More Than a Facelift ~ Flash Fiction | Five Minute Freewrite

“Oh my god, what have you done to yourself?”

Shuffling her feet, absentmindedly, “I got a facelift.” She turns away, twirling the tassel on her keys around her pointer finger.

“You’re unrecognizable.”

“I’ve been thinking about dying my hair for a while.” She flips her hair as if to demonstrate her own satisfaction with the transformation.

“Dying your hair, getting a facelift…” His voice trails off as he drops his sarcastic air-quotes gesture, instead wringing his hands and looking around.

“I don’t need a lecture.”

“Okay, well, I need some kind of explanation.”

Silence, even though the cafe bustles around them unflinchingly.

“It’s been two days, right?” He checks his watch. “Yeah, two days since we last saw each other.”

Still, silence. She may or may not be listening.

“I woke up, and you were gone. No note, no trace that you’d even been at my apartment.”

She looks at her watch, then out the picture window across from their corner of the cafe.

“What’s going on? We’ve been seeing each other for what, eight months? I’ve told my mother about you!” His agitation is beginning to show. The woman behind him looks at the back of his head with a scowl, and then at her, quizzically. When the girl doesn’t meet her eyes, the nosy woman turns around, shaking her head in disapproval.

The bell above the door tinkles as more patrons walk-in, and she is shaken from her stupor. She meets his eyes, but they aren’t the ones he knows. Hers are a rich hazel, and these eyes are a muddy brown.

“Are you wearing contacts?”

She swallows, steeling herself. “I have to go.”

“What?” His hands open in front of him as if to measure the weight of his confusion.

“I have to go, and I wanted to see you one last time.”

“This is getting pretty dramatic. Why do you have to go? Why on earth do you look like this? And why is this the last time we see each other?” The last question hangs in the air, and at once, he seems transformed into a little boy who doesn’t understand why he’s being punished. He has no idea what he did wrong.

Her lips press into a thin line. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.” She is trying to make herself sound cold, icy. She can tell she’s missed the mark.

Her eyes flick to the clock on the wall, to the teenager behind the counter, and then to the street outside where a repair van for the local internet company pulls into the fire lane with its hazards on, two men in uniforms emerging swiftly from the back.

“Don’t talk to anyone, don’t tell anyone you saw me today or that you know me at all. Don’t go looking for me. But, if you want just one answer, and its the only one I can give you, you’ll find the key to a safety deposit box in your apartment. Don’t go looking for it if you don’t have to.”

“What are you…” but she cut him off. Even though the color of her eyes is false and everything about her is foreign, her hand emerges from under the table and clasps his, just for a second. His skin is electrified. She’s still in there, somewhere.

She’s gone in a flash of silky blond hair, blending into the busy crowd of the cafe and slipping behind the counter, undoubtedly leaving through the kitchen.

The bell above the cafe door tinkles as two cable repairmen walk in, one carrying a small toolbox and the other, a roll of wire. They look out of place and conscious of the fact. Scanning the cafe, they briefly make eye contact with one another. The taller man pulls a radio from his belt and simultaneously touches an earpiece in his ear.

“She’s on the move.”

Still seated at the table, paralyzed the abrupt departure of who he thought was his girlfriend, the man turns to scan the cafe, his eyes briefly flick over the two cable repairmen. No one else seems to notice that one repairman is pretending to speak into a walkie-talkie but is actually talking into an earpiece. The other is scanning the cafe like a bird of prey.

He snaps his head back to the table. He pulls out his phone absentmindedly, knowing instinctively that there will be no answer to any text messages he sends her. No social media profiles to browse in her absence. No record of her ever having existed in his life because somehow, she is not at all who he thought she was.

The repairmen leave, and the man looks down at his half-drank cappucino sitting cold and alone on the table, only now just realizing she hadn’t even ordered a drink. Not a trace.

“You’ll find the key to a safety deposit box in your apartment. Don’t go looking for it if you don’t have to.”

He hears her voice over and over again as he walks home, narrowly avoiding an elderly woman walking her chihuahua and mumbling an apology without looking over his shoulder. By the time he reaches his third-floor walk-up, he still isn’t sure if he wants to look for the key. It feels like a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode.

Around the corner, a repair van for the local internet company pulls up to the curb, and two men emerge from the back. One is carrying a small toolbox and the other, a roll of wire.