FlashFiction Wednesday Challenge

Taking a break from A-Z to join Nicole's challenge this week.

The challenge is to write a flash fiction piece using the following photograph and the five words that are boldfaced in the story.

Inspiration

The smooth curves of the dome soothed her eyes the way violin music soothed her soul. She set her camera lens to its longest telephoto length, seesawing back and forth on the cork heels of her wedge sandals while she raised the camera to her eye, trying to get the right angle. She wanted a very close look at the iron rim running around the dome.

 

She started at the sight of the leering faces that seemed to stare at her in disapproval, as though she were trailing toilet paper from the hem of her skirt. Then she noticed the light behind one--and only one--of the small round windows. Why? she wondered.

 

It looked as though there was a warren of tiny rooms behind those windows. They were so close together that surely a light would show in all of them. She pictured a beehive of little cells, each complete in itself, but who or what could fit in them? What if those scary-looking faces were living gargoyles who each occupied one of those spaces at night? What if, in fact, they were the spirits of the architects, artists, composers who had built this city, centuries ago? What if they were angry at the changes the modern world brought to their masterpiece? What if they were plotting some kind of insurrection against the city? Or what if—what if someone only thought they were? An unstable, imaginative young woman with a romantic bent, someone like—herself?

            Her husband touched her arm. “Hey, what are you doing? I thought we were going to get dinner.”

            She turned and beamed at him.

            “What are you so excited about?”

            She took his arm. “I just found my next story.”

 

(289 words)