Flash Fiction Entry: The Postcard

Flash Fiction Entry: The Postcard

For five full minutes I stood there at the mailbox, staring down at the postcard. I didn’t know who it was from, as it was not signed. Looking closely, I studied the handwriting. It wasn’t familiar to me. Only four words were scrawled diagonally across the back, as if the writer had been in a hurry.

“Look under your bed.”

I was startled, and not a little bit afraid. I kept my house meticulously clean and knew there was nothing under my bed, not even dust-bunnies. Had someone put something there? Had a malevolent stranger been inside my house?

Suddenly I thought of my collection. My heart raced as I hurried up the driveway. If someone had been in my house, rummaging through closets and drawers, they would have found my collection.

I ran into the house, tripped up the stairs, and lurched toward my open bedroom door. I went directly to the nightstand, and opened the drawer. My breath caught on the lump that had formed in my throat as I sat down on the floor. They were gone.

As a contractor for the Pentagon, my husband had been away for over a year, traveling between war-ravaged countries in the Middle East. As a civilian, Jimmy had flown commercial and had sent me his boarding pass each time he had moved. Maybe it was silly, but that collection of boarding passes were my most prized possessions. They were my link to Jimmy.

Fear had left me, replaced by desolation. I looked under the bed.

I opened the lid to the music box I’d found there, and the first notes of “our song” began to play. As the tears began to roll down my face, I looked up.

There was my Jimmy, standing in the doorway. He was home.