fiction

Old Love

/ wvfurandroot / Leave a comment

You are sitting in the hotel downtown waiting for your lover to arrive. The snowfall is alarming, and you know he hates driving in adverse conditions. The weather this Valentine’s Day is nothing but adverse conditions, but you pleaded with him.

“Please! I want to see you!” And you do, but you want to wear your new outfit just as much as you want to see him. You peer out the window and sigh. With or without him, you are going to your prix fixe dinner reservation. You are stuck in town with the snow and there’s no safe way to get home. You ponder how to get across the street to the restaurant in stiletto heels.

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The Mirror

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Anita stopped and nearly tripped over a footstool at the opening to the stall. The mirror was Victorian with all the excess that style had to offer – and then some. It would be completely ridiculous in her Mid-Century modern home, but it called to her in that way that some things do. It was like she had sniffed out a treasure just waiting to be rescued and given a proper home.

Usually, her finds were starburst clocks or Danish modern furniture, but this heavy mahogany, intricately carved cherubs, gods, goddesses, and roses behemoth wouldn’t let her be. She was enchanted.

The mirror was easily eight feet by four feet in dimensions and would dominate a wall. “Where in the world would I put it,” she said aloud. At that the shopkeeper bustled over and said, “Why anywhere that needs a bit of beauty! I can let that go for $100 – cash and carry.”

“Wow. That seems awfully cheap for a Victorian mirror. What’s wrong with it?”

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Cold

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments
Photo by Joseph Pearson on Unsplash

The cold smacked him in the face and took his breath.  The polar vortex_ the weather folks called it.  When he was a kid, they called it the Siberian Express. Times change.   The ambient temperature was below zero and with windchill his bones shuddered, and his toes went numb. 

The assassin buttoned the top of his coat and wrapped his scarf around his neck.  There was no hope for it.  He would have to wear gloves.  Otherwise, his fingers would get clumsy, and the cuts would not be as precise as was his wont.  His mark, the doorman, would be outside even in this weather.  It was the doorman’s job; it was the assassin’s job to kill him and leave him lying in front of the apartment as a warning to the others.

He pulled out the knife and looked into the blade, but the silvery mirror finish clouded over from his breath.  It was too cold for condensation; the knife was encased in a thin layer of ice.  He didn’t suppose that would make any difference, but still it bothered him.  He liked a clean blade; one he could see his face in.  He wiped the blade on his coat, but the metal immediately clouded over again.  No hope for it.

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The Phoenix

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“How many times am I expected to do this?” The exasperated Phoenix looked at the new fires erupting around her. Her insurance agent had canceled her coverage fires and fires ago. She knew from experience that she had to let the fires burn to ashes before rising, so she settled in and tapped her talons on the kitchen counter – waiting for it to catch fire and burn.

“This is getting old.”

She had given up the fire extinguisher because it wouldn’t allow her to rise. The Phoenix didn’t understand why, but her wings were useless while the flames burned. The rubble had to burn to ashes. Complete ash was required. Cold ash.

Photo by Chris Sabor on Unsplash

She bided her time and used a coal shovel to scrape and scoop. After the last fire, she’d been sloppy. There were piles of ash here and there. They were so deep, and she was too buried in ash to stretch her wings. She had to shovel her way out.

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