Flash Fiction: Recollection

It happened every single time, at the exact moment she slid her finger under the envelope’s flap to break the seal.

Funny how certain mundane moments trigger the same distant detailed memory. This was hers, and with the arrival of every royalty payment, she dipped back a few decades to this moment.

It was late July, the heat and humidity both equal and equally unbearable even at 11:30 at night. They’d dragged a comforter, a sheet, and two pillows out to the backyard.

The house was a work in progress. Not the stylish, charming kind like you’d see on a home improvement show. More like the kind where the after pictures look only marginally better than the befores, thanks to the amateurish efforts of a young couple with more time than money or know-how, but short on all three.

With no air conditioning and not much in the way of ventilation, the night air in old house was stifling even with a fan. Oppressive to the point where it felt like waves of heat were set in perpetual motion, prickling and pushing, making sleep impossible, even after a cold shower.

They could hear the hum of their neighbors’ air conditioners, neighbors who were getting a good night’s sleep, who’d wake up refreshed, who’d grab a hot shower and drink hot coffee before starting their commute into the city.

Blades of grass, she thought, aptly named. The grass poked through the blanket, making her skin itch. No breeze. She grasped wildly in the dark, trying to catch and squash the mosquito buzzing around her exposed face. Too hot to sleep entirely under the light sheet, but sleeping in the grass meant waking up with bug bites.

She was grateful for the stockade fence around the yard, even though it was an eyesore, built decades ago by someone who didn’t own a level. At least if she managed to fall asleep, she wouldn’t have to worry about her neighbors seeing them, raising their eyebrows as they fetched their morning papers before heading off to work.

Six hours of sleep. If she could just fall asleep now, she’d get a solid six hours before it was time to get up and go to work. It would be enough, but she needed to fall asleep now. Now. Now.

Now, if Melinda had a sleepless night, it was because her characters had gotten busy inside her head, practically writing her book series for her. Funny how generous they’d gotten once she’d left her job to raise her kids. She’d scribbled her stories in wire-bound notebooks – a phrase here, a plot point there, her eyes the only ones to read them.

The characters were gracious, letting her watch and write as their stories unfolded. This series had topped all the others she’d written, and her readers devoured each book as soon as it was published, ravenous to read more, more, more.

Flipping through the mail on a hot afternoon in late July, iced coffee in hand, she saw the envelope bearing her latest royalty payment. Working her thumb under the corner, she slid her finger through the gap and across the top, shivering a little as she remembered.

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All images purchased from 123rf.com, modified using Picmonkey

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