Hi there! Are you ready for a super short, super punchy flash fiction piece on summer? If so, here is my entry for writerthreads‘ Instagram competition (update: didn’t win, but a very fun competition and prompt anyway)! It’s a one hundred and fifty word piece of descriptive flash fiction, thinking about the theme of summer (and especially how summer has changed recently). Hope you enjoy it!
Summer
Summer was warm, fluid, lazy days spent lounging on long grass, giggles. Laughter. Groups in t-shirts and shorts, running around listening to loud music. Peace, from the stresses of exams, lessons, teachers, parents. We were free. Life had loosened its grip for a few euphoric weeks, to let us live, to let us breathe. Our eyes were wide, lungs full of the outside world.
That was summer. It changed. We changed, perhaps because of it. Secluded. Locked away in box rooms to strain our eyes over textbooks, computer screens, checkboxes, percentages. Work has leaked into freedom and soured it. It may be called summer, but there is no summer in curling up on a messy bed, hair greasy, tears leaking down pale faces, too pale. Unnatural. Beyond closed windows, a world roams outside, the nature painted in all the colours of life, taunting us.
We aren’t allowed summer. Not anymore.
Oskar Leonard 