Alternate Dimension Days #Romance #ShortStory #FlashFiction #Love
Alternate Dimension Days is a short love story about an
alternate dimension that might have the light and hope that tech product
developer, Jenna Kalen, needs after swimming against the current for so long.
There must have been a hidden portal to an alternate
dimension somewhere on Irongate Road that Jenna Kalen had been accidentally
travelling through some mornings. The portal ate time and spit her into an
alternate dimension where she ended up late even though she’d left on time.
Logic dictated that the lateness could be explained by traffic and construction
on the roadways, except there were almost always traffic issues or construction
detours. She’d been working at Delgado Star Tech for five years and up until
the previous month, though she’d constantly been busy as hell with barely time
to come up for air, things had been alright.
The last few weeks had been different. Unpredictable. Some
days, she was really productive and she and the other members of the research
team made a ton of progress. Other days, she ended up at work, slightly late,
even though she’d been so sure she was running on time, and things seemed
uncomfortably weird all day. Also strange was, on what she’d begun calling
“time warp days”, she never really remembered parking her car in the deck, just
running to the elevator, trying not to trip and fall on her ass. Things usually
devolved from there. Obviously, she needed a week-long nap, followed by a
vacation, followed by more sleep but her boss had turned down her vacation request.
He’d given promises of a promotion to the team who developed the highest
profiting product but the vague chance of a promotion carrot didn’t get her
revved up on time warp days.
On those days, everything and everyone around her felt like
a song being played slightly off key, so close to being fine that the mystery part
of the harmony that was missing made her angry. Everyone seemed uncanny and
gave her a sticky, skin crawling feeling, except that one guy who worked in the
software development department. His hair was dark as night and his eyes were
deep, ocean blue. His muscular forearms were covered in tattoos that reminded
her of… something, maybe a scene from a movie or a story she’d once loved.
She’d only seen him twice but each time, he’d looked at her as if he knew her.
He hadn’t spoken either time, just nodded.
Maybe he had fallen through an alternate dimension portal,
too. Maybe he could see how, on time warp days, the windows were foggy and
blurred the out sight of the apple trees lining the street and hid the sunshine
outside so that when evening came, the blur of darkness didn’t cut through any
more of the windows than the sunlight had. Maybe he was sick of practically
living in the Delgado Star building the way she was on time warp days. More
likely, though, she probably reminded him of someone he used to know.
By the time her stomach started growling, Jenna decided she needed
a break from working on the latest project. Her teammates objected heavily at
the idea of stopping for lunch but she’d had enough— enough of racking her
brain to help create products that she didn’t care about, enough of listening
to her three teammates pick apart each other’s ideas without a scrap of empathy
for one another, enough of their arrogant voices, and enough of the whole damn
building.
The sexy, tattooed guy with the coal black hair stepped into
the elevator with her.
“Hey, Jenna. It’s been a long time.”
The sound of his voice, smooth and deep, wasn’t the
slightest bit off key, not the way everyone and everything sounded to her on
alternate dimension days, but “Do I know you?”
“You used to. I stayed here for a while. Hoping you would
find me again.”
Ah, hell. Was he an illusion? Was she so tired and
off-center that she was imaging actual people? He took her hand. The man
definitely felt solid and real. And… familiar.
When the doors opened, the sun hit just right, lighting up
the world outside. She stepped outside into the light and broke the surface.
The portal dissolved and the man with ocean-colored eyes asked if she was ready
to leave.
She held tight to his hand and they swam to the shore.
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2 comments:
Alternate Dimension Days sounds fascinating, Christina. I've never heard of flash fiction before. Makes me think of short pieces on The Twilight Zone with a surprise ending. :)
I loved the Twilight Zone when I was a kid! I've been trying to learn how to write short stories and flash fiction (super short stories) this past year and with practice, it is getting easier to condense a whole story into a few thousand words.
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