Latest Among the Notches
Flash Fiction by C.J. Heck
When Linda was sure it was over, she gave Joe back all the tangibles, the things you could touch: the gifts, the jewelry, his house key and the key to the car she drove.
Ironically, it was the intangibles from the heart she would most like to give back, but she couldn’t. Those were still as rich and vibrant as last autumn’s leaves.
Linda found a photo that morning, the framed one of them dancing on the cruise ship last year. It used to have a home on his desk. At one time, he loved it and couldn’t bear to have it rest anywhere else.
Eyes love-locked, they were the only two people in the world back then. The photo was one of the tangibles Joe returned to her when it was over.
Linda thought she disposed of it with the rest of the memorabilia neither of them wanted. She was surprised that looking at it hurt so much.
Well-meaning friends warned her the Internet was a dangerous place to meet someone for love. Linda’s ears were as closed to the friends as her heart had been open to Joe.
Now as she lay in bed, her heart fighting back the intangibles, Linda found some solace in the hope that while carving her out of his life, Joe might feel some of the hurt she felt realizing she was merely another mistake he made, one out of a long line of similar mistakes …
… and she was just the latest notch on his belt.
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OUCH! Another notch on his belt. That DOES hurt. Their way of peeling away from each other, though, seemed constructive. Dumping the garbage. Maybe if she wrote down all the intangiibles as they occurred to her, put them in a bowl and set fire to them, they could disappear in the wisps of smoke. Does that really happen though?
What an awful feeling to be another notch on someone’s belt.