The flat green line. The monitor said… dead.
Years after her heart stopped, mine remains shattered but “healthy.”
I’ve tried to reassemble. I think good thoughts, fond memories. Piece by piece its coming back together. My shattered heart. I thought I felt it today. Alas… it is made of stone.
Lou Romero wanders around the New Mexico desert in his old truck, looking for signs. The signs usually tell him, “Why not stop here and eat a burrito?”
He gives pieces of his heart away with no more thought than he would give to handing out nondescript business cards. After a while he almost forgets the value of what he’s giving away.
Only when the last piece is gone does he realize there’s no way to reorder more.
Daniel Slaten has a large supply of business cards but can never find one when he really needs it.
“What’s wrong?” asked my tattoo artist.
I took another swig from the bottle. “Ann left me.”
His bloodshot eyes said he knew the feeling. “Zita walked out on me,” he confessed.
I blinked, shared the bottle.
When I woke, I found a swirling, black ‘Z’ forever inscribed on my chest.
Alexis A. Hunter specializes in short stories and flash fiction. Thankfully, she types her imaginings out now instead of scribbling them in notebooks like she did as a child. To learn more about Alexis visit www.idreamagain.wordpress.com.
I thought stasis would be like sleeping: I’d close my eyes on Earth, and open them a hundred light-years away. I thought it would be an escape.
But it was more like a dream, a slow swirl of half-reality. I spent ten years inside my own head, reliving that memory.
This story was based on the prompt “that memory” at TypeTrigger.