Challenge!

Today is the blogging campaigns first challenge.  The rules are: Write a short flash fiction story in 200 words or less, excluding the title. Begin the story with the words, “Shadows crept across the wall”. If you want to give yourself an added challenge (optional), do one or more of these: end the story with the words: "everything faded", include the word "orange" in the story, write in the same genre you normally write, make your story 200 words exactly!

Here is my story that is exactly 200 words, began and ended with the requested words and is adapted from my WIP, so it's definitely in my genre. 



Regret

Shadows crept across the wall measuring the passing of time.  Anna didn’t know how long she stood there, her heart bleeding into the hollow where her lungs and stomach used to be, but the house was dark, the orange gone from the sky.

Her legs ached. As she moved one foot then the other little pins prickled everywhere. It was a relief to feel that kind of pain. The prickles eased with movement and she regretted their loss. Now it was too easy to feel the hole Paul had left in her chest. Where was he? The remembered anguish on his face made her crumple to the ground.

She couldn’t let him hurt like that. Jumping up, she was at the door before she knew it, fingers on the handle. But what would she say? Anything. Anything to remove that hurt from his face, erase the anger caused by her confession. Or worse yet, the dead empty look that told her she no longer meant anything to him.

Her heart twisted and her fingers slid off the handle. There was nothing she could say. He could never accept what she was.  She let the darkness take her and everything faded.