iStock Microfiction-Vol. 2

The second installment in our (future Pulitzer Prize-winning???) iStock Microfiction series! 

Why was the water so blue? she wondered, as she did every time she went beneath its silvery, reflective surface, every time she dove into the image of herself diving. She liked being underwater sometimes better than being above it. She was the friend who had never gotten past the Little Mermaid-phase.

Nights, she dreamt of it: the open ocean, waves, seaweed, no land in sight. She felt a thrill every time she heard someone mention global warming, the seas rising. She didn’t belong on land.

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››”I hate you,” Elise whispered through her perfectly rouged and pouted lips into the ear of Elise II, the clone her parents had commissioned during the few brief months she had “disappeared” backpacking in Europe. She had just wanted to get off the grid for a year, to clear her mind, get space from everything… And she’d come back to this: a stranger, an imposter in her place.

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The train had stopped. Through the window, a strange glow that looked almost like the sun had, in the years before The Scientists replaced it with The SunLight™. Natasha felt too happy, bathing in that golden glow, to feel scared. The train had stopped. She smiled.

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The woman with a giant palm leaf moved slowly through the night. The woman with a giant palm leaf walked the length of the beach, knowing she was not observed. The woman with a giant palm leaf believed the earth was flat. The woman with a giant palm leaf planned to walk off it.

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The worst of it, she hoped, was over. She needed to nurse her wounds, to prepare in case of another battle, to get out the infection from the bite… The bite. She could be turning into a zombie, slowly, as she sat there. At least she had coffee.

Would you try your hand at iStock microfiction? Give it a shot below!