ROMANTIC FRIDAY WRITERS and 3WW

Friday, June 3, 2011

Well here I go again, combining two awesome writing events so I don't have to decide which to participate in. 

Three Word Wednesday (3WW)  is a weekly writing prompt that posts three random words on Wednesdays.  All genre's and content welcome, and you have a week to post your submission, but you must use all three words in your excerpt, and link directly back to the post.  No word limits.

Romantic Friday Writers is the creation of Francine Howarth and L'Aussie Denise.  There is a different theme each Friday, but the guidelines are to write in 400 words or less, link directly to the post at the RFW site, and post a link and the logo on your entry.

This weeks RFW theme is "I remember."  This weeks 3WW words are: erratic, luminous, omen.

My entry is a tad over 400.  Ooops . .

Wanda approached the computer with caution. She’d avoided all glimpses of herself since the accident. Clovis was kind enough to change the screen saver so the photo reminders disappeared, but sometimes the light captured a vague image, stirring reminders. She closed her eyes, pushed the button, and counted out the seconds for the blue screen to load.

Her memory was unstable, fading and overwhelming at erratic moments. She saw his face, felt his touch, his breath in the crook of her neck. His warm lips brushing her’s in the heat of her morning coffee. At times emotions flowed unbidden like a tidal wave over her, pulling her heart into a ragged, limping burden in her chest.

Then she’d be an empty shell for days; but at least she could work. Codes filled the blank spaces where he intruded; nameless and voiceless.

Lost in her world of bytes and pixels, Wanda paid no attention to the folders she opened. Words without meaning until she inserted them in their proper place. Then one assaulted the fragile hold on the reality she’d painstakingly built for weeks.

Hale.

Pictures of a life unlived filtered through her shattered psyche. She traced the scars on her chin and cheek, the chewed remnant of her left ear. Patches of hair that would never grow back. She drew shaky fingers through the shortened brown links, feeling Hale’s graceful strokes.

The tears she cried were the same as the night he asked her to marry him, up in the cabin on the lake. It was dusk, they were on the porch. An owl hooted.

“Who will you be?” Hale cooed in the now missing ear.

Not an easy choice, despite her love for Hale. She had her own career plans, and they didn’t include a leg up from her boss turned husband. She turned her face into his shoulder; the two of them looking so in love and perfect together glanced back from the picture window.

Perhaps it was an omen that the reflection was insubstantial. In the next instant, a bat tangled in her hair; razor talons slashing and ripping, its screams mixing with her own. Suddenly the wings and claws were gone, and she crumpled to the deck in agony. A scream that wasn’t her own rent the air, pulling her from the threatening blackness.

Everything went silent as the bat lifted off Hale, dripping blood from teeth and talons. And Hale lie bleeding from his neck. Pale moonlight pierced his luminous green eyes. His lids closed, and so did Wanda’s.

She closed her eyes now, but the image didn’t disperse, and she could not pass out this time to avoid the pain of his loss.