My Very Second Best Friend

Hello, my name is Red. Please excuse my messy handwriting; my hand has been small and childlike since birth and I still find it difficult to clutch a quill. My face was scarred in a terrible accident when I ran headfirst into a wall of nails at the age of six. I keep a single nail embedded in my cheek, as a friendly reminder to take it out one day.

My name is Red, and this is my story.

I've lived in this cabin ever since I could speak. I built it with my own hands, painting the walls with dripping golden honey. My very best second friend Jane lives with me. She gets embarrassed sometimes because she has no arms or legs or a face. In fact, Jane is just a corn kernel that I keep tucked in my socks but she is a very good listener and smells like popcorn.

I woke up last Tuesday and noticed that there was a piece missing from my heart. I keep it in a box under my bed. It was only a small indent, mind you, but it was enough to worry me.

"Jane," I said sadly as tears welled up in my eyes, "something is incomplete in my life. Today… today I must find my true love." I wondered how long my heart had not been whole.

I invited Jane on my quest because she is, after all, my second best friend. I wore my best pair of socks and placed her carefully in the toe of my right one. I pulled my sombrero off the wall and licked the honey from its brim. As I strode past my mailbox I stroked it lovingly. No mail today, but the texture of the peeling paint sent shivers up my spine.

We walked for miles until we came upon an open field. It was seemingly empty, but in the air I could taste the aroma of children walking their canines. Twelve steps away, something lay in the brown grass next to a picket sign.

"Do not lick the ashtray." The spidery letters on the sign ordered.

Did they not know the magical word? Pleases and thank-yous were very important to me at that time in my life. And I didn't like this sign's authoritarian tone. Why shouldn't I lick whatever I felt the need to! I peered down at the ashtray, my mouth watering at the sight and the scent of ash and the flavourful discarded cigarette butts. Dare I live out the American dream? To lick an ashtray?

I did, and the results were wonderful. Rubbery filters crunched between my teeth and fiery tobacco burnt my tongue. I tasted menthol, the exotic flavour of clove and somebody's discarded shoelace amongst the mixture. I was in Heaven, rising upward into the empyrean. The feeling only intensified when I looked up and met a young lady's eyes across the park. She was eating handfuls of pepper from a paper bag and I had the feeling that she was the girl for me. Something warm was growing in my chest, where my heart should have been. Could it be love?

This girl had bright tangerine locks framing her face and a bald patch that shone radiantly in the midday sun. She smiled, showing pepper caught between the gaps in her perfect brown teeth. Her eyes beckoned to me, prurient and seductive.

I stroked the rusty nail in my face nervously, working up the courage to walk over. I imagined Jane in my sock was giving me thumbs up if she had thumbs, so I tilted my honey-coated sombrero and approached the woman.

Her name was Gertrude. Gertrude and I had something special from the start. In the days that followed, we bought shopping trolleys together and ate shoe polish straight from the tin. I thought my was finally complete but there was a persistent voice in the back of my mind, warning me that something wasn't right. My heart still had a missing piece, and small as it was, that piece needed to be filled.

Then I learnt of Gertrude's terrible secret. It was a confession that would tear us apart, causing us each to be unbearably alone once again. "I don't like corn," she stated one day, without even a hint of remorse.

We could never be.

Jane was still without a soul mate. As I looked at the familiar dint of her figure in-between my toes, I realised that I could never desert my best second friend for a life with my assumed True Love.

I returned home, my head hanging dejectedly and my feet dragging along the ground. I stuck my hat to the wall, sat in my bed and peeled off my socks. Jane tumbled onto my floor. I looked at her with sad eyes. Jane had never known true love either. We were two lonely souls, would we ever find our other halves?

My eyes flickered over to the open box which contained my heart minus one piece. One tiny, corn kernel shaped piece. My eyes travelled back to Jane, sitting innocently on my floor. Suddenly I realised what had been so obvious all along. Jane was not my best second friend, Jane was my true love!

Everything fell into place. It all made sense. I thought of all the times that I had probably caught her gazing longingly at me, all the times that I knew in the back of my mind that this piece of corn was the one for me.

I stared in awe at her curvaceous, sunshine-yellow body. Her natural beauty left me breathless. I kissed her once before I placed her into the hole in my heart. She was a perfect fit.

My life was finally complete; after all I had been through. I closed the lid tightly on the box and pushed it under my bed, away from sight.

Jane, you will always be in my heart…

THE END