Flash Fiction: February 18, 2025
The writing prompt: A judge overseeing a murder trial becomes increasingly suspicious of their fiancé.
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The smell of onions sizzling in the kitchen started to waft upstairs. The woman’s stomach began to growl while she dried her hair.
Tonight, it was her fiancé who was doing the cooking. When she had aired her grievances about the court case upon walking in the front door, she didn’t have to say much else.
Only one of the bedside lamps was on when she walked out of the bathroom. Her fiancé had been reading a supermarket paperback when she left, but he had turned off his lamp before heading to the kitchen. Index cards that had fallen out of her briefcase were still strewn across the bed. Desperately in need of a break, the woman left them there to clean up later before ushering herself into the hot water.
As her eyes adjusted to the light, she began to pick up the cards.
The court case was in its fifth week. Her role as judge could not have been farther from juror, but it was hard to tear herself away from enticing details.
One by one, words leaped from the cards. “Zwilling.” “Mother.” “Ohio.” “Tuesday.”
As the woman placed the stack of cards back into her briefcase, copies of courtroom photos spilled out onto the carpet floor. Graphic in nature, she could only look at them for so long. Rather than seeing a torn blanket and bloody footsteps in a hallway, she saw a tumultuous fight between lovers gone awry. Instead of a woman with a slashed neck lying naked across a kitchen floor, she saw a struggling mother of three.
The victim may never get justice without the knife to convict the killer, and that was a fact she would have to accept.
When her fiancé pinged to let her know dinner was ready, the woman pivoted to retrieve her house slippers under the bed. It was there that she noticed his running shoes, speckled with blood. Turning off the bedroom lamp, she thought of reasons to dismiss the image from her mind.
The sound of clinking dinnerware grew louder as she slowly walked downstairs. A glass of red wine was waiting for her on the kitchen island when she rounded the corner. To her left, the woman saw a spread of roasted vegetables, chicken, and two candles lit underneath the glowing chandelier in the dining room. To her right, her fiancé smiled at her with a Zwilling knife in hand, hovering over chopped herbs on a cutting board.
Writing prompt for 2/25/25: A whole town finds out they are not connected to the rest of the world.