Flash Fiction Friday (1)

I have seen this post over at My World...in words and pages, with Melissa participating frequently. It sounded like a great idea, so today I give it a shot!

The credit for the original idea goes to Dottie at Tink's Place. A picture is posted on Monday mornings to which you write a story of around 350 words, and link up on her blog on Friday. Simple enough, right? We'll see....

Here's this weeks picture and my virgin offering. Please feel free to critique honestly (but not cruelly ;):

Jonah swung his arm back, hesitating slightly. Then he pitched his arm forward, with all of the force he had, the line swinging out from the fishing rod in a near perfect arc.  He was usually a much more patient fisherman, but he had other things on his mind tonight.

He had arrived here a few hours ago, to the place he had found such comfort in as a child. Try as he might, he couldn’t wait until morning to get out on the water. The night was peaceful with only the call of the birds to detract from a feeling of total remoteness. The water was still; smooth like a sheet of perfectly made glass. What Jonah couldn’t figure out was why none of this was settling his sense of foreboding. So here he sat, hoping his favourite method of meditation would do the trick. Maybe he'd find a reasonable explanation to everything that was going on around him besides the obvious "you're losing your mind".

Maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t get the thoughts of what had happened over the last few days out of his head. How could he? The car overturning on the highway right in front of him? The windows all shattering at the coffee shop he worked at? The sewers bubbling up as he walked along the street? He knew with absolute certainty that he was the common factor. And the more he thought about it, he knew it was tied into his angry outbursts.

He was on the phone with his younger sister when the car flipped. She hadn’t come home last night and since their parents’ death, he was responsible for her. She was making it difficult.

The customer complaining that his non-fat latte was in fact filled with fat, despite watching Jonah like a hawk as he made it, had annoyed him. Had it really angered him enough to shatter windows though? And what was causing it all? This was new. He felt like a freak.

Jonah had so many questions and no one to give him answers. He looked up to the sky, as if to appeal to a higher power, but the sky was veiled by the fog. He sighed loudly, the sound echoing strangely in the vast open space.

He closed his eyes, thinking that whatever he was able to achieve here (if anything), he’d have to go back to the city tomorrow to see if his sister had gotten into more trouble. They needed to have a serious talk.
The boat shifted under him. He opened his eyes slowly, fearing, irrationally, that a crocodile or water snake was close by; irrational because there were none of either in this lake.

What he saw was something that scared him far more. Coming from the opposite shore, a figure emerged from the mist, walking. Walking across the water, like they bore no weight at all. As the figure drew nearer, recognition dawned. It was his mother.

“Son,” her breath a mere whisper, “there are things you need to know.”