The following is my entry to Toledo City Paper's socalled Flash Novel contest – a novel in three sentences. It was not selected as a winner. Perhaps it is too long for a three-sentence "novel." Maybe the subject matter was considered not compelling enough (another contest criterion). Or, as my wounded ego is telling me, maybe those judges just don't know from good writing...
The End of the Affair
In the middle of their lovemaking he laughed out loud.
Such a spontaneous outburst of bliss – for that was precisely what it was – had never happened to him during sex before, not that he was all that experienced in bed let alone here on her living room floor for that matter, and it startled him so thoroughly that he was temporarily unable to proceed.
She, too, was surprised, and being much more experienced than he – her BFF chalked up her promiscuity to low self-esteem – felt not at all pleased at such unheard-of mirth on her throw rug and became instantly defensive and angry that her man would mock her (WTF) at the moment she was approaching ecstasy and instantly she knew she needed to flee his sweaty torso, although to where she did not know, since how could you run away from what had just happened, and that inability to imagine a refuge paralyzed her for a moment in which she watched her lover’s beatific countenance morph into a mask of anguish and despair as he recognized her misinterpretation of his innocent albeit ill-timed laugh and correctly sensed that she would never again trust him, nevermore be his to love.
You can check TCP's actual winners right here and decide for yourself if my fiction fragment has comparable merit.
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