This comes about as a result of my post back in January that called for requests or topic suggestions.  Victoria asked for a story about a woman who, after doing all the ‘right’ things in life, discovers that she is not fulfilled in the way that she believes she deserves to be and, after some drama, completely reinvents herself and finds fulfillment.  It’s flash fiction (so it’s short) and it’s a work in progress (so it’s not very polished) but here it is. 

The mothers at the park don’t really notice Ramona, out of place though she is sitting quietly on a park bench, considering the little children playing on the various brightly-coloured plastic structures, considering calling in sick to work, considering never coming home again.  Wishing she could call in sick to her life, her marriage, the man behind the soft, dopey face she’d seen every day for what felt like forever and for longer than she’d likely admit to anyone who had known her before she said I do.  She has never sat on a park bench before and considered.  There is something very satisfying about it.

Later, sitting quietly in an overstuffed chair in her doctor’s office, crossing and uncrossing her arms, her hands, her legs, she is still easy to miss.  Ramona’s presence in the waiting room somehow blends into the light jazz being played from the little radio perched on the edge of the reception desk, music that is quiet and inoffensive but that you still don’t really care for on some fundamental level.  The doctor has the kind of face you could trust but the kind of news that made you wish you couldn’t.  It was back.  It was over.

Crawling into bed in the dark, her husband asking groggily how it went.  “Good!”  she says.  “Everything was fine!”  It wasn’t.

Ramona again, applying fresh lipstick and pouting greasily into the mirror, way more comfortable than anyone has a right to be in that part of town, louder somehow and more antagonistic this afternoon, like the kind of rock music aging hipsters blare at stoplights from their mid-life crisis convertibles.  It has been a long time since she has sat at the bus station, suitcase leaning up against her knees.  There is something very satisfying about it.