The Tug Of War (Flash Fiction)

“Let go of my hand”, said the woman to the man, who had grabbed on tightly to it and was now trying to grab hold of her other arm.

“No”, said the man,”No, I won’t ever let you go”.

But suddenly he felt a sharp pain in his right hand where she was biting into it.

Still, he refused to let go of her. How could he? He loved her too much.

“I love you”, he said, “I can’t let you go”.

“Well, I don’t love you”, she said to him trying to loosen his grip on her wrist.

But then, suddenly, she remembered a move she’d been taught by a self-defence instructor to break free from a hold and then, the next minute, she was loose.

“No!”, cried the man as she slipped free of his grasp and fell to her doom on the pavement a hundred stories below.

She had been suicidally depressed. He had done all he could to save her but, in the end, darkness had won the tug of war.