Volcano - A Short, Short Story

The first of (hopefully) many posts containing short stories, excerpts, and poetry by our Pee Dee Writers.

This is a Short Short Story by Ashley Long. Ashley wrote this piece of quick fiction a long time ago (in the original version Tom Brokaw was still hosting the Nightly News) as part of the Creative Copy Challenge. It has since been slightly edited.

Music inspiration "Volcano" by Damien Rice can be found below.

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Volcano - A Short, Short Story

DeAnn watched a drop of water trickle down the curvy stem of the rose bush which she'd finished trimming the dead buds from after a late afternoon rain. The sound of the Nightly News with Lester Holt drifted through the open kitchen window, and she listened as she tended to her small garden. It seemed that all Mark watched these days was the news, and the headlines added to her depression.

"Toxic volcanic ash is raining down on a small town in Iceland today. Farmers rush to protect their herds. Inhaling the ash can cause internal bleeding, long-term bone damage, and..."

DeAnn’s eyes moistened as she tried to tune out the news and concentrate on her flowers. She didn't know anyone in Iceland, but her father had been a dairy farmer, and she was struck with the overwhelming feeling of what it would've been like to lose their entire livelihood due to a freak natural disaster. She wished Mark would turn off the news, if only for an hour, but it was his escape--or so she imagined--as the garden was hers. How it comforted him, she couldn't understand. Perhaps seeing the terrible things in the world made him feel that his life was not the hell that he adamantly expressed it was.

They didn’t love each other and hadn’t for years, that was the truth. They stayed together because they each felt they were too old and had too many faults to find somebody new. His infidelity, a decade ago, gnarled her trust and love for him beyond the point of reconciliation, but because of the daughter they fought so hard to have, they persisted in this state. Together, but alone. Smiling through misery, to put on a good show for the neighbors. In a once warm home that became a frigid shelter.

The tomato plants were last in line to tend, and DeAnn adjusted the clothespins attached to the dowels and twine that were holding the burgeoning vines off the ground. Dusk was coming and she needed to sleep soon; her job required waking in the wee hours of the morning. When the garden was tended to her satisfaction, she trudged inside, past the living room where the rocking chair squeaked as the man she used to call her husband remained fixated on the television. The remains of a 6 pack sat on a TV tray; she would throw the empty bottles away tomorrow before Mark came home to make room for more. DeAnn uttered a good night that fell on deaf ears as she passed. She'd long since given up hope for a response.

On auto-pilot, she brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and slipped into her nightgown. The slow-burning ache that remained after the raging fire from ten years past filled her chest as it did every night, smothering her as she fluffed her pillow and crawled into the king bed alone. Always alone. Images of things that plagued her mind during the day filled her sleep. DeAnn reached out to the glacial area beside her searching for someone to reach back, to wrap her in his arms and comfort her, but she found only desolation.

--Ashley Long is the Municipal Liaison for NaNoWriMo in the Pee Dee and the organizer for Pee Dee Writer events. She mainly writes thrillers, fantasy, and romance and is in the process of rewriting her first novel--Alias--that has decided it wants to be a trilogy.

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