Measure of Prevention

He lowered the small ring box as her words sliced through the air and pierced deep into his chest.
She’d led him along like all those others and now the pain he felt turned to anger as he stood up.
He had no doubt she’d return and tell people about his proposal of marriage which would lead to scorn and ridicule, but only if she were allowed to.
She turned away with a shake of her head but her laughter only fueled his deadly intent.
The box fell away as his hand found the giant knife sheathed on his belt.

100 WordMicrofiction – NYC Midnight
Measure of Prevention – © 2021 Paul J. Fleming

This was my entry into the 100-word Micro-fiction challenge, in which we were split into groups and provided a Genre, Action and Word to use for our creation.
For my grouping, the Genre was Horror, the Action was Proposing Marriage and the word that should be included was Giant.

I will be the first to admit that the small clip above does not ooze with gore or send chills down the spine, but I was a bit lost – I mean, another group pulled “Sci-Fi”, “watching Television” and “smooth” whilst another received “Historical Fiction”, “Wiggling Toes” and “Waste”. For some reason, my own allocation just drew a large blank in my mind.

In any case, I feel quite happy to post this up before the judgement round completes because I made a glaring error and have fallen at the first hurdle. In my bid to reduce the words below the 100 word count I failed to make a final edit and swap the final line for the intended version. As such, the word “Giant” was missed out completely due to my furious editing as the deadline drew close. A learning experience! Don’t leave your edits to the last ten minutes!!
I’ve provided the final ‘intended’ version of the story above. The submitted last line which spelt my doom was:
“The small box fell away as his hand found the knife sheathed on his belt.”

As you can see, just two words of difference but ones which decided my fate. I wish the remaining authors all the best for the next round and shall endeavour to do better next time!