neelwrites/somethingtobury/thursdayphotoprompt/fiction/shortstory/209words/22/12/2017

Thursday photo prompt – Thaw #writephoto

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SOMETHING TO BURY

By Neel Anil Panicker

Richard stood, his trekking boots rooted to the rocky edges, his mind stilled by the mesmerising sight of pearly white mountain peaks jutting out into the cloudy skies. Below him, sparkled a carpet of cedar and pine trees, clothed in eclectic colours and dotted around them were heart stopping bottomless crevices alongside which drifted gorgeous waterfalls__froth-filled skeins of white lawn.

‘Some other day, some other time, he would stave off a day or maybe a week to soak in the indescribable pleasures of the Himalayas,’ he promised himself.

Not today, not now, he reminded himself.

For now, he’d a job to do.

He had climbed this high, a staggering 8,000 metres above sea level; come this far, criss-crossing continents, hopping in and out of planes, all the way from distant Detroit, not for nothing.

He had come to bury a memory, a bad memory that began a decade ago, and now threatened to last an entire lifetime.

He turned around to look at Irene. Her mouth agape, staple buck tooth smile in place, she gazed in wonderment as the ghostly river below them turned an amber.

She was his memory, his bad memory, the one he had come to bury.

But for that he had to first kill her.

©neelanilpanciker2017 #ThursdayPhotoPrompt#fiction #flashfiction #somethingtobury#209 words