Category: Flash Fiction

by Joe Stanley

2

IT WAS NOT EXCEEDINGLY difficult to do as she asked. The worst of it was tolerating her asinine friends. I was needed only for public events and left to my own most of the time. I spent that time bettering myself as much as possible. I read, learned to appreciate music and art, studied chess… But the long, lonely hours took their toll, and I craved the only comfort  I could never have, the warmth of another loving heart.

The smirks and snickers that attended the whispers surrounding me were not as deeply wounding as one might imagine.

Never being taken seriously is only an insult when you respect the people looking down at you. But beyond these soulless ones, there were others who judged me not so harshly. In the various classes I took in my spare time, I almost even made friends.

I think people liked me, even though they knew something was off. I got no small pleasure out of seeing a face or two light up when I came into a room. I suppose some thought me to be interesting, but what really seemed to connect with them was that I cared. When you view life from a position of pain, you either numb yourself to it or you appreciate what it is and how it affects people.

When I first met Emily, I knew immediately that she was, like myself, a solitary, broken heart. She sat alone, keeping to herself. She was exceedingly difficult to approach, but I knew that she wanted someone to reach out and this kept me persistent. When she finally let her guard down and opened up for me, I knew I understood nothing about suffering.

I resolved to make her happy, if I could, to show her that she did not need to face life by herself. She needed me and I needed her. We more than complimented each other, we completed each other. Our connection deepened with every moment we spent together, our hearts became hopelessly and forever entangled.

We both knew where we were headed. We pretended things weren’t so serious, that we were just good friends. But after sharing a silly laugh, as we gazed into each others eyes, our passions exploded. Our lips met, burning with passion’s fire, our trembling hands grasped at the treasure we had so long done without, our breaths were the screaming thunder of a tempest, and our hearts pounded for the very first time in our lives with the rhythm of love.

We held each other in silence, smiling in the dark, saying nothing and needing no more.
We knew the flaws, the secrets, the hurts, the wordless dreams we shared and that was enough.

I could barely bring myself to part with her, but I knew we belonged to and with each other.

Returning home was a rude and cold awakening. Marion could sense that I was happy and she tried to punish me for it.

I had other plans.

click here to continue

by Joe Stanley

1

LET THIS BE MY CONFESSION. My life has, for so long now, been a bundle of secrets and lies, that it will cleanse my soul to write the truth. At least, I hope it will.

I was married at an early age, too young to know what I was doing. My wife, Marion, was sweet enough to me, but, more,she was rich. I married her for that wealth, the sweet tenderness she showed me was merely a benefit.

We were happy together, for the beginning, anyway. But the novelty wore thin with the passing of a few years. Who we were in public was very different from who we were behind closed doors. We bickered constantly, and our intimacies grew fewer and fainter, despite my efforts to the contrary. I dared to question whether we should have been wed in the first place.

At this, she laughed, a wicked and hateful sound which I have come to despise in the depths of my heart. It was mocking and cruel, an inhuman noise, one which delights in the misery of others. To my surprise, she had been expecting this, as though it was natural.

There was a long tradition of loveless marriage in her family. Add to this a line of dominant matrons, shrewish nags who henpecked the men around them into submission. They knew the law well and how it favors the female. With but an accusation, I could be jailed and left penniless, and the implication was that worse could be easily arranged.

It was made absolutely clear to me who was in charge, and that she had ‘married down’ to put me in this position.

“All I expect from you,” she told me with a voice as cold as winter sleet, “is that you keep up appearances. You will never mention divorce again, to me or anyone, or I will make the rest of your life far worse than it already is.”

Like a fool, like a damned and helpless fool, I appealed to her heart. Why should she want it this way? Why not let me go and find a man who made her happy? It did not occur to me that she knew nothing else, that she did not know how to be happy.

“Men have their uses.” she explained, condescending as though she spoke to a child, “But they are not capable of making a woman truly happy. Equality is an illusion. Either they are in charge, muddling things up, or we are. Of the two, I choose the latter. I prefer that men be a plaything to be used and discarded. In fact, I have several that serve such a purpose.”

It was not enough to have beaten me, she was not satisfied until I was humiliated as well. But now all was clear, and though my heart was sickened, I knew the game at any rate. I suppose I had it coming, but I wished things could have been different.

click here to continue