FLASH FICTION:ELAINE WAITED as the last few stragglers departed. She had positioned herself at a slight distance to the proceedings so anyone watching might assume she was visiting a nearby grave.

A curtain of freezing rain had dropped from a dark sky and drawn itself across the graveyard just as the mourners had turned to leave. Puddles formed where the freshly-turned earth had failed to absorb the sudden downpour and she felt a momentary pang of concern.

The widow was walking through the bruised light to a gleaming black car, grief evident in her bowed frame. She noted her awkward shuffle as she clasped the arm of a younger man, their unsyncopated footsteps making faltering progress.

“The deceived bereaved,” she thought, without humour.

She spied the rectangular piece of board abandoned by the gravediggers and thought it would do. Bending she placed it carefully on the uneven surface of the plot, centering it on the temporary marker and the length of newly dug soil. It squelched as it settled in the loose, sodden clay and she worried it might sink. Cautiously, she tested her full weight on the board. It settled again, before stopping.

Deftly she removed her shoes, replacing them with the black patent taps she had brought in her shoulder bag and stretched to place her coat over the tombstone of the adjacent grave.

Upright, she shivered in her black outfit: tights, shorts, blouse and sequined duck tailed tuxedo.

Placing both hands on the silver head of the cane she carried, she composed herself, momentarily, before sliding a muscular, stockinged calf across the length of board. In position, she tapped the board three times with the metal tip of her cane and smiled brilliantly.

She was alone now. With him.

And it was time to dance.

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