“Not a Typical Love Story”

Author’s Note: This is a Take Ten to Write story and has not been proofread for errors. If I feel inspired or if there’s interest in the story, I’ll post a revised, edited, and extended version at a later date. Happy reading!

Quote prompt: “When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.” — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I wish I could say that I loved him. Truly, I do.

But here’s the problem: I loved the thought of him. I loved the idea that someone could love me back. That someone could actually care about me.

Sure, it might sound stupid now that I’m saying it out loud. Maybe I’m just going insane…

Nah, that’s crazy.

I mean, normal people follow their exes around with a knife in their pocket just in case… well… I just mean just in case… Really, it’s fine. I’m not insane.

But still, when I see him with anyone else–and I mean literally anyone else, even his dog–I get this feeling inside me. Like my heart is twisting and it feels so painful and awful that I just want to do anything to make it stop.

I would do anything to make it stop.

No, I will do anything to make it stop.

Jealousy? No, I don’t think so. This is ten times worse, no one hundred times worse than jealousy. This is like… like… like the world is ending and you’re just standing there because you can’t really do anything and you don’t really want to do anything.

Well, anyway, here we are. I’m going to stop that horrible, horrible feeling. I need it to stop.

It’s cold outside. I wish he would hurry up and come out to go on his daily walk with that stupid dog of his. How I wish I could just pick that dog up and…

Oh, here he comes now. No dog today, though. Maybe it’s too cold for that stupid animal even though it has a permanent fur coat. Whatever, I don’t care about the dog anyway.

I only care about him.

But not, like, care care about him. I’m not still in love with him. Hah! Imagine that. Me still being in love with him.

Absolutely ridiculous.

He doesn’t even know that I’m here. What an idiot. How could I have ever dated him anyway?

Oh, he saw me. If I duck behind this pot maybe he’ll think he was just seeing hallucinations or something. What? I don’t know how insane minds work. I’m just saying that maybe he’ll forget that he saw anything.

Nope, he’s walking right toward me now. Great. Now what am I supposed to do?

Oh, wait, I know. I have a knife. As soon as he creeps up on me, I’ll jump out and scare him off. Yeah, that should do it.

Alright, here he comes. Wait for it… Wait for it…

And… NOW!

Final Comments: Okay, this was a really weird one. I’m not really sure where my mind went or why it went there, but it’s a story I guess. I don’t really like where this one went because it didn’t seem to have much direction. I will say, though, that I enjoyed the freedom of writing in an incredibly unreliable narrator.

Overall Rating: 🤨