You Have No Messages

by Rashmi Vaish

Icy cold panic gripped his heart and clung to his insides like wet seaweed. He had accidentally deleted the voicemail message she’d left for him, a humdrum handful of words saying she was on her way home. He called her cell phone and it went straight to her greeting, her soft yet businesslike voice alternately making him calm and wanting to throw up and scream. Hands clammy and heart pounding, he logged into his inbox but there was no new email from her. “And there isn’t going to be, you stupid jerk,” a voice inside him cursed at him. He remembered with a dull, throbbing nausea – it was a month to the day that he had interred her ashes in the family plot.

6S

Rashmi Vaish, former newspaper journalist and urban dweller, now lives in rural northern New York state and is currently dabbling in creative writing, photography and horse riding. She recently started updating her two-year-old blog more frequently. Drop by.