Endings

For an online competition on Caferati, a Ryze network I'm a member of, interested paticipants were required to submit a piece of flash fiction, a form described here on Wiki, based on the theme "endings".

I used a story I had written more than a year ago. Still think I could've cut more but- ah well. Tell me what you think.

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Giaz thought fast, his blood pounding in his ears. If found, his own people would think he had deserted.
And they would kill him.
The jawans could find him soon.
And they would kill him.

Change. Now.

It happened like clockwork. He shaved off his beard with his father's knife, then unwrapped his pagri.
Shaved with cold red cuts in his tired scalp, he wrapped himself in an old blanket.

At three in the afternoon, later that day, a man was seen staggering into Pohra. He collapsed near the water pump. The Jawans tried questioning him. He remained silent. They concluded that he was just another shell-shocked civilian.

“Leave him. He’s gone. We'll tell the hospital about him".

Giaz closed his eyes, hearing the footsteps walk away, crunching into silence.

"I’m gone".

Slowly he got to his feet. A sob shook in his throat.
"I am gone".

And for the first time since he was a child, Giaz threw back his head and laughed, tears streaming from his eyes, as the women at the pump hurried away, water slish-sloshing from their pots.

Birds in the branches above him. He spent his days now sitting quietly in the shade.

He lay flat on the ground a year later. The wind blew over him, carrying dust and whispering in the dancing leaves above, as the sun set behind the hunched hill.

As the man's eyes shut, he murmured, the words lost in the bustling leaves-

"Goodbye Giaz...”

The wind blew out over the hill, and darkness fell.

-'Giaz's story', p.j,edited for flash fiction post by p.j. (255 words).Originally written march 2004. Posted in full length here