Flashes of Fiction: Volume 5 Excerpt "Time"

Enjoy this excerpt from the short story "Time" from Flashes of Fiction: Volume 5

Time

When I was young and naive, I saw myself as indestructible. I didn’t count every minute. I wasted precious moments every day without realizing that once they were gone, there was no going back.

Why was I so naive to think it was a good idea to know the age I would die? It’d been hell watching the years fly by taking me closer to the end. My brother Tom warned me not to play with the Ouija board. Convincing myself it was just a harmless game, I sat there on the last day of my life thinking back to that night, wishing I could change the past— wishing I didn’t know my fate.

I was fifteen, and it was Halloween. The guys and I were too old for trick-or-treat, so we came up with the bright idea of summoning a spirit through that wicked board. It was a unanimous vote to ask the spirit how long each of us would live. Placing our fingers on the planchette, it began to move around the board. I remember the words yes and no in the top corner, the alphabet written in two rows in the middle, and a row of numbers beneath them.

Jim went first. “At what age will I die?” The planchette glided across the board, showing us the number one and nine.

I was next. “What age will I be when I die?” The spirit moved our fingers to the number two and nine.

I remember thinking our little game was ridiculous. We all laughed as each took their turn. Ron would die at twenty-five, and Leon at forty.

The next few years, I never gave the board another thought, until Jim was in a car accident and died at the age of nineteen. I told myself it was a coincidence. An eerie one, but it didn’t prove anything.

Then Ron died at twenty-five. He committed suicide, probably because of all the strange voices he heard in his head. Tom told me that once you got involved with the demon spirits, not even God Himself could save your soul. That’s what he believed happened to Ron; he was possessed by demons.

So, on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, I waited. I didn't know how I would die, only that by midnight my soul would be taken. I wrote goodbye letters to my son, my ex-wife, and Tom, the three most important people in my life.

Read the rest in FOF Volume 5!

Happy Reading!