The mustard haze of office lights coated in the collected filth of nearly four decades flickered in the emergency stairwell. Sarah collapsed against the wall, sliding down to the cement floor exhausted. Her knees pulled to her chest she curled into a ball. A newly formed fixture on the cold cement landing she made no noise, the reverberating hum of the building’s air conditioner the sole sound.
“Sarah? Sarah?” A concerned voice dreamily called down the stairwell. The repetitive clack of heels on the cement stairs echoed like an alarm for Sarah. “Sarah oh my god what are doing down here?” Her head hoisted up, the silhouette of her friend, Emily, racing down the steps was the last thing she wanted. With a whimper she returned her gaze back to the safeness of her knees. “Hey what’s wrong?” Her Emily’s voice was softer and closer, with the intimately pained tone all siblings adopt instinctively in times of tribulation.
Sarah did not speak, instead she pressed herself deeper into a ball, desperate to hold on to the narrow window of freedom there. To force the world away so that the only thing to remain was herself, freed from everything but the stairwell she resided in. “Honey I need you to talk to me, what is going on? Did Chad do something?” Emily asked.
Sarah felt Emily’s hand rest on her own. Her engagement ring, a new addition it had grown cold in the frigid AC and a chill ran across Sarah’s skin at its touch. Emily’s fiancé, Doug, had only proposed the week prior and while both of them were excited neither was truly used to the ring’s presence yet.
Emily, as if somehow aware of Sarah’s discomfort, shifted so that the two were hugging. “Sarah did Chad do something? You know he isn’t right for you; he just takes advantage.” Emily pressed with growing concern.
Sarah shook her head before letting out a wispy “I am sorry.”
“For what?” Emily asked.
Sarah opened her mouth to talk but nothing came out. It was such a long stupid story, so clichéd in nature and complexity it was easily broken down into three simple words. Where would she even begin, Sarah asked herself.
“I need to tell you something.” Sarah began, “And I know it means we will have some problems but I just…”
“I know.” Emily cut her off, her forehead now resting on Sarah’s. “I knew from the beginning. I just didn’t think you…”
“I…do…I mean…I never meant to cause a problem.” Sarah glanced away, her face warm as it flushed with a hundred different emotions.
“I do to.” Emily’s hand tightened around Sarah’s once more, the engagement ring absents.
Truncate: to shorten, or as if by cutting off
Author’s Note: Day 5/365 down! This is proving harder to do that in anticipated, mostly because I want to actually create a singular story with a beginning, middle, and end. While like this one it obviously takes place in a much larger narrative I would like to give the impression of a resolution at the very least. Creating different ideas and venues for a story is not as challenging as then trying to compress those down into approximately 500 words but it’s certainly proving interesting as an exercise. In today’s instance it was trying to keep in mind that sometimes the greatest stories, the best stories, can be broken down and shortened into a few single words. In the case with this story relationships, friendships, histories, and futures could all be reduced down to three.
The Flask/Pen 