

Autumnal knelt and placed her hand in the cold water. Ripples spread outwards soundlessly, and the chill from her fingers ran up her arm to freeze the beauty of her soul. Once again, she thought: perhaps next year?