More winning fiction

A piece of flash fiction called Break The Glass won the One Word Challenge for April. The word in question was Glass. As with all my stories, I try to think of the human element within them, and how perspectives really do count. With Break the Glass I wanted to create a sense of fear and emotion, but I also wanted to create a sense of time and urgency and I did this through the use of repetition of the title throughout the piece.

The theme is self explanatory - one of those events never forgotten.


Break the Glass

The heat snapped at his throat.

The building trembled; a low undulating hum that rippled beneath his feet and made his legs quiver.

Break the glass.

Screams echoed in his mind; scratchy, distant, desolate, but in reality they were all around him, near him, next to him.

The crackle of fire broke through his panic. A saffron hue, spoiled with attrition, stinking of evil; needy and greedy, crept ever closer, clouded him.

Break the glass.

Images of his wife and daughter spliced his thoughts; he feared he would never see them again. He was trapped by the fire. Whatever had hit the building twenty minutes earlier had ignited several floors. 

Paper and debris spiralled down past the windows.

Thick smoke forced him near the windows. He pressed his face against the glass. A beautiful cloudless blue haze filled his vision. The sun looked like some angelic manifestation; it mesmerised him, calmed him.
Break the glass. That thought again, tapping at his conscience. He grabbed a chair, swung it at the windows. Cool air rushed in. Behind him, the flames crept across the walls and ceiling, growled.

He stepped onto the ledge, took out his phone. Dialled home.