I challenged myself to write something quirky in 500 words for no other reason than to see if I could do it, and here it is. The main body of the text is bang on my self-imposed limit.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

She felt like she was dying inside. How could he do this to her? Why would he do this to her? Didn’t he know how she felt? Didn’t he feel the same?

The questions she couldn’t answer had filled her every waking moment since the split, and now they were creeping into her dreams too. She wanted to scream at him, to vent her anger at the object of her fury until she was drained of all emotion of note, but she couldn’t find the energy to do anything but sit and cry. She’d invested everything in him, and this was how he repaid her; by throwing it all away without a second thought. He was discarding her as if she meant nothing to him.

How dare he treat her like this?

Her mother thought she was ridiculous, spending all day in her room with the curtains closed, playing their song over and over. He’s just a boy, she said, he’s nothing special. But she was old and didn’t understand what it was like to be young and in love.

She’d thrown away all his pictures and hidden away all the little reminders of him. It made her sick just to think of life without him. How could she go on? She couldn’t. She was surely going to die of a broken heart.

It was over.

She wished that time would stop and the world would cease to be; it held no meaning for her now anyway. She wanted to lie there on her bed for what remained of her life, staring blankly at the ceiling and remembering how wonderful it had been, but her mother was shouting something upstairs; something about seeing him right now. She picked up the remote and switched on the television. There was her beautiful love, sitting forward in his chair and looking earnestly into the camera as the interviewer asked about the rumoured break-up. She held her breath as she waited for his answer.

“Yeah,” he said, snapping his gum as he talked, “I don’t know where that came from. It’s nothing more than a dirty lie. We’re still together.”

She didn’t need to hear any more. Heart soaring, she crossed to the wastepaper basket and pulled out the crumpled mess that was her favourite picture of him. She should have known he would never let her down like that. Smiling into his gorgeous blue eyes, she felt herself fall in love all over again. He was perfect; how could she ever have doubted him? She vowed silently to make it up to him, planting a gentle kiss on his pouting lips.

Then, carefully smoothing out the creases, she stuck the poster of Corey Wallace, the lead singer of her favourite band The Wallabys, back up on the wall. She might have known the press had got it wrong; her guys would never call it quits. Suddenly, she had something to live for again.

After all, there was bound to be another tour soon.