Iron Fences

Here’s my Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers.  Had a sick pet all week and just now getting back around to this.  Better late than never.

 

Iron Fences (aka – Remembering Juliette)

Randy was holding it together… barely. He eased forward on unsteady feet down the little sidewalk that ran through the park.

She’d never run through the park again. Why had he even come this way?

He stopped at the faux iron fence and grabbed it for stability. Sunflowers pushed their way out, escapees from the field just beyond.

Sunflowers.

He still had the video when she was a puppy and charged through a field of them, nipping at their petals. He remembered laughing with his wife as they desperately tried to figure out if sunflowers were toxic to dogs. That had been five years ago. Five fun years. There should have been at least five more.

He hadn’t slept in two days… He barely left the vet after they brought her in. The doc said she wouldn’t last, but Randy had hoped she would be the exception, the one that made it.

The sunflower that escaped the iron prison.

He picked one and stared at it. Its life had ended with a single pluck. Just like Juliette’s. He wondered if the sunflower had possessed emotion, would it have regretted trying to escape from the walls that protected it. Some escape.

Still holding the sunflower, Randy sank to his knees and wept, wishing bitterly for his own iron fence.