I’ve been remise with my blog as of late. My apologies. You know how life gets crazy and passes you by without your knowing? Yeah, it was something like that, along with a pandemic thrown in. As a piece offering, I’m giving you a short I wrote. I wrote it for a contest where I had to create a story with 300 words or less and include: a comfort food, a song lyric/reference from the 70s, a mountain range, a new year’s resolution, and a horse reference. Can you pick out them all?
Hope you enjoy!
Unknown
“Stay,” he said.
She stuffed in one last box. Metal numbed her fingers as she closed her car’s trunk. She inhaled, drawing in the cold and hardening her resolve.
He sulked, but followed as she strode inside.
On the table, bowls of macaroni and cheese congealed. Crab dotted the surface, trapped in the yellowed paste. She scraped her nail around one chunk, catapulting it free. Jealousy towards the crab overwhelmed her.
He misconstrued the slight uplift of her mouth and embraced her. “Stay.”
She breathed in his scent, woody and warm. Familiar yet foreign. His lips brushed hers, savoring. A tear pooled in her lashes, and the riot within her began anew. She pushed him away before it ripped her in two.
A new year, a new start. She’d sworn it.
His shoulders drooped and his face paled. “Stay,” he murmured. “Please.”
The yearning in his voice choked her, and the tear slid from lash to cheek. She bit her lip. He searched for signs of concession.
Instead, she cut the tether. “We’re superficial.”
“We’re not.”
“Your code is still symbols on a screen,” she said, “and my Van Gogh is still splotches of paint. We’re everyday aliens, you and I.”
Her finality unleashed his resentment. “Why don’t you come to your senses?” he said. “You’re not getting any younger.”
“I won’t die unknown.”
She grabbed her keys, but paused at the door. “One day, I hope you understand,” she said.
As the Cascades shrank in her rearview mirror, the road flattened and opened before her. Out the window, she spied a mustang, wild and unhindered. Its galloping feet drummed the rhythm of a new day. Pressing her foot against her pedal, she smiled and hurled herself into its dawning.