I fell in love with a wolf in cheap clothing.

You might think this was all a disfigurement of my imagination and I’m not usually one to draw a tension to myself, but I’ll give you some of the pacifics. After all, I do have a photogenic memory and recall the details down pat. To tell the story, though, I’ll have to go the full five yards and I do worry about unleasing a hornet’s nest with what I’m about to tell.

I met him the summer I was busting tables at an uppity scaled tourist restaurant. The minute I saw him I could tell he was a man of great statue when I spotted him through the window. The air conditioner went on the frizz that day, and the stale and humored night air made me feel so impressurized, and I admit I acted on the spurt of the moment.

When I laid my eyes on him my first thought was bon a petite! I could feel my pupils dillitate and my knees grow week. He definitely peeked my interest and wetted my appetite. In the quink of an eye I was hopelessly inflatuated. I could tell the dye was caste and knew I’d be like Caesar crossing the Rubáiyát—there’d be no turning back for me.

I decided to cease the day and took out my pen filled with Quink® to write down his dinner request (to make this meeting look permanent) and I deliberately disordered his order so I could stoke up a conversation with him. He gave me a little quink with those gorgeous eyes and I had to mix myself a strong quink (a rum and Coke) to steady my nerves. The electrical charge was so strong that even my quinky preons were firing. Before the night was over, he had me quacking and quinking and feeling like a total quink of the most Gigli and nerdish kind. In one fowl swoop I fell madly, head-over-heals in love. It was a good feeling.

I learned he was gamefully employed and was one of those people who managed to plummet right to the top of his profession. In public he was always so confidant, the very pentacle of politeness, and he came across as a man who holds strong principals. He seemed to be a suppository of knowledge too and in good conscious I knew I could use some wizening up. Right from the gecko he never seized to amaze me and he made me so happy I felt like I was dancing the flamingo all day long. My pendulum was really rocking and I felt like I was having an outer body experience. He had that kind of affect on me and it felt right as rein.

But after a couple of weeks, I started smelling a rat. I should have nipped it in the butt right then but at the time I was stark raven mad for him. I started feeling like he was taking me for granite. Plus, so many of his stories just didn’t jive and he started giving me applause for concern. I grew highly suspect and found myself caught between a rock and a hard plate. It finally donned on me that I wasn’t the only one when I saw the lipstick on his collar. I wanted to ring his neck for that and that’s when I fully realized that this love affair was going no place, that it was all a waist of my time.

While I tried hard to get him to change his ways, for all intensive purposes he remained who he was. Buy in large, I had not a bit of affluence over him and that was flustrating. I learned that what’s good for the goose isn’t necessarily good for her dander. I wasn’t always nice myself and confess that one time he made me so angry I hurled filthy epitaphs at him. Another time I struck his hand so hard I was afraid I might have decapitated it!

It felt like I was going to hell in a henbasket with my bazaar behavior. This relationship was reeking havoc with my life; it was all for not, a mute point. After all was set and done, I realized I was in dire straights. The night I found myself in bed, curled into a feeble position, I knew I had to get out. This situation was clearly inimicable to my well being.

A full month after I first met him, I finally mustard my courage and broke it off. I put the petal to the medal and sped away fast. Yes, I had to pull out the fire distinguisher to cool down those hot flames of passion but I fully realized that my idea of who I thought he was turned out to be just one big allusion.

He, of course, got off scotch free. He showed me it’s a doggy dog world out there and I no longer wanted to be part of it. But after all this time I still can’t quite alliterate that man from my mind. I’m determined to make due, though. After all, I can still dream about him. Quink.

—One of five semi-finalists in MacQ’s Quink Writing Challenge

Pamelyn Casto

has articles on flash fiction in Writer’s Digest (and their other publications), Fiction Southeast, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of New American Reading, and Critical Insights: Flash Fiction. She is Associate Editor for Open: Journal of Arts & Letters.