The Age of Optimism

                                          A short story by Cindy Hammel

          Claudia had trouble receiving kisses. She could mail them out all right, but whenever someone tried to send her a kiss it would get lost in the mail. Sometimes the kisses would end up back on the sender’s lips marked, package undeliverable. At other times, depending on how much tongue had been included in the shipping, the sender himself would get lost in transit.

          Claudia couldn’t figure out why the kisses weren’t making it to her mouth. She went to the dentist to see if her mouth was miss-marked or if there was some glitch with her dental code.     

          “I don’t understand,” she complained. “This one time, the guy who sent the kiss, he completely vanished too.”

          “That’s terrible,” said the dentist.

          And it was. Claudia couldn’t just fly through good kissers like that. They were hard enough to come by. The dentist dumped his toolbox into her mouth and had a look around.

          “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for you,” he said. You’ll need to see a specialist. Or if you can live with it, just warn people that there are risks involved if they try to send you kisses direct.”

          “What do you mean, risks? I can understand kisses getting misplaced or put on hold, detained even; but to just up and vanish? That’s ridiculous. Kissing isn’t supposed to be dangerous.”

          “Claudia my dear, they fall in.”

          “I’m sorry?”

          “Look, it’s simple. Before a bloke sends you a kiss, just kindly warn him to mind the gap.”

© Cindy Hammel 2011. Some rights reserved. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/