Reflections: A Melancholic Romance

Instead of doing my usual blog post, I wanted to share this flash fiction piece I wrote during the pandemic. It's about a road reflector in love with the moon.

Actually, I wrote the first draft of this story when I was in college, circa 2008. At that time, it was a road reflector in love with a stop sign. I lost that copy, sadly, but I like this version better.

Enjoy!

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On a well-worn street not so far from you, there lived a road reflector, and he was a romantic.

The reflector couldn't do much (stuck on the ground as he was), but he could keep himself entertained; he could enjoy the vibrations from cars whipping over him; he could behold the idyllic, endless sky and the funny little things that appeared in it.

And he could love: he had lofty aspirations. When most of the cars were tucked into their garages for the night, and the road reflector was free to survey the sky, he would focus on the Moon.

He did not know his object of admiration was the Moon, of course. He thought he admired another road reflector and liked to imagine she gazed back.

Who can say? Maybe the Moon saw him. Two reflectors, one great and one small, doing nothing much, but doing everything right.

Despite his great love, his life was lonely. He longed to converse with his fellow reflectors. He could spot them glinting in the light, but they were too far—the world too noisy—for his voice to reach.

So during his days, the reflector drank in his surroundings. He watched the sky for gliding creatures or the soaring solitary shapes that left streaks of white against the blue, like a painter making their first brushstrokes. He was an audience of one for trees dancing in the wind. He listened to pleasing birdsong early in the morning and blaring horns late in the day. He watched people in fluorescent orange vests working on the horizon. He liked watching people; he envied their dynamic lives, walking and working and driving while he stayed static.

He spent his nights whispering to his love about the day’s occurrences. Most of his days stayed as steady as the Moon’s cycle, but occasionally there were notable events.

One day the reflector saw a car accident, different from the many he had seen before. It began normally: a car hit one of the cylinders placed by the orange-vested people and swerved wildly; tires screeched, followed by the brutal sound of metal colliding with metal. Then one of the vehicles expelled a body, which landed next to the reflector—that was new. An ambulance arrived, heralded by flashing lights and a blaring racket. Someone knelt by the prone form, making movements over them. Eventually, the body was covered and removed.

The reflector did not understand, but the sight of the still body deeply affected him. Later in the evening, after the commotion stopped, he gazed at his love. Some nights the Moon was no more than a sliver in the sky, but that night, she was bursting. The reflector struggled to explain what he had witnessed, but as the Moon aimed her light upon the reflector, he thought she glowed brighter than usual.

He bathed in the comfort of the Moon’s shine. He would have been content to lie there for all of time.

About two weeks later, during one of the difficult periods when his love would disappear behind a cloak of darkness, another unprecedented commotion disrupted the reflector’s routine. The orange-vested workers had finally drawn close enough that he could better observe them. They placed a formation of equally vivid cylinders along his lane. He was alight with the hope of a pleasant diversion to pass the time until he could see his love once more. Had he been able to see farther up the road, he might have known better.

Astonishing equipment accompanied the workers, compounding his excitement. These strange, large vehicles did not follow along with the other cars on the road but bullied their way through a gap between the orange drums and parked nearby.

With the approach of the new vehicles, a terrible racket surrounded him, drowning out all sounds of the world beyond. The reflector shook from powerful vibrations. When one of the vehicles rolled up next to him, he sensed that his world was about to change. The vehicle stopped; the passenger fixated on the reflector. He felt...seen. Something important was happening, and he had been chosen.

The man lowered an alien instrument toward the reflector; the racket resumed; in two seconds, our hero was wrenched away from his asphalt home.

The man tossed the reflector into the cart, and the reflector shone no more.

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