Blood at the Palace

By afternoon the crowd filled the streets. We were mostly women, all walking in the same direction, all chanting the same slogans. When we got there, the tired October sun was going down behind the palace and the air turned cool. I stood near the gates. People were shaking them, shouting and screaming as if possessed. The guards drew back and watched from the other side. Their faces were pale with disbelief, agitation, and fear. No one could believe what was going on. Even the rain couldn’t calm the mob. As the evening drew on, hunger and cold fed the rage. It was around six when we broke through. I saw a guard go under. He never got back up. We ran into the palace calling for the Queen’s head, drunken on the opulence, the blood, the mad rush of unexpected power. Had it not been for Lafayette’s theatrics, the royal family would have been ripped apart that very night.

///3-little-words///

Begin – fail – restart.

Begin – pronoun – fail – restart.

Begin – nominative singular pronoun - noun – fail – restart.

Begin - nominative singular pronoun – verb - noun – fail – restart.

Begin - nominative singular pronoun – verb – second person singular pronoun – win.

Not since

When they had no other choice but to move, he found the photographs. With dust clouds and fits of sneezing, the cardboard box was retrieved from the back of the attic. Under its weight he tottered on the cantankerous metal ladder that led from the top floor. He dropped the box on the bare living room floor. When he opened it, time shattered into little shards of frozen history. In his mind the entire family woke up, one by one, or in smiling groups. The living and the dead. Behind them the empty room appeared full again. It jumped through decades, sofas styles, and carpets. Half a century of life. He had stopped looking at photographs after his first digital camera; stopped looking at his past. He saw a photo of a child and saw it was himself. He would keep these.

Loyalty

The bullet took off half my face, from the left corner of my mouth up to my forehead. The fire took care of the rest. When they found my body five months later there wasn’t much of me left. A charred husk. I looked like the sausage that fell into the barbecue. Poking around, as detectives do, they discovered my wallet outside in the grass. The cash was gone, as were my bankcards. All that remained of my life, my identity, was a supermarket loyalty card. It didn’t return my name to me. All they could ascertain from the card was an inventory of my last shopping trip: shaving foam, six beers, a loaf of bread, and some triple A batteries.