Catherine Kos – Author

Happy Sunday!

It’s almost June! It’s hard to believe we’re almost halfway through 2021. But, as long as it’s better than 2020, I’ll take it.

Today, I have a peice of flash fiction about remembering things you’d completely forgotten. About how something you don’t think has meaning, totally does.

Happy reading!

Core Memories

I never thought a building could mean so much. 

The doors of the storefront before me are boarded up, chains intertwining the handles. The green and orange stripes on the windows have been scraped off and white boards are leaning against the inside of the windows. 

When I came home from work, I didn’t think anything of it. I’d driven past this store a million times in my life and I’ll probably do it a million more. But this time, it was boarded up. Like it had just happened in the past six hours, a core staple of my teen years is now gone. 

Memories of my ex-best friend and I frequenting this shop fill my mind. We haven’t spoken in months but we have a lifetime of memories. 

We each live a block away in opposite directions. When we were in high school, before I had a car, this is where we met. We left our houses at the same time and met in front of this store before we left to do whatever crazy thing we wanted to do.

There were many nights after coming home from a long night of drinking and stopping at this store to get three a.m. nachos, or a quick drink before we went to crash at one of our houses. 

She used to go in so much that she knew the men who worked behind the counter by their first names. 

So many times of pulling into this parking lot and grabbing last-minute water before a long drive. Grabbing my mom a paper or getting slushies on our way home from middle school.

Something pulls in my chest at the thought of her and all the memories. 

“I wonder what they’ll turn it into,” my mother murmurs from the passenger seat. 

I nod my head, not knowing what to say. 

Maybe once they put something new in its place, the pain of losing my best friend will fade away. The store taking all of my memories with it until there’s nothing left but space to move on. 

“Let’s go home,” I quietly tell my mother and slowly back out of the parking lot. 

The moon hangs high in the sky, the only sound on the street is the soft hum of cars as they slowly drift past, only a few at a time. I stop at the end of the parking lot and risk one last glance at the storefront. 

Who knew a store could mean so much. 

The end.