My return to Flash! Friday’s weekly contest (no more than 160 words) is the piece presented below. The word prompt is “include a wedding” and the above picture. I received a mention for “title/unexpected take on the prompt,” with the following statement from the judge, Margaret Locke, “People gave me violent weddings, but nothing so much as this. The play on words in the title is excellent.”
Todd banged his head over and over against the cement of the parking garage across the street from Cornerstone Baptist Church. Blood trickled from a slit in his forehead onto his white boutonniere.
The dead girl was five feet away behind a dozen construction cones. Not totally obscured but enough until Todd could clear his head.
At that precise moment he was supposed to be at the other end of the aisle gushing over Portia’s glowing bride face.
He had told his best man he just needed a moment to breathe in the bathroom. Instead, he went through a backdoor and to the parking garage.
And bludgeoned the first girl he saw. A petite redhead zombified by the glow of her phone, thus oblivious.
That morning, as he showered and suited up, he had what he thought were pre-wedding jitters. He should have known better. It had been months since his last fix.
Not quite the fairy tale he’d pictured.
Milam's Musings 