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| Above Hangars Liquides South |
"You know what coming to the city taught me?"
She crushed the cigarette she hadn't been smoking into the windowsill. The paper tore, and the unburned tobacco spilled on to the floor. Beyond the window, the city stretched as far as the naked eye could see, but, somehow, the warmth of all those bright lights twinkling in almost every window could not reach us here. The ice blue of her eyes and the hard line of her mouth kept it at bay, perhaps, and I wondered if, were I to reach out and wipe her silver lipstick where it had smudged, I would find her skin cold. I shivered.
She didn't notice.
"It taught me just how little a fuck people really give. I mean, really. They're all bastard sons of bitches and they're all the fucking same."
If she hadn't sounded so serious, I might have laughed. I didn't think she was the type of woman that would take too kindly to being laughed at, though, and I didn't want to offend her. I wanted to know what silver lipstick tasted like.
"Do you hate us all so much?" I asked instead.
She sighed heavily. "I wouldn't be helping you if I did. Trying to help you, anyway."
I like this because it's good flash fiction. Because its characters exist in a wider context that does not need to be spelled out, because of its noirish tone and brevity. It is good. I like it.
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