Monthly Archives: February 2026

That One Moment

The weekly prompt from my Florida writers’ group was ‘Thou shalt not…’, and this is my response.

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Managing to draw a final, feeble breath, I despair as it leaks slowly away. I try for another, but none comes. My eyes are slits, and through a gathering haze I see faces looming over my bed, concerned and curious.

“He’s gone,” a soft voice intones.

“I’m not! I’m not!” I cry wordlessly, soundlessly.

But then I am. And there is nothing…nothing…nothing…

I do not hear the words when they come. They emerge from my being, and I am become the words.

One. Moment. One. Moment.

Instinctively, I know the words refer to that same moment I have wished all my life to relive. And now it appears, on the brink of the afterlife, I am to have that chance.

I was fly-fishing with Hank, my twin brother, on the weekend before he was to marry the lovely Madison. She was the first person ever to come between us—Hank and Hal, Hal and Hank. But we both adored her.

We had fished this river so many times, it was like second nature—the boisterous sound of water rushing raucously over the rocks, the late-afternoon sunlight dancing on its rampaging surface, the fishing lines snaking overhead, gleaming in the waning light before the lures splashed into the current.

Hank was as happy as I had ever seen him. And indeed, why not? He was head over heels in love with Madison, his bride-to-be. As was I, alas, but it was he Maddie had chosen. And I had never wanted her more.

The fish were feeding in the cool evening, and Hank soon got a strike. As he moved to set the hook, he slipped on the moss-covered riverbed underfoot. I turned as he cried out, in time to see him hit his head on a rock. The current caught him, pulled him from the shallows, his arms flailing helplessly. I dropped my rod, charged after him, heedless of the precarious footing, and at the last moment, just as I fell myself, I clutched his outstretched hand.

“Hal! Hal! Help me!” he cried plaintively as he jounced and jigged in the powerful current. Blood streamed from the gash on his forehead. We locked eyes, and I could see he knew I would never let go.

But in that very instant, my unbidden thoughts fastened on Maddie and how distraught she would be if she were to lose him. To whom would she turn for solace, for comfort, perhaps eventually for love? And who would be better-suited than I to provide her that?

“Hal! Don’t let go! Don’t let go!”

We were struggling in deeper water now, where the current was stronger, tugging at my brother as if to tear him from my grasp.

“Hal! Don’t let go!”

But even as he implored me to save him, I did let go. And in a second, Hank was swept under, gone forever, and I swear I could hear Maddie’s forlorn weeping, taste her salty tears, feel her softness in my comforting arms.

And that was almost exactly how it played out. I cried copiously as I told everyone how I had tried in vain to save my brother. His body was found three days later, miles downstream, badly-battered by the river’s depredations, and he was buried with all due reverence.

Sixty years ago that was. And a scant two years after his tragic death, Maddie and I, each other’s chief comforters, were indeed wed. I have loved her with all I had to give ever since, but I have never quite forgiven myself for my treachery. Almost, but not quite. And perhaps because of my secret guilt, I have occasionally imagined a reservation in Maddie’s eyes about that day, although she has never questioned my account.

Nevertheless, I have never ceased to wonder what I would do if I could relive that one moment.

The good book tells us, Thou shalt not kill! But is that really what I did? Or was I just not able to hang on?

And now, wonder of wonders, so many years later, dead myself at last, I am being granted an opportunity to relive that moment. Is it a test to determine where I shall spend eternity? And with whom?

Hank and I are in the river once again, he has fallen and struck his head, is about to be carried away, and I have him in my grip. The bone-chilling water washes over us, and Hank calls frantically again, as he did back then.

“Hal! Save me! Don’t let go!”

But unlike the first time, I don’t have to wonder if I would win the beauteous Maddie’s love if Hank were to die. I already know the answer. He did die and she did become my wife, just as I had dared hope.

Should I change that outcome this second time around? Save my brother? Lose my Maddie? The final reckoning is at hand. The outcome is in my grasp.

And in that one moment, I make my decision.

You Win!

The prompt from my Florida writers’ group was to write a piece about winning, and to write it from another person’s perspective. This is my offering—

“I’m Clarissa.” The woman’s voice is husky, throaty, almost gravelly. “That’s how I wanta be known. It’s me!”

“You’re Agnes!” the Writer says. “You can’t be a Clarissa. No way!”

“Of course I can!” the woman exclaims, a hint of hostility darkening her tone. This is a hill she’s prepared to die on.

“You can’t,” the Writer stipulates. “A Clarissa would have to be a gamine, a waif, a music-box dancer. You’re a long-haul trucker, for goodness’ sake! You’re five-five, one-sixty, sturdy not shapely. And you have legs like a linebacker, not a dancer! Granted, you do have a pretty face, but it’s chunkier than it should be. Clarissas don’t have puffy faces.”

“Yeah, well the men don’t seem to mind how I look!”

“Never mind that! Someone named Clarissa would look like the woman in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. You look like the woman from Fargo!”

”Bullcrap! You’re the one who’s makin’ me look like Marge…or whatever that cop’s name was. I wanta be Clarissa, and that’s that!” She’s standing between two eighteen-wheelers in the roadside diner’s parking-lot, shaded from the noonday sun, her untamed, auburn hair all askew.

The Writer sighs audibly, wearily, stretches his arms, fingers linked, palms facing the computer screen. “You can’t be Clarissa!” he insists as his knuckles pop and crackle.

Before the woman can respond to that, a burly man in faded jeans and a lumberjack shirt appears on the scene. “Hey, dollface! That your rig?”

The woman turns to admire the cab behind her, its cobalt-pearl-blue skin gleaming, its chrome reflecting the sun back at itself. “All mine,” she proclaims. Patting the driver’s door proudly, she says, “I call her Blue Velvet. You comin’ or goin’?”

“Just rolled in,” the man says, sticking out a meaty paw. “Name’s Carl Gunnarson. Friends call me Gunny. That over there’s my rig, Black Beauty. What’s your name?”

The woman casts a long, appraising glance at his truck, a shiny-black behemoth, but before she can say more, the Writer starts typing furiously, allowing the woman to say only, “Yeah, nice set-up.” Clasping the man’s outstretched hand, she chokes out, “I’m Agnes.” When the Writer stops typing, though, she quickly adds, “But I hate that name!” 

“Good to meetcha!” Gunny grins. “I’m headin’ inside for some of that famous chili and a beer. You wanta join me?”

“Bet your sweet patootie I do!” the woman declares. Before they head off, however, she lays one hand on his arm, jerks a thumb over her shoulder. Leaning in close, she whispers, “But listen! Ignore the dork at the computer in the background, okay? He thinks he’s a writer, one of them geeks who figure they know everythin’.”

Gunny doesn’t seem to care about some gormless writer, doesn’t even bother to look. “If you hate your name, what name do you like?”

The geeky Writer is caught completely off-guard by the man’s question. Before he can resume typing to cut her off, the woman says, “I like Clarissa. Thanks for askin’!”

The Writer searches for the SELECT ALL and CUT functions on his keyboard, planning to excise the woman’s last words. But he hesitates as they approach the diner and Gunny gallantly holds the door open for her.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Gunny says shyly, “I’m gonna call you Clarissa. That there’s a real purty name.”

“I’d like that,” Clarissa smiles, dimpling her chubby cheeks. “I’d like that fine!” And as she passes through the door, she throws a glance over her shoulder, meets the Writer’s gaze, offers a deliberate wink. And then she’s lost from sight.

The dorky Writer sits back in his chair, the planned excision forgotten. “Okay,” he mutters to himself in the empty room. And with a resigned shrug, he sighs, “Okay, you win! Clarissa!”