Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 46

This weeks picture prompt was created by Ukrainian artist Mikhail Batrak. He has some incredible art, check out his website here.

I tried to come up with something original and encompass as many of the elements of this picture as possible. I ended up using a character from one of my novel's and a sort of 'alternate ending' to her story. It helps to explore the character and put her somewhere different and see what she would do and think.

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How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.

Ocean Dreaming

Lizzy stood contemplating the ocean. She had done this many times over the years, at different stages in her life. When she was a child it was with awe at the waves and their white horses and how they would shrink down to ripples at her toes. As a teenager it was with jealousy at the waves as they lifted up and crashed, releasing their rage, spraying it everywhere, laying it bare. And now as an adult Lizzy watched the ebb and flow of the tide, wondering where it would go to, and what far and distant shore it swelled on.

With each aging process it brought with it a certainty: it was always there, always doing the same thing, steady and constant, its movement a comfort. So unlike her life which seemed to grow in its turbulence, inside and out.

Lizzy would spend hours picking apart the view, rearranging it in her mind as though trying to find a way to paint it that would express how she felt. It differed every day, from the clouds and the sky, the shells and the pebbles, to the colour of the water and the position of the sun. And sometimes she would try and paint it but it never looked the same or felt quite right – much like herself.

She could blame all the factors in her life: the failed pregnancies, the failed marriage, the affair her husband was having that he thought she knew nothing about. All of them a part of her decline into depths so black she despaired of ever finding a way out. But the truth was she had lost her way, and then her will. And even though there had been a sudden spark of life for a short time, it had been built around frustration and anger, which burned out as suddenly as it started, leaving her empty.  

And so here she was, looking out at the waves, feeling spent, contemplating her future. Lizzy didn’t have the energy to face it. It would only be a matter of days before people would discover what her rage had wrought. There was no way she’d be able to talk her way out of it. It didn’t matter that they were the ones in the wrong: fucking in the middle of the day, in her bed, in her house, for everyone to hear. She could still hear his grunting and her moans as she had climbed the stairs with the knife in her hand. There was no turning back from what she had done and how she had left them.

So here she stood in the rising dawn still wearing the blood spattered clothes – because there’d been no point trying to hide them – looking at the waves and wondering what they would feel like on her skin. How they would wash over her and cleanse her body, the cold refreshing her and flushing out the dark weight she had been carrying. How it would feel to breathe in the spray and eventually the water and be engulfed from head to toe, submerged without redemption, released from the horrors of her life.