“The Missing Domino”

 

I wrote this Flash Fiction in 2002.

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The Missing Domino

(or, Spot’s Gone!)

 

She was on her hands and knees under the dining room table when he got home from work.

 

“Lose a contact again?” he joked.

 

“Very funny,” she said. “This is way more important.”

 

“What?”

 

“I’ve lost a domino.”

 

Now he understood the serious nature of the matter. His wife was totally addicted to playing dominoes. He immediately got down on the floor and joined in the search. “Which one?” he asked.

 

“The 6/1,” she replied.

 

Her favorite. This was worse than he thought. “When did you see it last?”

 

“After lunch. Jayne, Helen and Helen’s sister-in-law came over for a few games. Then we had pie. After they left and I cleared the table, I noticed I was a domino short.”

 

Personally, he’d always thought his wife was at least one domino short. He’d never known someone so in love with a game.

After an hour of futile searching they stopped for a breather. Sitting at the table she looked him in the eye. “If you want to know what I think, I think Helen’s sister-in-law took it.”

 

“Why on earth would she steal one of your dominoes?”

 

“I didn’t say steal, I said took. I expect she’ll find some way of returning it to me. She just wanted to shake me up. She knows how I feel about the game and especially about the 6/1 being my favorite. She thought it was pretty funny when Helen slipped and mentioned my little idiosyncrasy.”

 

After dinner he took the trash out to the back porch. As he raised the lid of the trash can, the yard light shone on something inside. Bending over the can, he extracted a very sticky domino. It had stuck to the bottom of a paper plate. Debating whether or not this was a good time for his wife to kick the habit, he was about to pocket the domino when she opened the back door to see what was taking him so long.

 

“You found it!” she cried. Taking the domino to the sink to wash it off, she said, “I guess I owe Helen’s sister-in-law a mental apology.”

 

“Mental’s the word,” he mumbled.

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Total word count: 364 – Sudden Fiction category