Flash Fiction and Other Bits

Lost Love Found

Kellars once had a picture book that said, All that is lost still lives on the other side of the flat earth.

Now his space-bell descended toward that unknown land. He wasn't expecting a heaven of baby teeth and orphan socks. Still less did he expect to see his wife of twelve years, who'd died the week before.

It was just an arid rockscape that the sun had never touched. His space-bell would confidently steer itself between the most dramatic formations in the homeworlds. If he turned on the bell's searchlights, they'd light the strangest shadowscape he'd ever see.

But as the space-bell headed across the dark side, he kept the lights off. The space-bell hummed and bobbed, hovered and darted, in a dance like the brush of a Zen master.

The darkness was total. He could not see his hands, the controls, the passing earth. This, then, was the most perfect mirror of what he felt within.

Then a whisper issued from the dark. Have you seen my lost kitten? Jane asked Enaj.

It was his wife Cassima reading that old picture book, Lost Love Found.

Hallucinations were a natural side effect of descent-sickness. Ignoring the voice, he focused on releasing his grief into the darkness, as his therapist had suggested.

Cassima's musical lilt came again, achingly close. Go home, Enaj said. It is no longer the kitten you knew. It has passed to the other side.

Cassima always worried that their son Milo wanted to hear this story over and over. Wasn't it too morbid for a four-year-old?

But Kellars always thought that children were drawn to the stories they needed. Maybe this was one they'd all need, some day.

But Jane refused to leave the dark side of the earth without her kitten. She searched until she was nothing but a shadow.

Kellars couldn't afford more than a twenty-minute ride. Soon the space-bell automatically turned in mid-air and began sailing back the way it had come.

It was probably better that way; he'd otherwise listen to Cassima's voice until he ran out of air and joined her.

Jane left her child-shadow behind in the dark. Now she is grown and reading her daughters this story.

On the flat side of the earth, her child-shadow searches on.

As the space-bell emerged into the light, Kellars clapped his hands over his watering eyes. Too bright.

In his mind's eye, he saw his childhood copy of Lost Love Found. The title was a lie. Jane never found her lost love.

Milo had later scribbled out and written over the title. Now the book was called Loving Found.

Kellars had left a part of him behind with Cassima's voice on the dark side of the flat earth.

Rubbing his eyes, he faced the new morning. Back home, Milo was waiting to hear another story.