Flash Fiction 29 - The Edge

Flash Nano  29: Write a story that takes place on the edge. This is the next to last day where writers are given a prompt and they write a piece of Flash Fiction,

The first time Beth had the dream was her high school senior year. The next day she was due to take her SATs.

In her dream, she sat on the edge of a cliff, her legs hanging over. Below waves broke on rocks. She jumped but woke before she fell into the water.

As for her SATs, she didn’t do as well as she expected, but she had never tested well. Her first two college choices rejected her, but she was accepted at her third choice. She blamed the SAT scores.

The next time she had the dream, where she was on the edge of the cliff, was the night before her senior prom. Instead of jumping off the cliff, she spread her arms and floated among the clouds. The prom was like magic.

The night before she married, she had the dream, but for the first time she hit the rocks instead of waking seconds before landing. Her arm hurt throughout the ceremony from where she’d fallen in the dream. The marriage lasted three months.

Beth dreamed of being on the edge and wanting to jump when she was offered two jobs. In one she landed on the rocks. A Havelock Enterprises box floated in the water. In the next dream she flew with a flock of ducks heading south where Maxi Products was headquartered. She rejected the Havelock offer.

At Maxi Products, she moved up the corporate ladder quickly. More importantly, she loved her job.

On one October Saturday, she sat on the porch swing. She’d rented an old Victorian house. It was just cool enough for her to need a sweater. Her landlady’s cat jumped into her lap and serenaded her with purrs.

She thought about the cliff dream. Over the past eight years, she must have had a variation of the dream at least a dozen times. The dreams always happened before something important or she had to make a big decision.

When she landed on the rocks or into the water below, whatever she decided had an under-wonderful result. However, whenever she took off from the edge and flew among the clouds reveling in the blue of the sky and puffy white clouds, everything in her waking life fell into place.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said to the cat. “If I tell anyone, they’ll think I’m nuts. I can’t base life decisions on a dream.” The cat shifted position slightly. “I suppose, I could factor it into whatever else I was considering." 

The edge dream as she called it, went on all her life. She used the landing vs. flying to make her decisions. Stupid or not, it worked.