The One That Got Away
by
Dale Elster
This is how the story ends.
My best friend Sam, he was always telling me to stop living in the past, to move on with my life. He’d follow up that part of his speech by saying, “There’s plenty of fish in the sea,” or some other cliché.
My sea only had one fish. Sam never understood that. How could he? Before he married, Sam was a notorious womanizer. After he married, he didn’t slow down much.
Missy Ramer was my fish, so to speak, and I let her get away.
It was Debbie Swartwood who started the rumors about me. Rumors that ultimately drove my love away. Debbie said I was creepy. Said it was me who did those awful things to Missy’s cat, Buttercup.
It wasn’t me.
I would never do anything to hurt Missy.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I met Missy in the summer of 1979. We were twelve, our birthdays a week apart. I loved her immediately. Even a year later, when we were close friends at the beginning of the greatest decade ever, I couldn’t summon the courage to ask her out.
Even when she could date, I was too chicken to make a move on her.
Shortly after we turned fifteen, Missy made a move on me. We went with Sam and some other friends to a matinee of John Carpenter’s Escape from New York.
I can tell you now there was something different about her that day. Her subtle displays of affection. Laughing at my corny jokes.
But I was too stupid to pick up on her signals back then. Besides, I was still too chicken to reciprocate.
By the time I realized what she was up to, it was too late.
Debbie Swartwood started spreading the cat-torture rumors about me.
After that, Missy rejected my offers to hang out. She hung out with other guys instead—dated some of them, too. Then in the summer of our junior year, she moved away. I made one final plea to reconnect with her, to explain to her that the rumors weren’t true. Finally, she believed me.
We promised to stay in touch. Social media didn’t exist then, and there were no text messages to send. Only letters and phone calls. I held up my end, and for a while, she did too. But within a few months, my letters and phone calls went unreturned, and the thing I’d feared most came to be: Missy had moved on.
All these years later, I still haven’t.
We were meant to be, ya know?
That’s a truth I feel in my soul.
But you shouldn’t have to serve a life sentence for missing a few signals.
These days, I refuse to participate in social media, as Sam suggested I do. He figured it’d be a way to reconnect with her.
I don’t want today’s Missy.
I want the Missy I knew. The Missy I fell in love with back then.
I still live in the same house I grew up in. I keep it just like it was in the ’80s after my dad took off and left Mom and me to fend for ourselves. She didn’t mind me sticking around after high school or passing up college. I was good company for her. I took care of her when she got old. I kept the lawn mowed and the snow cleared. When she passed away, I inherited the place.
I like to watch VHS tapes of Knight Rider and The A-Team on the same kind of TV we had back in my high school days. The fancy new flat screens hurt my eyes.
Recently, Sam talked me into going with him to New Orleans. A business trip for him, but a chance for me to get laid—his words, not mine. I was desperate, but not in the way Sam meant. I went to see Ms. Marie—a practitioner of voodoo—instead.
That’s how it read on her sign: “Practitioner of Voodoo.”
I told her what I wanted. She performed a spell and ended it by leaving a mark on my chest, right over my heart. And with that spell came a promise that Missy would soon return to me.
Sam thought it was all bullshit, of course.
He changed his tune when he dropped by to visit me a week after we got back and saw Missy standing in my living room, looking exactly as she did in high school.
I didn’t plan on Sam’s reaction being so negative. He accused me of kidnapping some girl that looked like Missy. Even took out his phone and threatened to call the police.
But Missy protected me.
She had to drop her disguise to do it. Her serpent’s tongue flicked out, tasting the air between them as she approached.
Sam’s phone bounced off the shag carpet as he backed away. He eyed the front door, but before he could run, Missy’s dagger-like tail speared him through the heart.
In the end, I was sad to lose my friend, but I was glad he at least knew the truth. I didn’t want him going to the grave thinking I was some demented child predator.
And, yeah, maybe she’s not exactly the real Missy. But she’s the Missy I want.
I put Sam in his car and sunk it in Clifford Pond.
When they finally found him, it looked like he’d gotten drunk again and went off the road.
I didn’t go to his funeral. That decision caused a few bridges to burn with some old classmates who turned up for the services, but I just couldn’t leave Missy’s side.
Instead, we made love for hours, and it lived up to all my fantasies and more. We watched all the classic ’80s movies like War Games and The Breakfast Club. We played Atari games for days.
Missy and I are building a whole new life.
I’m finally ready to move on. Together this time.
A new couple can’t be stuck forever behind these four walls now, can we?
We’re eager to get out into the world.
This is how the story begins.
Dale Elster is a dark fiction writer. He is the co-author of Deadsville, a short story anthology that’s seen high praise from reviewers and bloggers alike. His other stories and flash fiction pieces have appeared in several indie and small press anthologies, including I Can Taste the Blood (ebook edition) from Grey Matter Press and Shallow Waters, Volume 3 from Crystal Lake Publishing. All are available on Amazon.
He lives in upstate New York with his wife and two children, where he is currently writing Deadsville: Welcome Home as well as several other works-in-progress.
Copyright © Dale Elster 2019
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