FFfAW #20: Gone

This week’s Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers: Photo prompt with story to be 100-175 words.

I’d always imagined the End of Days as bleaker, blacker, somewhat more desolate. Well, okay, I’ve never really imagined the End at all. But in the movies, it was not nearly this serene. So maybe they’d got it wrong. Or have I?

In all the years I’d been coming here to feed the ducks, people have been everywhere. Business people eating lunch on the benches; pregnant moms corralling their toddlers to eat Goldfish and bananas under the umbrellas; pre-teens on skateboards where they weren’t allowed.

This park has always been an assault on the senses and even today the colors are raucous. But it’s quiet, deathly quiet, like the trees are collectively holding their breath. It smells like–well, nothing really. It sounds and smells like nothing. And I’d not seen a soul on my walk here from home.

I look down and realize the crackers in my hand are now nothing but fisted crumbs. Where the hell are the ducks?

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