The balloon hovered in the living room. Its string drug along the ground, the black latex beginning to rumple around the knot. It was supposed to be funny. But the half-deflated party favor reminded Amy that she was apparently over the hill, at forty. At least, according to some people.

Amy had tried to pop it. It was impervious to sharp objects.

Amy had tried to get her insensitive husband Tom to return it. He refused.

Amy had tried to shut it in the garage. It kept floating back into the living room.

***

The wind was howling. Amy saw her chance. Gathering up her daughter’s things for school, she ‘accidentally’ left the front door open, kicking the balloon as hard as she could towards the open air.

As it began to tumble into the crosscurrents, a tiny hand shot out and nabbed the tip of its tail. Fingernails splattered with self-applied sparkle polish, clutched the ribbon and tugged the balloon back into the house.

“Oh, thanks. Would hate to lose that.”

“We can’t lose it! It reminds me of you.”

Amy looked at the half-puckered, slightly misshapen balloon and sighed.

“Because it’s beautiful,” her daughter piped up as she skipped towards the car.

Amy traced a few fingers over the rubber.

“Guess you can stay. But we can both agree Tom is an asshole, right?”

The balloon bobbed in the breeze of the open door.

————

Autumn Bettinger is a short-form fiction writer and full-time mother of two living in Portland, Oregon. She was the 2024 Fishtrap fellow, has won the Tadpole Press 100-Word Writing Contest, The Not Quite Write Flash Fiction Prize, and the Silver Scribes Prize. All of Autumn’s published works can be found at autumnbettinger.com.