Smells as Sweet
He said it with flowers: one dozen red roses to smother love and patch a broken heart. It wasn’t enough. A thousand roses wouldn’t have been able to stem the pain that he caused.
But that was twenty years ago. I was a different woman when Facebook told me that Roger Smith had sent a friend request.
It came as a shock, seeing that name on my computer screen. I didn’t even have a computer when he left me with nothing more than a handful of thorns. Seeing his name appearing like that, as though it was just any other name, caused me to draw in my breath and bite my bottom lip.
I stood up from the desk in the front room and walked through to the conservatory. I gazed out, over the order of the trimmed lawn, past the disused but still-loved climbing frame and swing, to the deep rose-beds at the back. They were in full bloom: oranges and yellows mixed with purples and whites. No reds.
I thought about Bill and the kids, and the way that time passes. It doesn’t heal wounds, like they say, it lays plasters over them. And all it took was a name on a screen to rip the plaster off and restart the bleeding.
Well, I decided. I wasn’t going to allow this.
Back at my computer, I searched for what I needed. And before I clicked on the ‘Ignore’ button, and the ‘Block’ button, I made sure I’d posted a picture on his Wall of a suitably bloody bouquet.
Calum Kerr is the author of 31, Braking Distance, Undead at Heart and many short stories and flash fictions. He is a lecturer, an editor, and is the Director of the UK’s National Flash-Fiction Day. His new flash-fiction collection, Lost Property, from which Smells as Sweet is taken, is out now. Order your copy here