Written for the July 26th Flash Fiction Challenge
Changing planes at CDG, the public address system harangues, “The white zone is not a place to park automobiles; never leave your luggage unattended.”
A disturbance in the terminal causes me to look up from my reading, and I study a contingent of gendarmes scurrying across the airport to erect a barrier around an abandoned valise. A barrier that resembles something a film noir femme fatale would duck behind to change into “something more comfortable.”
The officers fall back, a muffled “POP” sounds, we watch a single nylon stocking rise above the screen before gently floating back to ground.
The prompt and instructions were:
In 99 words (no more, no less) write a story about what happens next to a stranded suitcase. Go where the prompt leads you, but consider the different perspectives you can take to tell the tale.