Friday Flash: Red Scare, Part 1

AHAHAHA you don't get any of that.

This post is brought to you by The Past! It's Thursday here when I'm typing this, but since I'll be on an overnight business trip tomorrow with the crappiest laptop ever I'm scheduling this bad boy for the usual Friday programming.

This week's Friday Flash is inspired by a Flash Fiction February prompt. I obviously didn't participate, but I needed some prompts so I looked them over and found one that made me go "Yessss."

Here's what we're doing this week. And next week. Because I had another idea.


9. Red Scare. It’s coming. But what is the “red scare”? It could be the Hollywood communists, or could be the dreaded Valentine’s Day. Maybe it’s a blood pathogen. Break out your most paranoid noir, sci fi, or futuristic speculation.

Ignoring the last one. Because as a female-bodied woman, there's only one thing I think of when I see "Red Scare".

As usual, I'm writing this using CROSS// characters.

(This week's post contains some sexual talk and fun human biology shenanigans. Wee!)

Danielle stared at the calendar.

Twenty-five.

She picked up a red pen and hovered over the current date, a Monday. She could do it. She could just draw the same circle she did every month.

But it would be a lie.

Cursing, Danielle slammed the pen down and watched the clock on the wall announce the midnight hour.

Twenty-six.

--

The bar was as rowdy as it could be on a Thursday night. Danielle sat in the corner with her date, a lean woman named Amy whom she met around work a couple of weeks before. They chatted about the usual – their families, their jobs, their hobbies, their likes and dislikes – but it was all just a precursor to what Danielle wanted and what she was sure Amy wanted in the end-game. Danielle glanced at Amy’s sleek shoulders between bites about essays by the founding fathers; Amy conveniently brushed her leg against Danielle’s every time she shuffled in her seat. Their conversation degenerated from pleasantries to forced conversation in the span of five minutes, and after that they muttered low enough to force the other to lean in closer to hear.

Danielle had danced this dance before, but it had been a long time. Too long. Amy was the muse that awoke the not-so-dormant urge inside Danielle’s stomach that told her to throw her date down into the booth in front of God and every other lesbian in the bar. Amy reached the point of taunting Danielle with hisses between her teeth as she folded her fingers over Danielle’s knuckles.

They kissed long enough for Danielle to know that this was what she wanted. Finally! After the longest of dry spells something (or someone) was happening! Danielle kissed her with renewed vigor as Amy suggested they “get out of here”. Her place, another place, any place was okay, as long as sex was a guarantee and…

Danielle agreed and excused herself to go to the bathroom. Amy offered to pay their tab as Danielle slunk into the nearest ladies’ stall and nervously undid her jeans in fear of what she felt was not her body’s presumption of sex.

There was a reason why red was not Danielle’s favorite color.

She swore, not that even she could understand what came out of her mouth in between the spits and the wails of a missed opportunity. After a five minute bout of cursing biology and whacking her head against the stall wall, Danielle fixed herself up for the inevitable and went out to reconvene with Amy to give her the bad news.

Of course, she couldn’t look more beautiful now that Danielle decided she was no longer attainable that night. A lock of black hair obscured Amy’s face as she fussed with her cell phone and waited for Danielle. It took every reserve of restraint to not reach out and push it away or take Amy’s hand in the process.

“Are you ready?” Amy glanced up and saw the frown on Danielle’s face. “Oh no. What’s wrong?”

Danielle explained that “something had come up” and she didn’t think she could have sex that night. When pressed for more fervent information, she admitted her discovery in the bathroom.

“I don’t care!” Amy slapped a hand on her chest. “I’m a twenty-first century dyke! Red don’t scare me!”

Danielle grimaced. “I care.” She applauded Amy for not caring as much as she proclaimed, but that was a difference between them that could not be compensated. Danielle knew that within the hour she would be crawling on the floor begging for medication with the last thing on her mind would be the image of a beautiful woman nose-deep between her legs. Danielle felt self-confident most days, but not quite that self-confident.

Amy muttered that she “understood”, but her eyebrows said otherwise. Danielle stared at the floor and asked if they could write a rain check. The muse inside her was huddled in the corner of her conscience, bawling.

--

Danielle stared at the calendar, in her apartment – alone. She picked up her red marker and drew a circle around the date, a Thursday.

Twenty-eight.

Always on time.