Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy

Seven Virtues Flash Fiction: Temperance

Lady Antimony’s Seven Virtues challenge continues, and I present my second offering for the challenge (you can find my entry for Chastity here). The theme for today: Temperance. 

Make sure to use the #7Virtues hashtag to check out the lovely works by the other writers taking part in the challenge.  Stop by and offer them a bit of love and encouragement!

-oOo-

“Thirst”

The bottle was grimy in the candlelight.  It beckoned her, mocked her.

It had been three months since rum burned her throat, three months since she reeked of whisky.  She stared at the bottle, licking dry lips.  If she stretched out her hand…

“Can’t handle it, can you?”  She shrank back, bristling like an angry wildcat.

The man uncorked the bottle and measured out a shot. Juniper berries tickled her nose; her mouth watered. “Taste it.”

There was a pause, broken when she threw the gin into his face, snarling. “Fuck off.”

Silence, and then the man vanished, the bottle with him, leaving her alone with thirst and desire.

 -oOo-

9 Comments

  1. I like that it sounds like she’d drink pretty much anything–and I especially like that you don’t identify the bottle she’s looking at as gin (my favorite alcohol). Juniper berries tickling her nose is such a subtle and elegant way of revealing the bottle’s contents to any who need to know. Three months since rum burned her throat’s another good description, just overall well handled language here.

    • Haha, that’s right — her taste in alcohol is pretty non-discriminatory, though I’d like to imagine that her favorite is gin, which is also my drink of choice. And thanks for the feedback on language. I’ve been trying to work on subtlety in my writing, so I thought I’d experiment a bit with this short piece.

  2. Powerful and poignant – I really like this!

  3. Great stuff! I like the way it felt real until the last line let us know it was in her mind.

  4. Very good! I’ve been seeing a lot of flash fiction lately, and I’m not sure I could do it. It has to be hard to put so much into so few words.

    • You know, at first I thought it would be way too hard to write a 100 word fill, but I’ve started trying to focus on capturing a single moment in time. With that frame in mind, it hasn’t been too terrible trying to write each fill. 😀

  5. This is really good. You definitely manage to capture the moment.

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