You Get What You Need

Inconvenience

(An Original 'Short' By: Twilla R. Boyce)

Kat pulled off the road onto the gravel shoulder and jerked the key out of the ignition. Jumping out of the driver's seat, she tried to prepare herself for what she was about to see. She slid down the steep embankment of the ditch. Thankfully, she had a full moon to guide her. She spotted him right away.

His body was limp. His breathing was shallow and laboured. Kat sat next to him, gently laid his head in her lap and smoothed his brow with her finger tips. It was all she could do.

Blake was furious with her for arriving late to their anniversary dinner. The kids said nothing, ignoring her explanation. She cared too much. That's what they told her time and again.

She poked at her eggplant parmesan, unable to push the road-side image from her mind. She didn't know how to explain a thing she barely understood herself. Why her? And why did it occur when she was supposed to be somewhere else, somewhere important? Twenty years of asking had brought her no closer to the answer.

Later that night, she slipped silently from Blake's side and went to the kitchen to make a tea. She stared at her reflection in the blackened window and readjusted her pony tail. Tea brewed, she sat at the table. Striking a match, she lit the candle centerpiece and sipped the warm brew, soothing the troubled image in her mind.

She closed her eyes and said a prayer for the fawn she had tried to comfort earlier that evening. Shadows quivered on the wall as the candle flickered, then fizzled to nothing.