Competition Twenty-Eight Shortlisted: Between Dust and Desolation by Emily Macdonald
Joe kicks the earth. Dust puffs and powders his worn boots. A few spits in the wind and a muddied sky raised his hopes but the feeble intimations have amounted to nothing. He crouches low and scans for signs of life. Red ants, a few beetles. Flies. The sinuous path left by a snake.
In this morning’s weak dawn, he’d leant over to kiss Anna. Touching his lips to the delicate creases fanning from the corner of her eye. Once those lines meant laughter. Now they just mean fatigue. Despite his tenderness, Anna shrugged him off once again. A desert of another kind.
The sky looks like it wants to rain but somehow, it’s forgotten how to. The creek dried up three weeks ago, the water in the bore holes is dangerously low.
Anna also has a desolate look like she’s near the end of her tether. Joe sure knows he’s fingering the end of his own rope. He doesn’t consider himself a gambling man, but now his bet on this land seems reckless.
If it was just the drought he might be able to continue. But Anna’s wilting is more painful than if he was walking the exposed stones in bare feet. Maybe her trust in him was barren, her own folly.
Perhaps he should perform a rain dance or pray to some beneficent God. Perhaps he should call time on his crumbling dreams, foreclose and hand the deeds back to the unyielding bank.
Or maybe he should bring Anna out here and lay down with her on the cracked fields. Try for life one last time. They could roll together, letting the earth’s hard fists pummel their backs. Then they could weep and let their shared tears water the ground.
Emily Macdonald has work published by Fictive Dream, Punk Noir, Gooseberry Pie Lit, Free Flash Fiction and The Phare amongst others. She has been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story award in both 2023 and 2024 and was nominated for a Best Microfiction in 2024 by Raw Lit. Her flash fiction collection of driving related stories Wheel Spin and Traction was published by Alien Buddah Press in November 2023 – available here.
Instagram: macdonald8017
Bluesky: @ekmacdonald.bsky.social
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
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