Here’s a short story (748 words) I wrote for Chuck Wendig’s weekly Flash Fiction Challenge. Let me know what you think about it in the comments below:
I Held Your Heart Once
“I told you this was a bad idea!” he shouted.
Yeah, as if the entire idea had been mine. We sat in the house on the gray floor, my fingers almost completely numb. I wanted to shove a knife under his ribs. I plastered a faux smile on my face.
“You start the fire then.”
“Fine,” he said, grabbing the stick and the stone from me.
I studied El’s face as the light in the windows began to recede and the bitter wind howled. His cheeks were gaunt. When we’d left they’d been full of meat. Now, we both looked like shadow people; skinnier than we ever should have been. The lines of dirt on his cheekbones would have made him look like a football player if he were bigger. But now they accentuated the emaciated look of his face.
I tried to blow the blue out of my fingers.
El shouted at the stick as if it had ears.
I went to the door.
“What the fuck are you going to do, Mare?”
“Going somewhere else. I mean we’ll freeze to death in here.”
“It’s safe and it’s warm.”
“It’s not warm.”
“It’s warmer than out there.”
I looked out the window. The ferocious snow fell barricading us into this desolate place. We were stuck, and it was my bad idea that had brought us up here. I thought there’d be food, maybe canned goods. But when we opened the door a vacuous wasteland of dust greeted us. The back window had a crack letting in a constant stream of cold air and snow. No wood, except for wet, snow-bound logs sitting on the crumbling front porch. I could feel El’s hostility aimed at me like an arrow.
“I mean who the fuck goes up the mountain. We should have been going down.”
My heart felt like a worn stone in my chest. I stood by the door, not opening it, with my back to him. He struck the rock against the stick. Heat remained aloof. There was friction in the air but not enough to start a fire.
“My hands are numb,” I said. I turned toward him.
He put the rock and stick down and looked at me. I could see his old face hidden in his new one. The old face I’d fallen in love with. His eyes which had looked cold softened and his face crinkled into a smile. His smile warmed me up, and I felt the once familiar spark. The one that had been missing for awhile now, the one that reminded me that I’d held his heart once.
“Come here.”
I stood still.
He stood up and walked toward me, measured steps through the dust of the room. He pulled my shirt off before I could say no. His hands on my breast warmed me up. Body heat, the natural generator. He took off his shirt and grabbed my hands. He warmed them with his, rubbing them together like the stick and the stone. He placed my hands on his chest.
He slid down my pants then pulled down his. I shivered, and he wrapped his arms around me. We were like two unlit pieces of coal trying to catch an elusive spark. I felt him enter me and shivered again. We had not made love in ages.
“I don’t have a condom.”
“It’s okay.” It wasn’t.
Our bodies moved together filling the cabin with warmth. I imagined soft lights. I imagined a rope bed with a soft mattress, blankets covering us. I imagined the smell of chicken cooking in the oven. I imagined our children.
When I blinked, I felt his hip bone against my inner thigh. I’d never felt his hip bone before. The barrenness of the cabin stole my fantasy. He moaned and I squeezed my arms around him trying to find the heat in what should have been passion. I didn’t want the fantasy of what we once had to end. But he pushed hard, climaxed, and rolled off of me. The frigid air pierced my sweat-smothered skin. El sat with his back to me and took up the stone and stick again.
I had been wrong to come here. He’d held my heart once but it has since shattered like an icicle.
A sudden spark rose from the stick. El lit the wood then turned to look at me with fire in his eyes.
The smoke was blue and grey and smelled like a promise.
Follow Lauren Greene:
Facebook: www.facebook.com\laurengreenewrites
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenegreene
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/109867402293227201728/posts
Lauren Greene, Author 