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The Bench. A Free Short Story

 



The Bench


It was weird how the sky could be so blue when everything was gray and rainy inside her. Maya let her weary feet take her home as her mind went once more through each messy detail, and then listed her three dismal options. In order from bad to worst.

The sound of her scuffed shoes on the warm tar mingled with suburban noises and the jumble in her head. She shifted her bag and wiped her damp forehead with a crumpled tissue. The heat wasn't helping. She was drained. Hopeless. Sinking.

A man grinned at her and whistled as she passed, but she ignored him. They all just wanted one thing, and she wasn't playing their game anymore.

The park beckoned to her as she neared home. Children were playing in a carefree way on the equipment, but a shady bench drew her. She needed time. Space to think. To breathe. Maya relaxed her weary body and watched the children for a few minutes. She remembered what it had been like to be happy.

Her gaze shifted back to the bench, and she saw something white jammed between the slats. A piece of paper. A word jumped out at her from it, and her fingers prised the paper from its place. She unfolded it. It was a leaflet. The kind her mother had often given to people or placed in supermarket trollies or post boxes. A memory of herself as a child, stretching up with a big smile to post one of the papers came back to her, and her heart ached.

Maya pushed the memory aside and turned her attention back to the tract. She read it as a starved person might eat a piece of bread, and her heart reminded her what she needed to do.

She read through the tract again carefully before focusing on the bold word that had drawn her to it in the first place: "JESUS."


***

Copyright: Alison Lawrence

***

Thanks for stopping by. :)
Jesus loves you.

***
 



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