Flash Fiction by Anthony Schneider

And then, in an instant, it went from becoming to flying. Its exoskeleton split open, and some mad burst of instinct or faith propelled it up and off the leaf it called home. Sayonara, water lily. Wings unfurled — and it was no longer crawling but darting in the sky, soaring, airborne and magical, seeing everything, feeling sun and wind, little jet-streams of aerial ecstasy.

Talk about a cursory life. Three score weeks, give or take, larval for longer than it would live, it surfaced into an acrid cloud of warfare, the smoke of Chassepot and the world’s first machine guns, les mitrailleuse, the smell of fire and horse carcasses. The dragonfly glittered in the sun, and flew like there was no tomorrow (in fact, it would know sixty or so tomorrows). Its keen eyes with their compound lenses took in the balls of fire, feu de bataillon. At night the air was thick with the scent of carrion and bullets, nitroglycerin and woodsmoke. Lucky for the dragonfly, it couldn’t smell for shit.

It didn’t know that there had ever been a time before war, didn’t know the war would ever end. It was in the wrong game: beauty, winged acrobatics, basking in the sun, hunting. Like every dragonfly, it wondered if its older siblings hadn’t had it better and if its cousins didn’t have it better, any of the odonota — damselflies, skimmers, dashers, dancers, darners, giant hawkers. And like every dragonfly, it died none the wiser.

Text © Anthony Schneider