Flash Fiction – 4th Ed.

I’m not going into why I’ve been off the net recently.  I claim getting my crap together to move as a reason.  There’s an excuse here, too, but you’ll have to wait for that story.  It’s a doozy.  But enough about me.

If you want to join in the Flash Madness, go to Rochelle’s Purple Blog and follow the rules.

Concept: a weekly picture is posted, and the writer is challenged to produce one-hundred (more or less) words of some sort of fiction with a full plotline (beginning, middle and end). Here is my fourth installment:

Copyright Jennifer Pendergast

AGAIN

The day unfurled just as I remembered it would. Odd thing to think, I know. The cognitive dissonance gets me every time. Or will get me, or both. I don’t know. I’m only an operative. I see the waiting figure in the archway.

“Hello, Steve,” the familiar voice says.

“I failed again,” I say.

“We failed again,” he corrects me.

“Sorry, Steve,” I say.

“We can only keep trying,” the loud mechanical click echoes.

I nod my assent.

I raise the ancient weapon and kill myself, clean and painless.

“Not like I have a choice,” I mumble, “Causal loops suck.”

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