Daily Flash Fiction Challenge

Weeds take their chances. Did the wind blow my seed to a good location?

For generations John Flower and his wife Meg had perpetuated their clan on the sunny side of the old barn. Then one day the string came.

It wasn't much at first, just a few strands discarded from the new hay baling machine. John and Meg hardly noticed it. To the children it was just a new way to play.

But the pile of string grew... and grew... and grew. John and Meg had to stretch their stems farther and farther through the tangled mass to reach sunlight. The children had to spend the first days of their lives in near darkness.

One day Meg said, "John, I can't take this anymore!" and she fell over, her long stem no longer able to support the weight of her flower head. The next morning she was dead.

John struggled on for another week, watching his children die one by one until John himself was the last of the clan. He stretched his withered leaves to the sky, closed his eyes, sighed, "Why?" ...and died.




WORD COUNT: 205