Jan sat down upon the frog and pondered the lint in the palm of her hand. It was a gift from Jones, the lint that is, not her hand. She got her hand from the ParaTechnical Institute of Prosthetic Limbs and Intuitive Burping.
The lint was feathery, a bit grey, but not terribly unpleasant. The frog disagreed with Jan’s thoughts, but then, the frog had always been contrary and contentious. World War III would never have broken out if the frog hadn’t gone and squirted tadpoles into the Prime Ministers tea. It was the Boston Tea Party all over again, but this time we lost, hence the United States of Britain.
Jones had been walking down the street when he was hit by the train that rearranged his limbs into a more interesting configuration. The lint had been right in front of his eye and he snatched it up, again the lint, not his eye, and pocketed it. A few minutes later the EMT popped Jones’ eye back into his head, only backwards. This little mistake gave Jones a new insight to his thoughts that he used to great advantage as a lawyer.
It was over coffee that Jones presented Jan with the lint. He had that charming Picasso grin on his face as Jan turned the lint over and over in her hand.
“I know it’s not the diamond you wanted, but this,” he grinned wider and dislocated a tooth, “Thish comesh from my heart.”
Jan helped tuck the errant tooth back into place, blinked a few times, and silently drank her wine through her nose tube as she pondered the small ball of fuzz. The evening had ended in much the same sort of silence until Jan was left much where we found her with this narrative started.
The frog croaked and Jan poked its bulging eye. Slipping the lint into her pocket, she knew what was coming next. Wrinkling her nose and sneezing, she squeezed through the fabric of time, space and reality and was in the stroke of a kleenex, standing over Jones as he slept on his mother’s couch.
“You’re such a dear man, Jones,” she whispered softly. “I do love you and I accept.”
Jones, hearing Jan’s soft voice and smelling her overpowering perfume, rose up and took his beloved in his arms. The break to her neck was swift and Jones wept happily as Jan’s green eyes glazed over. “You’ll be with me always, sweetheart.”
Tags: flash fiction
