Everyday

Locked door with shadow

Door locked. Windows too. No escape.

Everyday.

I cry out. None hear.

Everyday.

Fed once. Not yet.

A bird lands outside. Plump. Turns its head. Flies away.

Nothing to do but sleep.

Footsteps. Heavy. Him.

I dash.

Keys jingle. Him.

I hide.

Lock turns. Door opens. He enters.

I pounce. I strike.

He grabs me. Strong. Breaks my grip. Lifts me up.

Puts me down. On my back. Hand on my stomach. Another on my neck. 

I squirm.

He rubs my neck. Then under my chin.

I can’t help but purr. 

Afterword

The task was to write a story of 100 words or less on the theme of ‘loop’.

Did the last line change your perspective of the whole piece (maybe you re-read it, in a different light)? Or did you guess the twist? 

As you’d expect for flash fiction, there were a lot of ideas that didn’t make it into the final draft. Some of these would have made the twist easier to guess. For example, if I had kept in “Collared”, what would you have thought? Other ideas meant that the twist would have been revealed a little earlier, which I wasn’t keen on. 

Photo attribution: thanks to Christopher Martyn on Unsplash.

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