She smiled. He believed it. But the fire had already started.

---

The woman sitting next to me slipped a note into my hand that read:
“He’s not who he says he is.”

She didn’t look back. Just placed it there—neat, deliberate—and folded herself into stillness, like she’d already said too much.

I didn’t open it. Not yet. The paper pulsed against my palm like a second heartbeat.

Outside, the river caught fire. Sunlight splintered across the water, all rust and ruin. Temple silhouettes watched from the banks, hollow and grieving.
Grief has no language. Just echoes. Just light bleeding through the wreckage.

Across from me, he sat, impeccable. Tie straight. Wristwatch catching the last of the sun.
“You alright?” he asked, voice drenched in honey and soothing like always.

But I wonder—Is this false comfort?
That soft menace people only hear in hindsight.

I’ve been here before.
My finger found the scar hidden in my palm, the one shaped like escape.
It remembers what my heart tries to forget.

I smile. He believes it. Because that’s the thing about men like him—they love the surface.
And some people never notice the smoke. They only see the flames.
By then, it’s too late.

My stop is next. So is his.
He doesn’t know I’ve been here before. That this time, I won’t look back.
I know he wants me to.
But he’s not ready for what comes if I do.

---

Author’s Note:
This piece was written for Fandango’s Flash Fiction Challenge (FSS #209).

There’s a strange, satisfying freedom in flash fiction—the constraints force you to choose each word like a scalpel. It’s a literary pressure cooker where character, tension, and atmosphere have to collide fast and leave a mark.

For me, flash is where I go to explore the edges—grief, memory, survival, those quiet gut-punch moments when the world shifts and no one else notices. Stories like this come out like smoke under a locked door. You don’t always see the fire yet—but it’s there.

Want to try your own version of this story’s beginning?
The prompt was: “The woman sitting next to me slipped a note into my hand that read, ‘He’s not who he says he is.’”