A Gargantuan Flash Fiction Challenege

Okay, so this was supposed to go up yesterday, but I've had a hard few days. I haven't been sleeping well and I've been busy on top of it. So today I whipped something up today on the theory that it's better late than never.

So please excuse the roughness of it. No editing. Just written and posted raw.

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Karen threw the ball as far as she could in the empty field and watched as Charlie, her aging golden retriever, chased after it. He brought it back and dropped it her feet before lying down. She could see that he was tired, but she also knew that if she threw the ball again he would chase it down and bring it back. It was metaphor for her life. She was tired, but she kept trying to chase down that goal just to have it thrown out of reach again. It was her own twisted version of the myth of Sisyphus.

Karen sat down on the ground beside her exhausted dog and absent-mindedly stroked the soft fur behind his ears.

“I think we could both just use a good long break from chasing the same ball over and over again.” Karen said as she grabbed the bright blue ball and jumped to her feet. Charlie scrambled to his feet, his eyes intent on the ball in his master’s hand.

“No Charlie, not this time. Not ever again.” She smiled down at her dog and gave a tug on his collar so that he would sit down. She waved her hand in front of his muzzle to tell him to wait and then threw the ball as hard as she could. “There. It’s done and we’re both going to get on with our lives now. We’re not going settle for chasing the ball.”

It was a huge decision, a gargantuan decision. She was going to go home, pack up her stuff and leave her boyfriend. She wasn’t going to settle for a relationship where she wasn’t getting the love she deserved no matter how hard she tried.