DAILY PROMPT RESPONSE – FICTION SHORT STORY SERIAL
Chapter 1:
The Ask
Dr. Fiona Klausner had survived worse.
She’d survived peer review by an all-male panel who said things like “feisty formula” and “adorably ambitious.” She’d survived seventeen-hour data cleanses on a broken monitor, and one ill-fated attempt to microwave soup in a vacuum chamber.
But this? This was worse.
She stared across the lab at Dr. Elliot Chowdhury, hunched over a datapad, brow furrowed, lips moving as he whispered numbers to himself. Probably modeling the lattice resonance from their last run. Probably not thinking about her at all.
He wore what he always wore: a Ramones t-shirt (today’s said “Hey Ho Let’s Go”), wrinkled jeans, a slightly singed lab coat, and plastic-frame glasses held together with electrical tape. His prematurely gray hair appeared to have lost an argument with gravity.
To Fiona, he looked like the human embodiment of a chaotic good equation. Unshaven. Brilliant. Endlessly distracting.
You don’t have to do this, her brain whispered. You could just ask him to double-check the time-slice projections. You don’t have to launch your dignity into space on a caffeine-fueled whim.
She reached for her mug, cold. Her hands were damp. Without realizing it, she began adjusting her elegant lab coat. The sleeve, the collar, the pocket. Again and again.
Then she realized what she was doing—you already fixed that—and forced her hand to stop.
Just let it go. He’s nice to everyone. He probably lent you that soldering iron because he’s kind, not because he was flirting in the language of hardware.
She stood up anyway.
Her chair screeched across the tile. Elliot looked up, startled but smiling.
Abort. Retreat. Climb into the trash can and make it your home.
“Elliot?” she said.
He blinked. “Yeah?”
She cleared her throat, then blurted, “I was wondering if you wanted to get dinner sometime. With me. Socially. I mean. Or romantically. I mean—if that’s a thing you’d want. Or ever consider. Or—”
She’d said it. It was now out in the world, irreversible.
Her heart pounded. Her stomach twisted into knots.
She actually felt her intestines realigning themselves like they were trying to flee the scene.
This was a biological emergency.
And then, Elliot made a face. A tiny nose scrunch, subtle but visible.
What’s that face? His nose? Is that a disgust squint?
Do I stink? Is it the emergency deodorant? Oh god, is it the lentil soup from yesterday? I knew it lingered.
Then she blinked. Realized something.
Wait. That’s his thinking face.
She’d seen it dozens of times—whenever he was mid-equation, mid-epiphany, or mid-muffin.
It wasn’t rejection. It was…processing.
Oh. Oh no. This is happening. This is real.
Dr. Fiona Klausner—world-class brain, terrifying poise, hair that doesn’t know chaos—just asked me out.
Me. In this shirt. In these pants. Do these pants even have a functioning zipper?
She’s hot.
Why is a hot girl asking me out?
Am I pitiful? Is this a setup? Is there a camera in the fume hood?
Then it hit him.
The last time a hot girl asked me out…
Carla Smith.
Candle wax. Glitter. A Yelp review.
He still didn’t know how that review got posted under his name, but it cost him two months of eye contact with anyone named Carla.
Say something. Say yes. Don’t mention Carla. Or glitter. Or wax. Just say yes.
He scratched behind his ear. His nose twitched again. Panic reflex.
And somehow, he said it.
“Like a date?” Elliot asked, voice surprisingly steady.
Fiona nodded like a wind-up toy nearing the end of its coil. “Yes. That. Ideally.”
He smiled—not smug or surprised, but warm. Real.
“I’d really like that.”
She blinked. “You would?”
He ran a hand through his ridiculous hair. “Yeah. I’ve been meaning to ask you, actually. But I figured I’d mess it up and say something weird, like, I don’t know… ask if you wanted to split a burrito and debate quantum foam.”
She laughed—a real, involuntary laugh—and it echoed through the lab like something newly possible.
Elliot looked at his watch. “Wait… what day is it?”
Fiona checked her phone. “Friday. The 13th.”
He grinned. “Of course it is.” He shrugged. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Across the lab, hidden behind a tower of coiled cabling and dead sensors, the chrono-lattice prototype pulsed softly. Once. Twice. Like it was listening. Like it was waiting.
Neither of them noticed.
They were both too busy melting down in tandem.
Memoirs of Madness 