The Scarlet Window

A Narrative Thriller in Flash Fiction

Shalini C
2 min readJul 25, 2020
Photo by Stephany Lorena on Unsplash

The first time I saw her, she was in her bare-naked skin.
Every freckle, every scar, every pool of darkness was mine, much to her chagrin.
She seemed to me a wee bit broken, rather strange and somewhat lost.
I was transfixed — seething to be the steamy nights to her lonely morns at any cost.

That was then, this is now…

She towers above me in all her nymph-like magnificence,
Her porcelain skin radiates other-worldly, her smile twilight-drenched.
The window behind her let the sun in for a pit stop before it sank into oblivion,
Appears now as the light at the end of a tunnel — the departing sun as sole witness to a lover’s treason.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6….

And now, as I count seconds until this magical facade comes crumbling down,
Sputtering blood and ink, the dagger stealing through my heart, my last breaths staining her satin gown.
I turn to her with a quizzical, pained look on my face — this very face soon to be layered with mud and gravel.
She retorts with an icy stare, my heavy eyelids drowning in her soul’s abysmal marvel.

In finality, I shut my eyes for I do not know where they can seek solace.
Is there poignancy in a body’s breakdown in the creeps this way?
Will I be remembered as a boy who lived and loved?
Or will my life’s manifesto be shrouded in a crime mystery, the boy cast away in the isle of stars above?

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Shalini C

Poet, beauty-of-words seeker, cook, bookworm. Politically-correct chocolate muncher.