Late last year I entered the NYCMidnight 250 word flash fiction challenge. Great exercise.
Next, I saw the Australian Writers Centre Furious Fiction challenge for January. Daylight saving made me miss the deadline, so I’m publishing it here.
The challenge ingredients were:
- 500 words or less
- takes place on the first day of a job
- something needs to be stolen
- must include words: trip, tsunami, triangle.
The Hemmed Skirt
We’d argued the night before. Prior to that, during the afternoon, we’d been pleasant to each other. We mingled at our mutual friend’s barbecue; all of our requisite favourites spread out on rustic tables in the long grass. Sparkling crystal bowls held summer punches perfectly chilled. These same friends had all thrown in and paid for our trip to Bora Bora from which we’d just returned. This trip to reward his and my healing after the last 3 months of fighting. But not before I spent weeks crucifying myself that I didn’t see the signs of the Hollywood-esque love triangle formed by him and me, and her.
I am in the process of forgiving.
We are living separately, but I’m hopeful that things are getting better. I truly think so. So many shared moments while we were away. A reawakening of what we mean to each other.
I left the barbecue early. I was starting a new job the next day and the suit skirt that layed on my bed at home needed hemming. Jesus, why didn’t I do it earlier? He didn’t understand why I fretted. If I knew that just one thing was out of place, it clouds my focus and I imagine everyone is looking at it. I didn’t want that on top of impressing my new work mates.
With the hemmed skirt hanging in the kitchen, he knocked at my door. I opened it and he crushed the distance between us in a second. I wanted it, but then I didn’t. I didn’t want to acknowledge a familiar scent on him either. I sent him away, and he lashed out. Words, growing shorter and shorter with rage. I hadn’t even yet told him that my new job was in his building. We’d lunch. We’d walk at lunch. We’d walk and talk.
But as I stood in the foyer on that next bright new Monday morning, watching the shining lifts catapult up and down, a familiar tsunami of emotions threatened to engulf me. He strode through the revolving foyer doors and swung to his left. Not towards the lifts, and me. His eyes were firmly fixed on the target to which he strode. Not me. It was her. He and her.
I turned back to look at my reflection in the shiny lift doors. My left hand fingering the newly hemmed skirt.
Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe the bright sunshine piercing through the exterior glass splashed my retina too much. The same sun that strayed through my window those weeks prior. The same sun that annoyed a particular nurse who had to draw the blackout curtains in the ward that I’d never be in ever again.
My eyes searched the foyer, but I relaxed a little when I didn’t see him.
The lift doors finally opened and I stepped forward. Just me and this 20-year-old skirt suit.
alexdee me 
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