Easter Egg by Carolyn Lenz
2022 Flash Fiction Winner
First Place
The brickwork seemed to tremble against her fingertips as Sheila ran up the stairs, her hand bouncing across the pocked and pitted surface like a needle on a record. Darren raced ahead of her, always an inch from disappearing around the spiral.
“We could be arrested for this,” she called up to him, her voice echoing.
“It’s worth it, I swear,” Darren replied.
A second later they stepped out into the warm iridescent glow at the top of the spire. Sunlight shimmered through the stained glass at a low angle, tinted a rainbow of colours by scenes of saints and martyrs. A massive brass bell hung in the centre of the room – in fact, in every part of the room, given how much space it took up. Sheila wondered how it had the clearance to swing. If it ever hit the walls of the tiny, lofty room. If the sound of metal gonging against rock would even be audible over the deafening peals.
“I love it up here,” Darren said, shimmying his way around the bell. He peered through a clear part of the stained glass, taking in the city skyline through the eyes of Saint Sebastian.
“It’s beautiful,” Sheila agreed.
She heard a soft click, plastic on plastic. Her gaze whipped away from an intricate mosaic of a swirling sun. Darren scribbled something in sharpie on the wooden casement of the closest window.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Check it out,” Darren replied. Sheila came closer to see the little heart he’d drawn with their initials, an arrow directly through it. A more graphically injured heart glowed in the glass above it. “Now we’ll always know this is here. Like our own Easter egg.”
“Oh my god,” Sheila scoffed. She rubbed at the graffiti with her sleeve. When nothing happened, she licked her finger and buffed harder. It didn’t even smudge.
“Permanent,” Darren beamed triumphantly. “Like my love.”
“I’m going to come back later with alcohol wipes,” Sheila told him.
“No way. Like you said, we could get in a lot of trouble for sneaking up here.”
“Like you said, it’s worth it.”
Darren tried his best to look cocky. He stood tall, tilting his chin back to look down on her. But the slight wrinkle of worry at the corner of his eyes tolled his uncertainty as loudly as the ringing of a church bell.
As he wrapped Sheila up in his arms in place of an apology, Sheila wondered if she would come back. If it mattered. If he believed she had removed it, was it as good as gone for him? Or, would the version of the church in his mind always have a tiny heart scrawled in the bell tower?