Flash Fiction Month – 2

April 11, 2011 By: Christopher D. Eldridge Category: Flash Fiction, Writing Craft

To continue this month’s theme of flash fiction, here is another short story under five hundred words.

The Mother’s Power © 1999

You were a corpse among the living, blue lips, white paper skin. You were loveless, soulless. I only wanted to be held, to be loved, but your tepid touch never pleased. Your prevaricating tale could not hide your surrogate lies.

I close my eyes and your voice is a cackle, a malevolent shriek, my voice a whimper. My weakness cowers before your frightening visage, your omnipotence that has broken me. Your madness, your freakish indifference is the cause of my maladaptive existence. But how could I know any different? I emerged from the womb, trying to connect to those placid eyes, those wells of insurmountable emptiness. Doing so caused a stoppage of time.

You never realized your godly powers, the powers you had to create and destroy. You brought purity into this world, a purity your wickedness tainted. I reached out a symbiotic hand, a desire for affection and warmth, for a closeness I would not receive. Your sustenance was of the wrong kind, a nourishment that was only enough for survival. Did you not know your vicious cycle? How could you let your foolishness catch my helplessness in a cycle doomed to repeat once again?

My emptiness you can never fix, for you failed to realize the beginning of the emergence, the constant state of symbiosis that you left me in to suffer. In grappling for my own, I must fear my own demise, an unraveling of the substance that holds me together. Now I am like you, a corpse pretending to live. See me smile? See my laugh?

I will forever long to have you; your idiocy has developed my ignorance into a longing for the unattainable. You, you of all people have caused me to live forever in some unrealistic dream, in a world I may never wake from. Do you think life is such a game? A scrap of paper you can whim into the wastebasket and forget that an entire tale was written upon it?

You mother, you creator, you who failed to finish what you started. The very moment you touched me, you dropped me, and I shattered into a thousand broken pieces. I can never be made whole.

It which is I, in which I means nothing but you, for you and I are still one, a one that you always thought were two, not one but two, a two that was doomed even when there was still one.

4 Comments to “Flash Fiction Month – 2”


  1. Laura Chick says:

    WOW!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! OH MY GOD!!! MAGNIFICENT!
    My heart breaks for you, my heart ACHES for you….and for all children of this cold world who has a motherless mother!

    I had a cold one like this, so these words stir up the black hole she left in me!

    …this is a remarkable raw and bloody tale, more bloody than any character in your novel…..A motherless child…..the bible would say,”your wound is as deep as the sea, who can heal you?”
    … the heavens cry out from the bottom of your soul for a miracle! …a miracle that is reserved for the deepest wounds, the ones that feel incureable… it is the “one” miracle that a child should never need to ask for in the first place…. for a mother is supposed to bring the nourishment to our souls till the day we die…. our “safe place.”
    Your words are PROFOUND….I have never, ever read anything like this in all my days…a sword has pierced my soul, and blind eyes have been opened to the power of a mother…
    a mother can bring life, or she can bring death to the living soul!

    the bible says, that even if a mother or a father abandons you, the LORD will find you, and never abandon you….that is our only hope when our mothers fail to finish what they start….

    thank you for your COURAGE to paint a picture with your words of the power of a mother, or “the lack of a mother”, and the damage and emotional abuse a mother can do in the life of a child just by sheer “neglect”…..
    my mind is totally blown away by this writing. I must say, it is your best work yet. It is raw. It is real. It is from your heart. And that touches everyones heart.

    Will it touch a mother’s heart? Mothers all around the world need to read this and fall on their face in sorrow and compassion.
    I have faith, I have hope… for only a DEAD mother could not have a compassionate heart for her broken child after reading magnificent words like these. Thank you for touching my heart.
    What in the world is more important than a mother giving her child all the love they need and want in this life? If it helps at all,
    I love you very much, and I LOVE this short story!

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  2. Mandie Eldridge says:

    You are absolutely brilliant my love and are able to capture a depth of emotion that few people can. Your short fiction stories are powerful and enthralling. I can not wait to read more of your amazing work.

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  3. Christopher, your story perfectly captures the inner agony my character D feels about his wife L, the woman who turned him into a vampire. After all, L is the “mother” who created the vampire version of D.

    As with the song lyrics in my playlist, reading this piece from a “vampire” perspective yields new meanings on a different level.

    a corpse among the living, blue lips, white paper skin. Now I am like you, a corpse pretending to live.
    a nourishment that was only enough for survival
    your madness, your freakish indifference is the cause of my maladaptive existence.
    you of all people have caused me to live forever in some unrealistic dream, in a world I may never wake from.

    A perfect demonstration of the power of changing words’ context! 😉

    3
    • Daven, even though it wasn’t my intention, it does seem a fitting story for a vampire, especially if you do a little editing or rearranging of sentences. As in a lot of fictional prose (at least the kind I enjoy reading and writing), each reader may find a different meaning or even a meaning on several different levels.

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