Here’s another flash fiction story I wrote during one of my recent practice writing sessions:

by Linda Jo Martin

Daisy ran across the road into the park, glad to get away from the city streets. There she found quiet tranquility in the center of a frantic city, the place where she’d been born, where she was raised, where she has had always lived.

She made her way to the baseball field. It was empty, deserted, peaceful. She let herself in through the rusty metal gate and walked to the dugout where she could sit in the shade and enjoy a few minutes by herself. Ah, the scent of freedom - a brilliant orbed, blue skied, grass under the feet kind of expansive freedom that comes from a lifetime penned in by huge buildings and asphalt byways.

Daisy mellowed into the joy of aloneness, and relaxed for the first time that day. Between the stress of her job at the grocery store and her crazy, distressing relationship with Arden, she rarely found time for herself, but that was to change, she’d decided. She reached into her pocket where she’d hidden her treasure - a bus ticket to a small town in Idaho - a place she’d never been to where Arden would never think to look for her.

She smiled slightly, and looked out at the ball field as two children came in through a gate on the other side of the field. They had a big red ball with them, and started tossing it back and forth. She watched them wishing she’d had an easy relationship with Arden where both of them had equal rights and an opportunity to toss things back and forth, where neither felt downtrodden or afraid to speak. But that wasn’t the way it was. Her practical side forced her to shrug off the useless thoughts. By midnight she’d be gone along with her savings account, enough for her to live on until she found another job. It was time. It was freedom from Arden and from the dusty city and the tiring job, and it was way too late for remorse.