Isolate, #RDP #flashfiction

(c)2020 by Pamela Schloesser Canepa

It’s easy in times like this

not to trust,

to let fear take over.  

You think, if you isolate, what you fear can’t win.  That, if you isolate, you are starving the fear, shutting off from what you fear.

Let  me tell you about this little monster.  It grows in cold, dark, lonely places void of light, within people who fear the warmth, who assume the worst of others.  It grows; it takes over the very person trying to starve it.  For, one who assumes the worst, needs to give oneself a chance to be proven wrong.  If you are never proven wrong, then why would you change your beliefs?

Isolating is great, when it occurs to get things done, to get down to business and feed your own thoughts.  When one isolates to avoid, that monster grows ever stronger and IT feeds off your own thoughts.  I know.  You see it growing all over me, don’t you?

Two young men had stopped but walked off as the old women opened her coat and removed it to reveal her arms covered in dirt and a green growth all over her arms.  She had lost her audience; they were disgusted and maybe even afraid.  

A little child peeked out at her from behind his mother’s leg where he’d been hiding.

I see you!  Don’t be afraid!  Don’t let it take over you, don’t do what I did.  You still have time!  Be brave, little one!

He didn’t turn away; he knew she was not the monster but simply had been overcome. Still, he stayed close to his mother.

Quickly, his mother whisked him away, and the old woman smiled, once again putting on her coat.  Her audience was gone, but she had reached one impressionable soul, and this was good.  For, she knew paranoia would again sweep the land, and likely very soon.

(Written in response to the Ragtag Daily Prompt word: Isolate.  Quite timely, yeah?  Visit them at https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2020/03/13/rdp-friday-isolate/ )

 

 

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