Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

20

Dry Land

Even after the 30-foot surge had receded, dry land didn’t seem as demarcated and safe from the ocean as it once had.

When the ocean withdrew, it revealed a horrendous tangle of houses and cars, utility poles and wires, street signs and billboards, and 100-year-old oak trees stood like naked giants, though some were variously decorated with metal and plastic and mechanical debris.

We had persuaded her to evacuate. Her son had stayed behind—

on guard—and had watched as the flood entered and filled the house, twisting and squeezing it.

For the next two years, everything seemed to get sucked down in a muddy sludge. Everyone was affected. The supercenter sold anti-depressants by the pound.

Her house was not covered, the insurance company told her—not for this kind of damage—so her son restored it, put it on the market, and got enough to pay off the bank. Afterwards he went away—

quietly.

In the beginning, she stayed with us for a while, but soon after her cancer was diagnosed, she was back and forth between the hospital and a long term acute care centre before she ended up here in the hospice.

Today for the first time in days, she has opened her blueberry eyes wide to the purdy-purdy-purdy of a cardinal singing in the park across the street.

First published in Postcard Shorts, September 12, 2013.