The Butterfly Defect

711 words qualifies this for flash fiction. I wrote this by hand last Friday while sitting in a waiting area for an appointment.

As I closed the door, the bag of trash tangled itself between my legs such that when I turned to walk down the steps from the stoop to the street, I tripped, falling forward towards the stairs, the bag flailing chaotically around me. A small tear formed in the bag as it was jerked violently skyward, which served to launch several small objects in a graceful arc over me, some of them falling harmlessly around and some hurrying to meet me on the sidewalk below.

I momentarily recovered from hurtling towards the concrete, regaining control of my limbs when my foot planted itself firmly on the hard marble ball I was discarding – a gag gift I received during last week’s white elephant office gift exchange. Newly off-balance, the lateral force of my fall began as I rolled off the marble and launched the projectile down the sidewalk, rolling down the hill my apartment entrance lies atop. In a crash, my shoulder had the good fortune of landing on the trash bag, its torn side splitting under the pressure of my impact with it, divulging the rest of its contents in a splash of debris and trash from my home office.

I righted myself to a sitting position and heard the faint intake of air into the bag now that my weight was off it as I watched the marble’s impressive progress down the hill towards the cards stopped at the intersection at the bottom. My only saving grace now is the crookedness of the sidewalk that guided the marble through the occasional irregularly-shaped edge of a yard, the grass and dirt taking away from the velocity of the ball almost as much as gravity added.

I sprang to my feet and chased the errant ball cum missile down the block in the faint hope that I might prevent it from impacting against the side of the car waiting for the traffic light to turn, its driver obliviously leaning her head on her hand, her elbow resting on the open window frame. When I saw that no more patches of grass or jutting bits of yard remained between the marble and the woman’s Subaru, I ran headlong down the block with only slightly more guidance than the marble had on its journey.

By the time we got to the intersection, the ball was once again traveling at least as fast as I was after my downhill sprint. The ball fell off the curb and bounced far higher than I would have expected, aiming – like I was – directly for the woman’s window. As I leapt next to the car, I reached ahead, fingers outstretched, trying to catch the marble or at the very least deflect it so that it doesn’t cause any harm to the innocent bystander. Miraculously, the arc of the bounce led the ball through the open driver’s side window and the open passenger’s side window touching neither car nor driver in its traversal. I was not so lucky, my forearm catching the roof of the car as I launched myself upward. The drag of my arm started the aerial pirouette that sent my ass over my teakettle and my teakettle over the surprised driver and her car.

My shoulder touched the roof of the car as I rolled over into oblivion. “Oblivion” in this case was the name of the product displayed prominently on the city bus advertisement that I crashed into a moment after the errant chunk of marble. I took what felt like a slow slide down the side of the public transportation, looking around enough to glance at the faces o surprised pedestrians and drivers all around, among them the Subaru woman who was closest to the blur that crossed her vision a moment before. I landed on the street next to the bus with only the chunk of marble to break my fall – and my third and fourth rib on my right side. The Subaru driver was out in a flash and at my side, tugging on my arm to help me to a sitting position and making sure I could feel every broken bone and bruise I received since I walked out my front door thirty seconds before.

And that’s how I met your mother.