Cut Carrots - Flash Fiction

The first time I saw her I knew it. Without a doubt. I was looking at a goddamn angel. I didn't voice the thought because it was too much of a cliché. The sort of thing a creep at a bar says about five minutes before you throw a drink in his face. Also, I couldn't have opened my mouth if my life depended on it. I sat, dumbstruck, as she casually dropped her bag onto the bench beside me.

"Anyone sitting here?" she asked after she'd already sat down. When I just stared in response she didn't even notice, too busy tipping her head back to drain the last of her coffee.

She wore black skinny leg jeans and a flannelette shirt. About as far from angelic as clothing could get, but the way she wore it gave her away. Everything about her was a little too intense, too blunt, like she was trying too hard to cover her grace.

"Fuckin' ay," she said in the same tone someone else might say 'Dear God' - not blaspheming, but with total reverence. "This weather. Bloody gorgeous."

She stretched her legs out in front of her and my gaze drifted along their line to the park before us. I tried to see what she saw, but couldn't. The sun was piercingly bright and I felt sweaty from the heat.

She pulled out a tupperware container from her bag, opened it up and held it out, offering me the contents - carefully cut carrots and a side of dip. I wondered whether she had prepared them, or if someone at home had made lunch for her. She didn't seem like the cut carrots type. "You come here often?"

I laughed then. It came out louder than I expected and she raised her eyebrows at me.

"Do I come here often?" I repeated. It was about as cheap a pick up line as they came, and seemed totally out of place given our setting, though no worse than some line about angels falling from Heaven.

"That's not what I meant to ask." She looked flustered then, which was weird, because angels shouldn't look flustered. She tugged on her ear in a way I could tell was a nervous habit. "Fuck."

She was laughing too then as she ran a hand through her short spiky hair. I took a bite of carrot. When I'd finished chewing and her laughter had given way to silence, I said, "What did you mean to ask?"

She pointed at the duffel bag at my feet. "I was gonna ask, where you headed? And, can I come?"



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I wrote this piece very late last night / early this morning, so my inspiration was a combination of insomnia and memories of a girl I used to know. She always seemed like she was in a perpetual state of going somewhere and coming from somewhere else. She wore flannelette shirts like they were some kind of manifesto.