Furious Fiction November 2021
Your story must include someone PACKING A SUITCASE.
Your story must include the phrase “ACROSS A CROWDED ROOM” (as dialogue or narrative).
Your story must include the words CHARM, CRUSH and FAINT.
Sandra slung the shirts into her suitcase. Nice alliteration, she thought.
She tucked her passport into the netting of her backpack.
Paris. A new job. A white Christmas.
Not what she’d originally planned. It was meant to be prawn cocktails and pavlovas under an Aussie sky with Stephen.
Stephen.
She’d expected him to appear on her doorstep by now, begging her not to get on the midday flight. Asking her to forget the past, because the future is theirs. She looked out the window. No Stephen. Only the recycling bin and a taxi. A honking taxi. Crap. Time to go.
**
Constable Chiseljaw sat down at the metal table. He hated these interviews. The guy opposite him had ‘delusional’ written all over his perfect dental work.
Chiseljaw started the voice recorder. ‘Stephen, talk me through your relationship with Sandra Murone.’
‘Well, our eyes met across a crowded room.’ Stephen’s eyes twinkled.
‘Is that a joke?’
‘No, it’s a trope.’
‘Right.’ Chiseljaw scratched his beard and began reading from a piece of paper. ‘You dated briefly then broke up—after which you commenced stalking her.’
Stephen’s eyes became dinner plates. ‘Stalking?’
‘You admit to turning up uninvited at her workplace…’
‘I was being charming!’
‘You sent her a letter every day for eight months, despite never getting a response.’
Stephen raised his arms. ‘How else do I demonstrate a lasting crush?’
Chiseljaw kept reading. ‘You threw stones at her bedroom window and later, broke into her apartment and scattered rose petals.’
Stephen nodded, smiling at the memory.
‘You did all this,’ said Chiseljaw, ‘Despite her repeatedly asking you to leave her alone.’
Stephen laughed. ‘You’re not getting it! This is a romance story. Every refusal of my affection simply means I have to try harder.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘They were grand gestures,’ explained Stephen. ‘All of which will culminate in me racing to the airport this morning and jumping the boarding gate barriers, upon which my beloved will realise we’re meant to be together forever.’
‘How sweet,’ said Chiseljaw. ‘But you’re not going anywhere.’ He stood quickly to create a dramatic chair scrape across the floor. ‘You’re officially under arrest.’
Stephen leapt to his feet, his lip quivering. ‘But I’ll miss our happy ending! And it’s not a romance without one!’
‘Tell it to the judge.’ Chiseljaw cliché-ed, reaching for his plastic cuffs.
‘No, please!’ said Stephen. His eyes hardened. ‘And how exactly do you know what I’ve been up to, anyway?’
‘Mate, this is not the time or place for back story.’
**
Sandra held out her boarding pass to be scanned and glanced over her shoulder.
He didn’t come.
She passed through the claustrophobic tunnel, located her window seat and put on her seatbelt. She took a deep breath, the air laced faintly with aviation fuel and opportunity.
Time to go and write my own story.
