A Very Very Short Story

Leaving Kansas

                           In my room on the road to Denver, a few miles from

                        the Colorado line, the amber light on the telephone was

                        flashing. The message was not meant for me. "Listen," a 

                        distraught woman's voice began, "it's me. And I'm so sorry

                        . . . and I . . . I really need to talk to you. Please don't go 

                        to Colorado. And please call me. Please."

                            "Oh, we get that all the time," the evening clerk said as

                         he tallied the day's receipts. "The man who was in that room

                         came in late last night and left first thing this morning. There's

                         nothing to be done about it. It's out of our hands. Day and

                         night that road out there thunders with the sound of leaving.

                         Madmen and fools, all of them. Mark my words. They will all

                         be back, sooner or later, one way or another, and none of 

                         them the wiser for it. Which way you headed?" he asked without

                         looking up.  "Kansas City," I lied.

                                                                                                                                                  glwarren, 2014

     Worse were the lies we told ourselves: that in faraway places we would discover who we really were and that our Muse, free at last, would carry us to the literary glory we had always imagined. Madmen and fools, truly!