By Manu St. Thomas
This Story Won Third Prize in Our Contest
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Until tonight, Danny and Kate had been what people call a couple.
They met at work, where Kate was an Account Manager and, Danny was an Art Director. Kate hated the idea of falling in love through sheer proximity, as if they were penguins who chose their mate because they happened to be on the same side of the beach. Nonetheless, it happened. It happened through links and songs and memes and conversations by the coffee machine about the latest episode of Stranger Things. It happened in private chats, where they made fun of the Office Manager, who sent emails asking everyone to “wash their dirty bowels after having cereal in the cafeteria.” One night, after a party, they kissed, and four days later, they went to Danny’s place and made love, and it was strange and pleasant, like getting high on cough syrup. They peeled away each other’s work selves and discovered the warm human underneath, with moles and birthmarks and hair in secret places. They talked about what it was like to have siblings, what it was like to not have them, about how Kate wanted to be a mortician when she was a child and how Danny’s full name was Daniel Ozzy Parker, because his father was a huge Black Sabbath fan. Kate told him about the penguin thing and Danny laughed, and after that night, they called each other “my penguin.”
They were what people call a couple for a little over five years, during which they did ordinary couple things, like say “I love you” before hanging up, go on city breaks and trips to Ikea, watch Netflix, and have the occasional fight. But their love felt extraordinary, a revelation that filled them both with ardent devotion to each other’s happiness and offered them small glimpses of immortality.
Kate dabbled in one interest before she moved on to another, changed jobs without remorse, dreamed big but didn’t pursue any of those dreams with great fervor. Danny was focused, purposeful and diligent, committed to the life he’d designed for himself: a well-paid career, a comfortable existence, a family. In the beginning, these differences had been the source of a sparkling fascination with one another. The years had eroded that fascination until only their differences remained. “I imagine myself going out into the ocean and fishing for you and our chicks,” he said one day, and the sentence made Kate’s soul shrivel and cower like burning paper and that was the beginning of the end. So, tonight, unlike penguins, who mated for life, Danny and Kate did what people call breaking up.
Now they sit next to each other on the sofa, like witnesses to a murder.
“I’m going to sleep at Joe’s tonight. And tomorrow while you’re at work, I’ll come and take my stuff,” says Danny, and he has a lot more voice in his voice.
“Okay. I have that pottery class tomorrow anyway, so I’ll be home late,” answers Kate. She doesn’t know what else to say.
To Danny, she sounds like the girl from years ago, by the coffee machine, like someone he’d like to know.
When he gets up, Kate can feel the air between them tearing like a sheet of paper. With every step he takes, he belongs more to himself and less to her, until he reaches the door and he is his own separate being again. Daniel Ozzy Parker, a free man, free to make love to other women, father children, see and do things of which Kate will never know, be someone else’s penguin. She swallows the hot salt that pools in the back of her throat.
Danny unlocks the door and looks at Kate one more time. She sits on the gray sofa, like a spent Madonna, her hair redder than it’s ever been. He has the distinct feeling that this is going to be one of those images he will carry with him forever. Maybe this is the moment he goes back into the living room, grabs her and never lets her go again, and promises they’ll find a way to make it work. Or maybe this is just the moment he leaves.
“Goodbye, Kate,” he says. He steps into the elevator, and once he’s outside, walks to the metro station. It’s late October. The city is wrapped in the cool velvet of autumn dusk. He wipes the tears off his face and gets lost in a crowd that couldn’t care less.
From her window, Kate watches him crossing the street. Her heart beats one extra time, and in that beat, she thinks about running after him, like in a movie scene, but she lets the curtain fall back and tells her heart to settle down. The house is full of his absence.
They both marvel at how strange and undignified it feels for everything to have ended in such a placid way, like their love was a wave that ran out of water, like they were any other couple. They wonder what the point is if even something so beautiful can just expire like that.
Danny waits for the metro. His body feels awkward and tender, like it’s hardening with one more layer of loss. Kate plays some music to paint the colorless space around her. She is the loneliest she’s ever been. None of them know exactly how, but what they do know is that they must eventually do what people call moving on. Until then, he drinks with Joe, and she falls asleep crying.
Outside, darkness seeps into the heedless city, and in it stir flashes of red and green and whispers of rubber on asphalt and whistles of trams and the voices of others living other lives.
What a beautiful, emotional story! Well deserved!
Thank you, Jen!
Beautifully written!
Thank you, Joanne! Much appreciated! 🙂
I love this story. It shows the power of a calm, confident narrative voice.
That’s a big compliment! 🙂 Thank you so much, I’m glad you enjoyed it!
I loved the point of view in this story, and how you made the mundane so meaningful. It was bittersweet without being sappy. The metaphor was perfectly balanced and I heard it throughout. Well crafted and a wonderful read. Thanks for sharing it with readers.
Thank you so much for your kind words, Margaret! 🙂 I am so glad you liked it.
Nicely formed. Great emotional through-line from each POV. Wonderful use of the penguin idea from title through to end.
Thank you, Peter! Your comment brought me so much joy!
Charming story that had me captivated from start to finish. This threads the needle between the ideas that all love stories are ordinary (people do the same things feel the same emotions, etc.) and that every love story is unique and amazing. Well done!
I’m so happy to read this and to see that what I meant to do and express with this story shone through! Thank you, Tim!
This is such a great example of what I find so hard to do when trying to write FF. This is just such a poignant dissection of something that verges on banal in how inevitable it is for almost every human. This line and insight is crazy good, “undignified it feels for everything to have ended in such a placid way,” The breakups of mine that ended in puffs of air instead of cyclones have been the saddest. And here’s a line I wish I’d written, “Now they sit next to each other on the sofa, like witnesses to a murder.”
Anyway, this is a great piece. I’m honored to be in this volume? edition? episode? with you. Thank you.
By the way do you have a substack by chance? And honestly, anyone who might read this I’d love to find yours as well!
Wow, thank you Mike, your comment is really encouraging and I’m really happy to read that you got 100% of what I was trying to do with this story and it resonated with you. It’s a great feeling for a writer. 🙂 Honoured as well to be in this batch (?) with you. I have literally just created a Substack, it’s @manustthomas.
Beautiful. Sad. And very, very human.
Thank you so much! 🙂
Great title and story. I couldn’t help myself from rooting for them even though I knew there would be no happy ending. Great touch at the end with the sights and sounds of the world moving on.
Thank you, Jack! Much appreciated!
So lovely and sad. We can all relate to this. You’ve managed to find emotion and beauty in the mundane. Congrats
Thank you Madeleine! Happy to have written something relatable and that stirs some emotions. 🙂
Such a beautiful line: “Kate plays some music to paint the colorless space around her.”
Glad you liked it! Thank you! 🙂
Simply brilliant. I have experienced this same evolution and dissolution of a relationship, and envy the author’s talent at putting the emotions into words.
Thank you Ginger! I’m so glad this resonated with you! 🙂
What a gorgeous story. Succinct imagery, delicate tension and emotional impact. This one will leave a mark. Well done.
Thank you so much!
All the famous writers we honor throughout history, none better than you. From the metaphoric penguin connection; the “peeled away each other’s work selves and discovered the warm human underneath, with moles and birthmarks and hair in secret places”; the descriptive city wrapped in the cool velvet of autumn dusk; the house full of his absence. And, I must mention the hilarious “bowels” error. Brilliant writing. You should be famous.
Hi Tamara! This is the best comment I’ve ever received, I’m so honoured. Thank you! Your words mean a lot.
Wow. So much in such a short story. My favorite line: the air tearing between them like a sheet of paper.
Thank you, Jane!
A marvelously complete story in such a tight container. I loved it. The build up, the mundane, the parting. Just perfect. Every word a delight.
Thank you so much for this wonderful comment! My heart is happy. 🙂
We meet love believing it will change the world, only to find it dissolves into the mundane unless given a purpose beyond itself. Yet, its power lingers—a force that does not merely pass through us, but reshapes us at our core. Love is not just something we experience; it is a process of self-creation.
Like the shimmer in Annihilation, it unravels and remakes us in ways we cannot predict. Losing it feels like losing a piece of ourselves, but in that absence, we come to see what was truly altered, what was left behind, and what new form we have taken in its wake.