I’ll Get Over You… I think

(experimenting with flash fiction i.e. less than 1000 words)

Her eyes almost tore themselves sideways as they widened. The tsunami surged towards her at eye height as she clung to the top of a skyscraper. How is that even possible? She pondered this in the tiniest corner of her brain — the rest of it pinned against her skull in sheer disbelief.

On one side, a broccoli-top rainforest surrounded the knife-edged skyscrapers as far as the eye could see. On the other side, a pale beach wriggled like an eel alongside the darkening ocean… the onrushing wave overshadowing it all.

OMG it’s a Hollywood movie!

No, it’s not.

The wave grew closer, bigger, wider. She squeezed her eyes shut. She could already feel the coming weight of that enormous wall on her shoulders… the increasingly loud ringing in her ears as the pressure got impossible… the extra-strong smell of that briny sandy water as it scraped up her nose and choked her from the inside-out. This is no way to die.

She flung her eyes open. Everything around morphed into view anew. Seafood Palace containers with the sour-smelling remains of crispy chilli eels, egg fried rice and steamed ginger broccoli that had promised to fill up all the emptiness. The now-watered-down dregs of that expensive Glenfiddich guaranteed to wipe out your senses. That discreet little bag with the rolling papers and the lighter to make doubly sure. Moving boxes piled up around her in the new flat.

Dear God.

Not like this.

The phone kept ringing. Now he was pounding at the door, shouting her name. What had she texted him?