Every week, the Fiction Writers Group Facebook group offers a visual prompt for a 300 word story. Here is this week's prompt
Path To Infinity
He stands atop the arching bridge. The still canal below him perfectly mirrors the world above -- the darkening sky, streetlights, and warm townhouses where he will never again be welcome.
Sources and their reflections combine to form a path to infinity. They all converge to a vanishing point. The sun and its warmth and light vanish there, as do his hopes and dreams. One selfish, unforgivable mistake is all it took to bring down the darling of this town, welcome at every table and party, to become a hunted pariah.
"She smiled at me," he murmurs. "She laughed at my jokes." His shoulders slump and his head bows. Looking into the canal, he sees his own silhouette reflected there. It does not look like a monster's, but he knows the reality of the man behind the outline. The reality of what he has done to the one who smiled like the sun, whose smile has vanished as surely as the sun has.
In his memory he hears "Yes." In his memory they make love and her gasps are ecstatic. But his senses return and she lies lifeless beneath him, her beautiful face frozen in a rictus of fear. This is what he knows but not what he remembers.
He wonders how to make his memories real. These beautiful memories that are so opposed to ugly reality, to the horrible truth. How to make real what he so wants, what he so desperately needs.
The answer blossoms fully formed in his mind. One step. One step is all that is needed. It will be so easy to follow the sun's path. To step onto that road to infinity, caught between Heaven and Earth, and follow it to its end. Its appeal is undeniable, its attraction irresistible.
He takes the step.