February / March 100 Word Anonymous Challenge

[elvet]

Starry Night – - Bright Comets Adrift


Saint-Paul Asylum, June 1889

In the hours just before dawn they called to him through the iron-barred window of his room.

Mixing colors with round brush, he created a sleeping gray village and dark olive grove beneath a line of blue-black hills.

With broad flat strokes, he shaped the currents of silver rivers writhing over mountain tops then cut across the canvas
with turbulent knife slashes of ultramarine and cobalt.

Now he set yellow nebulae careening toward a burning orange moon and, with a leap from atop the smoldering cedar,
he joined them and was free.

 

[elvet]

Words Fail

They held hands, desperately trying to shut out the beeps and flashing warnings of the bio monitors.
“I’m scared,” she whispered.
He swallowed. “Don’t be. Think about the good times we’ve had. The happy moments. The view from the cabin on our honeymoon. Remember? The unreal beauty of it?”
“It was unreal.” She half smiled, “The beauty was only in our eyes.”
“But we’ve always treasured the memory. That’s what count.”
He tightened his grip.
“Close your eyes and picture all the wonderful views we’ve seen.”
He kept holding her hand till long after the monitors had gone dark.

 

[elvet]

Soul Review

An opaque, blue haze provided the solitary light. His bones creaked with every hesitant step toward it - heart pounding in his hunched rib-cage. Weathered fingertips gripped the windowsill, bones stark against aged skin.

He shuttered a sigh of surrender - to the fear, finality, anticipation - and lifted his misted eyes. Images swam, replaying over again; sometimes as he remembered them, sometimes the reality unwound itself from his memory’s imaginings. His life unfolded before him, it’s thrills, anguish, longings and triumphs.

As the images faded, he turned with awe and finality toward his next life, dispatching tears to discover what awaited beyond.

 

[elvet]

The challenge is now closed, and the poll is up.