It’s time for another Flash Fiction challenge! See the prompt below and give us up to your best work in the comments. We look forward to reading how your story unfolds.
Write no more than 300 words that finishes this story:
Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair. With a sigh, she said, “The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.”
Leaning her head back, she closed her eyes and considered her nemesis. There was so very much that she loved about their relationship. It was addictive, warm and inviting, speaking to her very soul.There were moments of abject despair when she considered her life without this amazing entity that she had known as long as she could remember. Yet, it was too much. It was costing her, especially on the scale of her existence. Molly rose then and squaring her shoulders walked purposely back into the kitchen. There it was, just lying there, glistening, naked, waiting. It beckoned her, even now. She stood a moment longer, considering what she was about to do. “No, she thought. It must end this way”. With resolve, she walked to the counter and, reaching out a trembling hand, grabbed the unwrapped chocolate bar and, turning, walked to the trash can. Eyes tightly squeezed shut she unclenched her fist and dropped it in. Openly sobbing, she sank to her knees in abject misery. Goodbye, she whispered. Goodbye.
I just wrote my story and went to submit it. It says ‘not open to submissions’.Shirley
Date: Thu, 5 May 2016 12:33:32 +0000 To: muirse@hotmail.com
Hey Shirley – we aren’t taking guest submission right now (stories that are around 2000 words that are posted as stand alone stories on the site), but if you want to do the flash fiction challenge, just leave your story in the comments of this post.
Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair. With a sigh, she said:
“The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.”
She tucked her legs under her and continued.
“Which is not to say that I don’t love you. I do. Very much. Oh, it hasn’t always been the case, that’s true. At the beginning, I must admit that you took some getting used to. ‘So why did you persevere with me?’ you might ask. Well, a lot of things are an acquired taste, as you know. I remember my best friend at secondary school – Tina, who you’re acquainted with. When I first met her, I couldn’t stand the sight of her, and we went a whole term without even speaking. But then we had to sit next to each other on the bus during a school trip, and we couldn’t help but start talking. I found out that we had more in common than I would ever have imagined – an awful lot in common. It was Tina that introduced me to you, of course, do you remember? That summer at the swimming pool? Ah, halcyon days – when my body was fit enough to attract plenty of boys. No longer, though. I’m wasting away, and I put it down to you. Oh, you may say that it’s not all your fault, and I agree – there are other factors involved. But you’re the main reason, and I’ve resolved to fall out of love with you. You think I can’t do it? You don’t know me as well as you think you do. When I set my mind to something, it usually gets done. I gave up alcohol after all – and I bloody loved alcohol. So let me say, here and now, that I’m quitting you. This is the last one. And maybe just the odd one after meals.”
The cat looked at her with one spy-eye and thought, meh.
Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair. With a sigh, she said, “The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.”
Olivier made no response, reclining unmoved on the armchair. He was cold but he was available and willing.
Molly stroked his neck. “You are very attractive. I do love you, but too much.”
She put on her coat and went to the front door. She called to Olivier, “I’m going for a walk. Goodbye for the last time. Don’t wait for me.”
It was a long walk from her house, especially in the dark, and the last hundred yards were especially breezy because of the height. She was glad of the leather gloves she had pulled from the pocket of her winter coat.
Susie had got there first and waved.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” Susie said, and they embraced. “No moon tonight, that’s good.”
“I’m ready,” said Molly, “are you really quitting this time?”
“I am,” she said, “I just downed a whole bottle of Cotes du Rhone. How about you?”
“I left my last chilled bottle of Olivier on the chair, untouched, how’s that for resolve?”
“The water will be very cold so it should be over quickly, no more than five minutes,” said Susie. “After quaffing that Cotes du Rhone I’ve got the courage to go. No more embarrassing scenes, no more hangovers. Thanks for your support and friendship.”
“And yours, darling, for all the secrets and confessions we’ve shared and wept over. I’m glad it’s over.”
The two women removed their shoes and climbed onto the rail of the Forth Road Bridge. The lights of Edinburgh twinkled in the distance. Two figures holding hands slipped over the side, plunging into the cold dark waters one hundred and fifty feet below.
Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair.
“My friends warned me about you, they told me about your past and how many people you hurt! Even my own father! I never valued his opinions! EVER! Even after what you did to Francine I made up excuses why I should stay. That you doing what you did was her fault she should have known better not to mess with you!”
With a sigh, she said, “The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.”
” Before you go! Can we share one last breath? I need to know that you won’t hate me after this! That all my love, time money energy was not all in vain!”
” One last breath baby, just one last time” Smoke billows from her nostrils caressing her for the last time.
Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair. With a sigh, she said, “The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.”
“What’s that, babe?” said Brad. His eyes were on his phone, his finger scrolling, scrolling. Behind him a horde of shoppers shuffled onward like laborers in a work camp.
Molly hadn’t meant to say that out loud. She was so tired and so hungry and they were so far from the exit. This happened to them every time they came to Ikea. They got lost, got trampled. Why had they come here again? Molly couldn’t remember. She needed to rest, to clear her head. Good thing they were in the living room department. There were sofas everywhere.
“I was talking to Ikea, babe,” said Molly. “We’ve got to quit coming here! It’s not good for us!”
Brad lifted his eyes from his phone’s screen to graze her with an irritated look. Molly was the melodramatic type.
“You say that every time, babe,” Brad said, “and every weekend, we come back.”
Molly whimpered. It was true. She wanted to quit Ikea, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She reached up for the price tag on the sofa – $150. It wasn’t a bad looking sofa, either.
“Now, get up,” said Brad. “We need picture frames and that department is still 45 departments away. We have to get a move on if we want to get out of here by nightfall.”
Molly struggled to her feet and she and Brad merged into the stream of shoppers. Brad was right. They had to keep moving, keep moving or they would surely die here.
Write no more than 300 words that finishes this story:
Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair. With a sigh, she said, “The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.”
She threw what she held and heard the tinkling crash of silver and glass. Almost she had succumbed. Almost, she had given in once again. Almost it was like all the other times.
Powerful now, determined, and energized; she rose from the sofa and strode with purpose to the kitchen counter. The unforgiving, hard concrete of the counter top held the cold and merciless object of destruction that she very much wanted and abhorred at the same time. Yes, she had used it in the past to destroy, ruin, and spoil. No more! Her mind screamed.
With her fresh determination Molly grasped the object and felt the freezing bite of guilt and shame pulse through her hand. She wavered. Just once more, she reasoned, for the last time and Molly felt her resolve fading. No more! Her mind screamed again.
Uttering a forlorn and desperate cry of love and hate she dumped the ice cream into the sink and flipped on the disposal.
Having a pet did get Molly out of her apartment every day and into the park, she even took it with her when she went to the shops.
The plus side to having a pet was all the exercise and it wasn’t long before she needed to take her belt in a few notches, but there was a down side and her husband Rodney noticed — she was losing her bum! Some women have faces, others have legs or bosoms and a lucky few have it all, but some, like Molly, have bums.
Rodney, her husband, was forever telling the story of how he had followed Molly down Main Street and fallen in love with her bum and its wiggle. He had overtaken her, then turned to get a view of her front and liked what he saw. He checked her ring finger and seeing it free, he took a chance and asked her if she would let a stranger new to town buy her a coffee.
They had taken off like a rocket and thirty years on they still went to the same diner for brunch on a Sunday before a long walk holding hands, but Molly had foolishly listened to her friend Susan when she said ‘They never complain, they just get up and leave or start playing away from home’.
Molly would never have got herself a personal electronic trainer had she thought for a minute that the loss of a few inches was going to upset her husband. Her pet would have to go, but not until they had one final jog around the park together and back to the apartment, where Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair and with a sigh said, ‘The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.’
Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair. With a sigh, she said, “The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.”
She looked at her own reflection in the mirror with disdain. She stood up and went close to the mirror. She saw a tall, slender girl gazing her back through the glass.
“ I am beautiful”, she thought. And she was really a beauty, with her sparkling emerald eyes, her sculpted face and her mischievous hair, which looked like a cascade of chocolate, brushing her shoulders. The only problem was that she was ashamed of her beauty. She was ashamed of her intelligence. She was ashamed of everything good with which she was blessed by nature.
She was pricked by a strange guilt, a weird worry in her soft heart. She thought that people will think her as proud if she didn’t hide her beauty. So, she tried to look as ugly as possible. She wore old-fashioned clothes, her hair were seldom styled, her shoulders were always slouched. She acted clumsily and talked nervously to appear awkward.
All she wanted was to be like everyone else so that she wouldn’t be alone. For this very reason, she never raised her hand in class even if she knew the answer for the question being asked.
“What will everyone think if I answer every question in the class? They will think that I am showing off my intelligence”, she thought. She didn’t want to be alienated as Hermione Granger. The world is not Hogwarts where one gets friends like Harry Potter and Ron Weasely who are fine with your being more intelligent than them.
She was content with her life and extremely comfortable in the façade she had created to retain her friends until she was slapped with reality. Gradually her friends started ignoring her to enter the popular group in her college. Everyone around her behaved as if she did not even exist. She was once again alone. Her worst fear had been realized. Now she was not afraid of anything. There was no need of the façade now. One is always alone in this world, regardless of how much he tries to blend in.
There was no need to be like everyone else. For the last time, she looked at her old self in the mirror. She didn’t deserve this timid girl gazing through the glass. She styled her hair according to the latest trend. She applied minimal make-up on her face and strode confidently out of her home to attend college.
In college, she answered every question she knew and behaved in a sophisticated manner. Everyone was stunned at her transformation. Her classmates started swarming around her. It appeared as if she had entered a new college.
But later at night, when she was tossing around her bed, with sleep being away like a distant dream, she was thinking, “Did I was too confident among my classmates? What will they be thinking?”
“I have to quit you,” she repeated. She stretched out on the sofa, hand straying toward the remote control. Her team was playing again tonight. Baseball, that most marvelous expression of everything American. They were playing on the west coasts for the next two weeks, then the central teams. As the games came on later and later, she proved to be a true fan by staying up and watching MASN until the clock struck eleven.
“I love you, Harper, Zimmerman, Ross and the rest of you, but I can’t keep doing this. My boss is going to fire me if I’m late to work one more time.”
The TV seemed to come on of its own accord. Werth hit another 2 run homer. Her eyes watched avidly as the score was no longer tied. She couldn’t believe that her team, the Nationals, were playing so well this season. There had to be a compromise. Sighing softly, she grabbed her lap top and typed a message to her boss. He deserved this and she had earned it.
“I’ve saved six months of vacation pay which I will lose if I don’t use it. So, I’ll be back at the end of September. Thanks for being so understanding. Sincerely, Molly.”
April was a good month after all.
Molly collapsed onto the sofa in despair. With a sigh, she said, “The problem is, you’re not good for me. I have to quit you.”
Marty cocked his ear and looked at her quizzically. “No, not you old friend” she said as she ruffled the top of his furry brown head. He licked her hand a few times, his rough tongue giving her comfort before he burrowed into her leg and fell asleep. Molly let out a long exasperated breath as her eyes welled with tears. She never meant for things to go this far. It had been fifteen years since she had last seen him when she ran into Jonathon at the café. She never expected to feel that swelling in her chest that made her heart race and other parts of her ache. After they broke up it had only taken him three months before he was married. It was only supposed to be a break. She never expected him to find someone else. And here they were, fifteen years later. He was still married; she was still in love with him. They had lunch a few times and it wasn’t long before the chemistry they felt reignited. She hated being his mistress but didn’t want to give him up. There was too much between them. Her phone buzzed startling her. It was a text from him. Her breath caught as she read what he wrote. Shaking her head the tears she had been fighting came cascading down her cheeks. Marty gave a little whimper, licked her cheek and snuggled in tighter as Molly cried. “I should have known better,” she thought. Eventually the tears dried up and Molly got up, wandered into her bedroom and soon fell asleep.