Flash Fiction Friday

For today’s flash fiction challenge, I set myself a target of 200 words, and used a Random Word Generator to pull five words to use as part of the story. These are the words it chose:

• feast
• rubbish
• wood
• creeper
• graffiti

Here’s my story (200 words exactly):

I made my way carefully to the bags that littered the ground, smiling inside. One man’s rubbish is another scavenger’s feast, after all. The thin white plastic tore easily under my fingers. Clothes. I pulled them out piece by piece, hoping to find something more substantial further in. Nothing but shirts and pants; stained, torn, patched, and worn.

The second bag yielded house trash; books— bent, creased, and mildewed; the cracked glass and splintered wood remnants of a coffee table; a crumpled McDonald’s bag; small paisley cushions, ripped open to expose yellow foam stuffing; chipped and faded ceramic ornaments of animals and people— a fox with a broken tail, a cat with one ear, an old man missing his walking stick.

Finally, I tried the armoire. It was stained, scratched with graffiti carvings, and now adorned with feather boas that hung like creepers over the sides and the unlatched doors. I gently pulled the doors open, trying not to get my hopes up. My heart sank to see empty shelves, save for a few moldy towels and moth-eaten head scarves.

I cursed the air as I walked away. That’s the last time I waste $1,000 on an abandoned storage unit.