Theodore Jerome Cohen is the Readers’ Choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge. The winning entry is decided by the popular vote and rewarded with a special feature here today. (In the case of a tie, the writer who submitted an entry first is the winner per our rules.)
Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Nightfall
by Theodore Jerome Cohen
It was the scent of her that first caught his attention, a subtle blend of roses and jasmine with just the hint of musky civet tones and sandalwood, a fragrance so breathtaking it instantly turned his head in her direction and forever cemented her visage in his mind. Her face, angular, with skin so white it could have been made of porcelain, was framed by long blond hair that almost made him forget he was due in the chairman’s office for a budget meeting in two minutes.
Did she just touch my shoulder as she passed, he thought, something more imagined than real, to be sure. Such things were not the stuff of Myron Tanner’s life, he of the green eyeshade and black elastic armbands who had never kissed a woman, much less dated one. Touch his shoulder? Hardly. No more likely than she would have been asking about him one day during lunch when he heard her talking to the company’s vice president, her lilting voice floating through the office like a lark ascending, her “song” swirling around Myron’s head and body, totally embracing him, and making the two of them one. Why shouldn’t they be together, he thought, it was their destiny; she never was meant to be with anyone else.
To him, the solution was easy. And so, as he looked into the lake that afternoon as the sun descended behind the mountains, he was comforted by the fact she never again would be with another man.
Hi Ted,
Congratulations on this weeks story being picked, I enjoyed the subtle twist at the end.