Author's Note
This was the first piece of flash fiction I ever wrote. It was written for the Lascaux Review’s first Lascaux Flash Fiction Contest and had a hard limit of 250 words. I actually thought that would be more difficult than it was, but I kept that in mind while I was writing it, and the first draft only overshot that limit by about a dozen words. Given the limitation, I was still fairly pleased with the way this turned out.
Of Christmases Past
Colored lights twinkled through the window, striking its delicate cracks, creating prisms in the girl’s eyes. Outside, she could hear the sounds of people hurrying by, no doubt laden with their holiday shopping. Christmas had always been her favorite. Even now, she could almost smell the familiar scents of her mother’s cooking. The cinnamony sweet smell of pies and cookies and the rich aroma of the roasting turkey. Her mother smiling as the family gathered around the table. But the best had always been the colorful Christmas trees. Oh, how many times she’d lain under them, looking up through their branches at the dangling decorations and thick garland, the lights reflecting off it in golden hues.
A bead of condensation ran down the inside of the window. She reached up, shivering delightedly at the chill of the cold glass against her fingertips, and ran her fingers through the moisture. Then, she smiled, a sweet smile, closed her eyes, and drifted away.
They found her the next morning during a sweep of the abandoned buildings in their district, frozen, a needle still dangling from one arm. One of the policemen looked at the window. The Christmas lights from the homeless shelter, dim now with the daylight, backlit shaky letters that had been left in the grime of the glass. “I love you, Mom,” they read. He looked back down at the girl, barely out of childhood, and thought of his own children. That night, he hugged them and wept over them.
Copyright Notice
Of Christmases Past
Copyright © 2012 by Brian Crowell
Cover design by Jimmy Gibbs
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Edition: 2012
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