Valentine Flash Fiction - 2008
Winner - Valentine Flash Fiction
Sande Anfang - "Buetos"
I never felt love before. For another human, that is. That was in the old days, the pre-raptor days of my twenties and thirties. Instead, I subsisted on a diet of crushes on odd things: fields, country roads, barns in various stages of collapse, and animals. Sometimes I even fell in love with tattered, quaint objects disintegrating on musty thrift shop shelves.
In college, I found a pale pink topper, very fifties. I wore it until the sleeves fell off. I spied a metal cookie tin, emblazoned with romantic schooners billowing along under a full moon. On the side, some kid had scratched “Keep ‘em flying.” It was an authentic marble box, and, like the jacket, a piece of someone’s past, an intimacy, something they had loved and outgrown….and I had been lucky enough to hold in my hands years later.
When I moved to the coast, I walked the bluffs daily, eyeing potential friends and lovers, always too shy to make eye contact. I began to notice small hawks sitting on the wires along the highway, searching out prey. They were a mottled brown, with soft, white bellies, and sweet faces. Later, I learned that they were kestrels, or sparrow hawks.
On the bluff trails, I studied the habits of three pairs of marsh hawks, Northern Harriers. They combed the earth at very close range, cocking their heads at right angles to the ground. They were easily identified by the white bands between their chocolate brown bodies and tails. I was in love! I later learned that they mate for life.
As I learned more about the buteos, I began to notice barn owls flying overhead at night, their ghostly forms leaving chalky trails on the slate-gray sky. I found a spot –as if called by a native drum-- where barn owls clock in at dusk, darting swiftly over the heads of horses, staring me down with their trusting, round black eyes.
I was in love, but it was more than that. I felt that they loved me too. Perhaps I was the only human who had ever been skewered with an arrow by a raptor named Cupid. They seemed to dance and flit for me alone, a private ballet of heartbreaking beauty.
The night I heard the Great Horned Owl calling to his mate outside my bedroom window sealed my love for eternity. The deep, unguent call passed through me like a fine filleting knife, leaving a bloodless scar. I bear it proudly, the place where buteos and raptors entered my heart and built a nest there. I will show it to you if you like.
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Honorable Mention
Jim O'Loughlin - "A Part of Her"
I never felt love before. Jessica liked the sound of that and she said it out loud. It would have been a good line to have used when Jason broke up with her, just to let him know that, in the end, she didn’t really care about him either. It would be a good line to use now, if Jason was home. But as she looked up from the street she saw that Jason’s apartment,—four floors up, three windows over— was dark. She resented that he wasn’t sitting there, alone and feeling miserable.
And then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him, maybe. The car turned the corner before she got a good look, but it was the same color as Jason’s car. She hadn’t seen the driver, but there was a woman in the passenger’s seat
But it couldn’t be Jason. He couldn’t be with someone else so soon. Unless, of course, he’d already been seeing another woman before the break up! No, he would never have done something as evil as that. Then again, she never thought he would have broken up with her either.
The only thing Jessica knew for sure was that there was no way she was going to spend tonight staring at the ceiling unable to sleep because Jason might have cheated on her. She marched into Jason’s apartment building, glad now that she had forgotten to give him back his key. She knocked once on his apartment door, just to make sure no one was home, and let herself in. Jessica didn’t have to be in the cast of C.S.I. to read the signs in the apartment. Jason had recently vacuumed and cleaned up all the magazines that were usually strewn across his coffee table. There were two wine glasses in the dishwasher and a strand of blonde hair on the couch. She went through his bedroom but there weren’t any signs of a woman having been there. The kitchen garbage can had a bunch of empty frozen dinner boxes, so he was still cooking for himself. It was possible he just had a blind date. One of his friends could have felt sorry for him and set him up.
But then she saw it. His college yearbook was on the living room table. It was open to a page of class photos. And there in the middle of the page, with a perfect smile, was Lynette. Lynette, the ex-girlfriend. Lynette, who was beloved by Jason’s friends and family. Lynette, who supposedly broke Jason’s heart and made him think he could never love again until Jessica came along.
Jessica couldn’t believe it. She pulled out a chair to sit down and something clattered to the floor. It was a lipstick tube. She picked it up and looked at the label. Strawberry blossom. Strawberry blossom? It was the color of a rotting orange, and she half expected it to smell like strawberries. How could Jason cheat on her with someone who wore strawberry blossom lipstick? Is that what he thought he wanted? Is that what he thought would make him happy?
Jessica opened the lipstick tube and stared at the pristine white walls of Jason’s apartment. She let her hand write what it wanted. “PRICK” in big letters next to the framed poster of the 1992-93 Montreal Canadiens. “CHEAT” scrawled next to the flat screen television. Then, in a spot close to the floor, a spot he would only see if he moved the couch, in smaller letters “you will not be happy.” Jessica pocketed the now-empty lipstick tube, turned off the lights, and let herself out.
* * *
On her drive home, she tapped the lipstick tube on the steering wheel and hummed along to the radio. She was in such a better mood now. It had been nice to be back in Jason’s apartment. A part of her still missed him. Maybe she’d email him tomorrow.