Blue, Grey and Lavender- Mehreen Ahmed

Bio: Mehreen Ahmed is an award-winning, internationally published and critically acclaimed author. She has written Novels, Novella, Short Stories, Creative Nonfiction, Flash Fiction, Academic, Prose Poetry, Memoirs, Essays and Journalistic Write-Ups. Her works have been podcast, anthologised and translated in German, Greek and Bengali. She was born and raised in Bangladesh. At the moment, she lives in Australia.

Grass had become dehydrated. Trees poured out saffron. Brittle straws clung to mother earth, a stream of orange lawn. The soil was made of sand. It caved in and became hollow land. A bowl for my soul where I hid like a mole. I felt nothing at first. Then a hunger rose. I ate my hunger, I walked in a dream. Dream of life. There was silence in my heart. It whispered an autumnal dirge. On the outpost of a war, a fallen soldier, noted lights of nuanced whites, and many ugly plights.

Then I stood before a ship. This, but a spectre of a ship, full of passengers on board. They held globed sceptres, and goblets which lacked lustre; drunken spectators, smiley faces of lime plasters. They were a flying apparitions of greater imaginations, once Kings and Queens, in powerful human bodies. They were here, fighting like crazy for the love of land, now pushed up daisies. I waited out on the shore, as the ship slowly anchored. Deep into the blues of an oceanic wonder, I watched to catch the Kings’ flounder. They rose from their seats and somersaulted, for they'd become sprites of glowing gases. 

I wondered why they looked like this? Also, the phantom ship, a vessel of uncovered ribs. A telltale sign of no mortal needs, why did they drink and eat indeed? Then I realised, it was just a flash of the worldly pleasures, unabashedly brash. The clinging of my flesh under skinned mesh, I'd passed into the sublime and couldn't care less; briefly without a cure, my mind wasn't too sure. But I could breathe spots of fresh air, in this warfare, except there were no cries, only stilly stares. The bullets were gone, the soldiers slept in peace, into their little crypts. Some had shut eyelids, others in half-open slits. 

In a daze, this fuzzy maze, was I caught up in another war craze? The dances of the lights led me on, but I felt like a dunce myself in tattered clothes and all. Because, I was still wearing a soldier’s uniform, but pretty sure I didn’t need one. Then I felt a rush of adrenaline. I was at boundary lane, until I heard a call, from my mom at dawn. She’d come into my room, a patched blanket hot off the loom, she was no loon, neither a shadow of doom.

“Wake up, wake up, you fool,” she then crooned.

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Setu, May 2020 :: Flash Fiction 2020