April 10, 2011 - They Once Were Wild

Prompt: Use the following image and title for a piece of flash fiction: They Once Were Wild. (100-110 words)

Source: onerealstory.com

Original Airdate: June 23, 2010

Response:

Madeline stretched the cloth taut in its hoop. She threaded her needle with black thread and a steady hand. Her stitches were quiet, so small they were not visible until several had bunched together, beginning the pattern’s outline. The patterns themselves developed slowly, in aching sluggishness. Madeline’s patterns once were wild creatures that frolicked across the cloth in jovial spirals, she remembered. But their fervor had calmed as the years passed. Flowers of black bloomed across the blank cloth expanse. But when she had finished and sat back to survey her work, the flowers wilted in her hands. They lay lack-luster in their beds of cloth; already dead.