#RomanticFridayWriters - Challenge No 32 - My flash fiction - The Perfect 9.5

There are many opportunities to write offered on the internet - blogfests, competitions, memes and more. RomanticFridayWriters is just one of these opportunities. Every second Friday, a group of writers practise their craft by writing to prompts, reading everyones' stories and offering critiques when asked. Members find writing to stimulus gets the creative juices fired up, and editing to 400 words helps make every word count. If you haven't already, I hope you will read some of our stories.

Each week there is a Featured Writer chosen. Last week it was jointly shared with two amazingly-talented writers, Madeleine Maddocks from Scribble and Edit and Erin Kane Spock.


I hope you enjoy my story, inspired by a visit to Madrid, Spain, in 2011.

The Perfect Dance

The women danced. Their dresses, bodices decorated with jewels, shimmered in the semi-dark. The movements began slowly, the dancers moving like fish floating across a luminescent ocean. Soon the slow dance became a crescendo of whirling, twirling patterns across the barn-like room. This was excellence, the best of the best.

He cast his eyes to the stage. The musicians stood tall, their faces gleaming, sweat dripping from their black curls. They played the trembling guitars, stroking the strings with a thrumming like a thousand fluttering winged birds, softer now, then louder. Their white shirts were blue under the light, their tight black high-waisted trousers gleamed and shone. Their cowboy boots were glittering glass as they stamped to their own beat.

Mirrored lights swirled over the dancers, silvering the sequins on the flounces of skirts as the frills vibrated with the dancers’ steps. It was a kaleidoscope of red, purple, yellow and white, checks, polka dots, stripes. He counted the heavy, clacking beats as the black dancing pumps met the timber floor, shaking the room. A hundred shoes in perfect time as the dancers followed the thrum of the five flamenco guitars.

But there was only one dancer on the floor who set his blood boiling.

Her auburn ringlets, her lithe body clad in a slash of brightest red, her waist an invitation for a man to span with joined fingers. His Angelique. Her lower body kicked yards of frills, revealing slim legs in satiny black stockings. Her arms held above her head, the clicking fingers, were a perfect sculpture of beauty and tension. His eyes followed her every movement. How could he fault her? Did she miss a beat? No, every call of the sobbing guitars was met, every whirl perfection, every stamping foot in perfect timing.

Source*

Soon it was only a competition between two – Angelique and a fiery redhead who looked imperiously at the judge’s table each time she shimmied by, daring them to eliminate her. She was perfection herself, her body screamed. Find a fault if you dare! I’m the perfect 10!

Angelique was asked to leave the floor. How could they send her away? Only he saw the tear she brushed from her eye. He half stood in his seat, mortified.

‘9.5!’ The judges score his Angelique.

‘They might give you a less than perfect score,’ he thought to himself, ‘but to me you’re the perfect 9.5.’

©DeniseCovey2012

Word count: 400 ish. FCA.

*Photo taken and edited by L'Aussie Images.
 (Lucky enough to be inspired by a night of
 flamenco dancing in Madrid, Spain, in 2011.)

I hope you enjoyed my story and that you will visit some other writers who're writing to this challenge. Click on the links below...

Here is an excellent youtube video on flamenco dancing: