Flash Fiction By Nigel Hare – Written on his Sixtieth Birthday.
The Birthday Walk
Flash Fiction.
The wave caught my attention. At the top of the rise with a line of treetops behind the shape. The wind that had been combing across the short wild grass of the field finished. Almost like a reverence time seemed to stop, the silence crashed around me. That hum of traffic that you only notice when it is gone, the calling of birds, the crackle of leaves, all were absent as I looked at the figure waving to me.
Dressed in a long cloak with a deep hood that hid the face, one hand holding onto a long thick horned piece of wood that at the ground end caught a picture of the sun. The hand that was waving, dwarfed by the depth of the sleeve which flapped as his hand drifted slowly side to side.
I had no clear view. Yet I knew them.
Lifting my hand to wave back, it felt leaden. The knowledge that I must wave back before I could continue my walk holding the weight of my arm down. My hand made the journey to my face. It took a minute. My head counting the slow seconds. Like all spectacle wearers my fingers pushed my glasses up my nose, they did not move.
Forcing my arm outwards from the shoulder so my palm faced the figure.
Eyes focused and saw as if the distance was ten meters not four hundred. The sharp curving, cutting blade balanced on the ground. The thin fingers around the shaft. No, not thin, bone. My eyes moved across to the hand that was still waving. Thin, without flesh.
Sound travelled as thought waves. Happy birthday echoed around my head.
My hand waved, just once. The reaper was gone.
He left a message. If you do not get on my list, I will be ten meters closer next year.
Thank you for reading my flash Fiction. It came as an image in a dream, how often do we dream of death? As we age, I suppose we consider mortality more as every year the end becomes closer and that tether tightens. It is not the only flash fiction on the subject, as a cancer survivor I feel the tether is squeezing ever tighter around my neck.
Life is about connection. On a planet of billions, there are only two – you and me.
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