Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 5

Last weeks challenge brought two entries. I had hoped it would inspire more, but maybe it was a little intimidating. Hopefully this week's photo will elicit more. 

This week's prompt photo was created by Marcela Bolivar, a digital artist from Columbia. You can check out some of her other wonderful creations on her website here.

This photo provides many different interpretations. I am interested in what others might make of it. This is what I came up with.

The General Guidelines can be found here.  

Once Bitten Twice Shy 

He carried the pain around with him as though it was on display. He thought others could see it as though his chest were made of glass and people could see inside, see the damaged darkness where there was once a heart – once a happy healthy heart, full of joy and love and giving. But it was no more. It was now an aching husk of darkness that poisoned his body, draining it of energy, of any desire, of any point of being.

He wanted it to end, but he didn’t have the guts to. He couldn’t quite bring himself to step out of this life. There was guilt at what it might do to those around him, those that felt they were good and close friends. And there were those that flung the word selfish around when people took their lives, which led him back to the guilt. Although he always believed that was a reflection of themselves: how they felt wrong and selfish for not understanding. No one knows the pain another suffers, let alone should judge it. 

He imagined being free of this pain; imagined throwing off the shackles of the dead weight it brought to his life. But it did little to change anything. She was gone. She was just a shadow in his heart. She had come, wrought her damage and left. Turned her back and walked away. He could even see her in his mind’s eye, walking away across a field, while he was unable to move or call out and stop her.

It was the risk he had taken; one he would never take again – or so he told himself.