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The Journey, by Bruce Levine

26/6/2020

 
For forty-five minutes he’d sat there. Bradley Richards, always called Brad by everyone other than his mother, wasn’t sure if he’d been sleeping, dozing or simply vegetating. Whatever it had been, for the past forty-five minutes he was completely unaware of anything.

The television was still on, but he didn’t know what he’d seen, if anything. And the book he’d been simultaneously reading lay open on his chest as he still reclined in the chair.

When he awoke, or rather regained a sense of reality, he felt confused and he didn’t know why.

Slowly he tried to piece together the recent past beginning with the first thing he could remember with certainty – checking his email about an hour before.

There were only a couple and he’d disposed of them quickly – nothing important, nothing that needed more than a sentence or two in reply.

Then he felt tired, as if all of his energy had been suddenly drained, and his eyes became heavy, but not really sleepy.

He shut his computer and went to the living room to relax; turned on the television to a mystery channel and picked up a mystery book that he’d been reading. It wasn’t unusual for him to read and watch television simultaneously, in fact he’d often done both and did a little writing in addition – Brad wrote mysteries as well as watched and read them.

He liked stories where there was either a happy ending or someone got killed, but then those had happy endings in that the bad guys always got what they deserved and the good guys always won. He also didn’t like violence so the dead body had to become dead without having to read about or watch it happen. Brad’s idea was to follow the detective through their journey rather than try to guess the killer. But he did like the author to play fair, to let the reader, or watcher, have all the clues and take their own journey.

For Brad it was the journey that counted.

Now he had his own journey to take – the past forty-five minutes.
Pamela Kennedy
26/6/2020 01:20:36 pm

I thoroughly enjoyed your story and your take on murder scenes.

Sue Clayton
27/6/2020 03:13:58 am

Have you ever taken a journey in your car and can't remember how you drove from A to B. This reminds me of those times. Maybe he committed "violence" during the lost 45 mins and is blotting it out. Liked the story

Gordon Lawrie
30/6/2020 10:54:39 am

How interesting. When I read this story, I assumed that Brad had suffered a stroke or some similar event. I didn't see the murder idea until Pam and Sue's comments.


Comments are closed.

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    Friday Flash Fiction is primarily a site for stories of 100 words or fewer, and our authors are expected to take on that challenge if they possibly can. Most stories of under 150 words can be trimmed and we do not accept submissions of 101-150 words.


    However, in response to demand, the FFF team constructed this forum for significantly longer stories of 151-500 words. Please send submissions for these using the Submissions Page.

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    One little further note. Posting and publishing 500-word stories takes a little time if they need to be formatted, too.
    ​Please note that we tend to post longer flash fiction exactly as we find it – wrong spacing, everything.

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