This was written for Bradley Ramsey’s Flash February. This was for the Day 13 Prompt.
Chad Dexter dumped me the day after he won the lottery.
We dated for three years. He won 366 million in a Mega Millions on a Saturday. By Sunday, I wasn’t good enough for him anymore.
I spent the next six years following him on social media, in magazines, on reality television. His face seemed to be everywhere — even after he died.
Chad drowned on a private yacht owned by some European playboy, and he was on TV even more. News anchors speculated about whether he’d been drinking or using drugs, or if maybe he’d been murdered by the starlet with whom he’d just had a very public breakup.
But I saw it as an opportunity.
I went over to his mother’s house and showed the grieving woman some sympathy. I told her how much I’d missed Chad. And how I regretted that we’d lost touch.
She ate it up. No one else had been by to share her grief, so she was grateful for an ex-girlfriend she remembered fondly. She held a small memorial service for him, and only she and I were allowed graveside, though the paparazzi were furious.
Once we’d gone our separate ways, I went home and pulled my Grammy’s grimoire from my safe. I’d never been much of a witch, not like most of the women in my family. But I could manage when I had to.
The spell was remarkably simple to perform other than finding the black lotus seeds. It involved a pentagram, some black beeswax candles, water, ginger, raven feathers, a drop of my own blood, and the seeds. That was it.
Then I sat cross-legged and began to chant.
By ginger root and raven’s wing,
By blood I give and salt I bring,
What drowned in dark and drifted free,
I summon back to stand by me.Not ghost, not shade, not memory’s trick —
Come back whole. And come back quick.
I repeated it three times. After the first recitation, the candles sprang to light, little blue lights in the dimness of my basement. After the second, the feather rustled as though in a breeze, and small waves ran across the surface of the water. And after the third time through, the seeds sprouted into a growing plant, springing up quickly into a stunning black lotus.
I waited.
Without warning, the candles went dark, and there was a deep suction sound that made my ears pop like I’d just gone up in an airplane. I flicked on the lights, and there he was… Chad lay naked in the center of the pentagram looking very confused.
He sat up slowly and looked around, his gaze pausing on me only a moment, then moving on. The bastard didn’t even recognize me.
I gritted my teeth and waited — according to the spell, he needed to speak first. It seemed like forever, but eventually he said, “Where am I?” Followed quickly by, “Why am I naked?”
Good questions.
I let the silence stretch — just to make him sweat — then answered, “My basement. Remember me, Chad?”
He tilted his head with its thick black hair to the side and studied me like a puzzle he needed to solve. “I… Sara, right?” He seemed so pleased with himself that he’d remembered.
I sighed and nodded, then dove right in. “Yes. You died. I brought you back.”
He blinked. “What? Wait… I remember. Dying, I mean.”
“Interesting,” I said, though I didn’t mean it. “So here’s why I brought you back…”
He cut me off before I could finish. “I wasn’t supposed to die!”
This time I blinked. “Says whom?”
“Who,” he answered.
I nearly killed him right there.
“Why am I here?” Chad blustered. “This is kidnapping. I’ll call the police!”
I ignored him, because that was so not happening. I pretended to scan the grimoire, listening vaguely to the sounds of scuffling and sputtering behind me. Chad had figured out he couldn’t leave the pentagram — not without help from outside, anyway.
Setting the book down, I relaxed and turned back to him. “Just stop,” I muttered as he pounded with a fist on the empty air above the pentagram. Until I decided to break one of the lines, he was well and invisibly trapped.
“Let me outta here!” he yelled. “Why can’t I get out?”
I quirked an eyebrow, crossed my arms and leaned back against the wall. And I waited.
He called me names, yelled, and pounded on the air. He stomped his foot and spat epithets. But ultimately, he calmed down. Then the sulking began…
“I’ll let you out when I’m good and ready,” I finally offered, pushing myself off the wall. “I have some things to say to you first.”
I walked up to the edge of the pentagram so he was only inches from me, and I finished, “And you are going to listen.”
His pouty lips were full and a little bit delicious-looking, but I wasn’t fool enough to fall for that again. “Nod if you understand.”
Frowning, he crossed his arms and gave me a grudging nod.
“You dumped me when you won the lottery, asshat,” I growled.
He looked surprised, though I have no idea why.
“Did you want some money?” he asked, clearly willing to share. He thought it was about money???
My next words may have come out just a little shrill. “Are you effing kidding me? I never wanted your damn money! I thought you loved me!”
His face was still gorgeous even with a stupid, confused look on it. “I mean… I guess I did?”
I rolled my eyes and stepped back. Time to drop the bomb.
“You have one day. That’s it. Then you’re dead again.” I couldn’t stop the petty satisfaction in my tone.
“What?” Now it was his tone that was shrill. He ranted for a few minutes. I let him.
When he finally stopped talking, I pulled out the photo album — the one I’d made of all our photos. I sat next to him on the floor. On the other side of the pentagram line, of course. And I opened it to the first page.
“Do you remember how we met?”
And so it began. I had 24 hours to say everything I’d been wanting to say since the day he dumped me. I had one day to find out if he ever loved me at all.
And if he didn’t? Well, I didn’t need the whole 24 hours…
For about 45 minutes, I walked him through photos of us — dressed-up date nights, walks in the park, selfies on the couch. I talked about every memory and asked questions — I wanted to know how much he remembered.
Did he remember us at all? I needed to know…
He answered almost nothing the way I expected — the way I hoped. He remembered DisneyWorld — the rides, the lines, the overpriced churros. But not me. He remembered the Super Bowl and the five-alarm chili. But not me. The lake trip? Crystal clear — except he couldn’t recall whose cabin it was.
I listened hopefully to everything the bastard said, waiting for myself to show up in his memories. I never did. I tried to believe he’d loved me — or that he’d even cared at all.
I failed.
Or maybe it was more accurate to say, he failed. Epically.
I snapped the album shut and stared at him for a long moment. He was still trying. Still explaining. Still minimizing.
Six years of rage.
Forty-five minutes of confirmation.
Fair enough.
“You know,” I said, standing, “It turns out I only needed about an hour.”
“What does that—”
He didn’t hear the knife slide free from my back holster or notice when my heel scuffed the pentagram.
In the end, he didn’t even have time to correct my grammar.
—
‼️ If you liked this, you may want to check out some of my other fiction.
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This is AWESOME!!!!!! Jen, you know how to make everything wird count & then some. Friday the 13th delivered 🙌
Oh this was everything I didn’t know I was missing in life!!! What an epic flash fiction story.