This post is in response to this week’s Friday Fictioneers prompt, furnished by Rochelle on her blog, Addicted to Purple. Check out her blog and click the blue frog below to read other stories and to add your own. We get the photo (this week from Marie Gail Stratford) and up to 100 words to tell a flash fiction story. Mine this week is more of a character than a story, but I hope you enjoy anyway!
Photo Prompt copyright Marie Gail Stratford
Change in Perspective
(99 words)
The city always seemed confining—towering buildings, people rushing around…and the noise creates walls even where there aren’t any.
It’s strange to look at it, now that I’m dead. Everything is muted, manageable, and I can pass through the walls. I simply walk into this apartment or sit down in that cab. I watch the father put his child to sleep. I listen to the executive on the phone with her mother while walking to a meeting.
There’s one place, though, that I cannot go: back. I can’t talk to those who knew me. I can’t make it right.
I’ve also finished the final installment of my short story, “Spring Spirit.” If you’re interested, here are links to all three parts:
Unmapped Country within Us 
Funny how that works… not being able to go back. I think it is best that is this way!
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Hi Dale–thanks for reading and commenting : )
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A very good reminder of the consequences of our actions.
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Thank you–I’m not sure exactly how she ended up where she is, but she doesn’t seem truly content to be there…I suppose she has the traditional “unfinished business.”
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Sounds like a ghost with some unfinished business. To be able to do and see almost anything but not the one thing you really need to do…
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Yes, exactly! How sad. Thanks for reading!
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Dear Emily,
You’ve brought death to life in this unique story. Well done.
Shalom,
Rochelle
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Thanks, Rochelle, for reading and for your thoughtful comment.
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excellent and thought provoking
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Thank you!
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So true. Well done.
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Thanks, Sandra!
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Haunting, in so many ways.
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Thank you : )
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Sigh.. regret! You keep putting off certain things until it’s too late! Great story!
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Seize the day! haha – Thanks!
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Great ghost story. I wonder what happens when those she’s wronged are all dead, will she still have to wander?
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Thank you! Good question! Maybe she’d have a chance to change things then, though I’d like to think that it might be possible for her to do so before they meet their ends…if she learned what she needed to, or found a different way to communicate or act within the living world.
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Interesting take on the prompt. This is way-out thinking, but I find it interesting that the “ghost” or “specter” {whatever she is} is “observing” the living. I’ve been skimming over quantum physics, and it seems that “reality” requires an observer. I was sitting here yesterday thinking, well…nobody is watching me right now – does that mean that I may not exist in this moment? Here, with this flash-fiction, you’ve presented theory with an observer. Granted, a supernatural one, but an observer none the less.
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Thanks for your thoughtful comment. Interesting! This reminds me of the tree falling in the woods. Yes, perhaps there are more observers around than we think.
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