Someone Else

Flash Fiction by Calla Smith

Laura had to run as fast and as far as she could. From that day forward, she would leave everything and everyone she knew behind until they had forgotten her face and the feeling of her name in their mouth. She would be someone else. Someone with no shame and no reason to curse the day she had seen his sweet smile or his golden curls. His tongue so nimble that she had been unable to turn away.

It had started as an impulsive decision to go spend the afternoon reading in a coffee shop away from the constant demands of her home and her husband who she now wondered if she had ever loved. And Xavier was there with his gravitational pull, and she fell into his soul, hidden in the deep pool of his eyes. She didn’t care then that it was wrong, didn’t care even if anyone saw her. She just desperately needed that break from her routine, a flash of life into the overpowering grayness of her days. He made her feel that everything that had come before was only lost time.

There was only one possible solution to her situation. Yes, her husband had given her the life he had promised, but now she needed something more: to finally be free. Xavier had agreed, had told her that he would take care of it. But it was her marriage, her life that she knew she was destroying with every step that she took, and it had to be her. She had to kill off every last tender feeling that she had ever had for the man she had shared so many years with.

So she had planned, and her husband faded away little by little, one dinner at a time, until that day that she had held a napkin to his mouth as he coughed until he was silent. And now she was running, running to the place that they had agreed to meet. The deed done and no turning back. If she still had any mourning left to do, she would do it later. After Xavier had tasted the blood and sent her to the shower to emerge as someone bold and dangerous. The woman she had always wanted to be.

Laura reached the hotel that they had spent so many hours in, lost in their own word. Her key turned in the latch, and the door jerked open. She fell into the darkness of the room she knew so well, expecting to be stopped by his strong arms.

But the room was quiet and the white bed cover hadn’t been disturbed. His wallet wasn’t on the bedside table, and his jacket wasn’t hanging in the closet. The air was dusty and devoid of his scent. There was no safety in that empty hotel room. If he wasn’t there, nothing had gone according to plan. But Laura couldn’t stop now. She still had to step under the hot water and emerge somehow different than even she had expected. For once alone in the world, the future empty before her.

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Bio: Calla Smith lives and writes in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She enjoys long walks, cooking, and keeping her eyes open for the bizarre to serve as inspiration for her next story. She has published a collection of flash fiction “What Doesn’t Kill You”, and her work can also be found in several literary journals.

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