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Writing prompt: YOUTH

Provided by: Claire Goverts ,
a fellow A-Z challenge participant. Please visit her excellent blog!

Can’t believe I have one more post left to go…Z, and we’re done!

Genre: Fiction

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Youth and blood spatter, magnolia

A to Z: Youth and Magnolia

The magnolia tree outside his apartment lit up his eyes as he wrote. He had to hurry, because they would be here soon. He had to write of his lost youth, of his encounter with the butcher, how he was spared, and became a butcher himself.

But first he had to take out the .45 bullets, the cold, sharp, dead things. Not his weapon of choice on the flowers he picked up, the boys who fell for the hush, the softness of his voice, never recognized him for who he was until too late.  Youth was stupid, that way. No grown man would have entered his car.

Knives had life, they hummed and sang with each spurt, but not the easiest things to use on your own throat. Things could get messy. He wanted a clean end and he knew how to shoot a .45 ACP from his days in the army.

The pistol readied, he sat down again to write, but the words would not come. He thought of the last boy, the one that almost got away, of how he lay under the earth, carved and peeled, so close to him.

He needed to decide how to end this.

He took one of the pale pink blossoms he had gathered that morning on his table. Magnolias should be red, he said, like blood, or youth. Not magnolia seeds. He began peeling the flower. The butcher had taught him this way of making up his mind.

I will be here when they come, he said, and tore a petal. I won’t be here, he said, and tore another.

He heard a bolt slip somewhere at the back, and knew they had found him. He wondered how he had missed the sound of cars pulling up.

The pale pink petals, having done their job, lay on the parquet around his feet.

He scribbled on the pad before him: Under the magnolia tree.

Let them find out the secret of the thriving posies that weighed the tree to the lawn.

As the door opened, he fired his shot, and a tiny red magnolia blossomed on his throat, where his voice had been.

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I’m tweeting A to Z posts at #atozchallenge  There is also the A to Z Challenge Daily with links to Tweeted A-Z posts over the last 24 hours.
Thanks and shout-outs to organisers Arlee Bird (Tossing It Out) , Jeffrey Beesler’s (World of the Scribe),  Alex J. Cavanaugh (Alex J. Cavanaugh) , Jen Daiker ( Unedited), Candace Ganger (The Misadventures in Candyland) , Karen J Gowen  (Coming Down the Mountain) , Talli Roland ,  Stephen Tremp (Breakthrough Blogs )
Damyanti Biswas

Damyanti Biswas is the author of You Beneath Your Skin and numerous short stories that have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, the UK, and Asia. She has been shortlisted for Best Small Fictions and Bath Novel Awards and is co-editor of the Forge Literary Magazine. Her literary crime thriller series, the Blue Mumbai, is represented by Lucienne Diver from The Knight Agency. Both The Blue Bar and The Blue Monsoon were published in 2023.

I appreciate comments, and I always visit back. If you're having trouble commenting, let me know via the contact form, or tweet me up @damyantig !

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