The Yellow Hibiscus
Flash Fiction Under 1000
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With my brown hair now blonde, my light brown eyes now blue and a heavy heart, we boarded American Airlines Flight 16 at 3:34 P.M. from JFK, en-route to Los Angeles. American Airlines didn’t fly directly to Honolulu. We arrived at LAX at 12:45 a.m. Pacific. Then we boarded Flight 19 at 2:15 a.m. arriving at Honolulu International Airport at 8:15 a.m. Pacific time.
Sgt. Booker quickly cleared Customs, with the help of two plainclothes Hawaiian Police detectives. They whisked him away in an unmarked vehicle.
“Where are we going?” Sgt. Booker asked.
“To the Sunflower Hotel, where you will rest and tomorrow we will take you to see our Captain.”
“I would rather see him now,” Sgt. Booker stated.
“Sorry, but Captain Gellent is in Maui, and won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Sgt. Booker answered, staring out the window, reminding himself to call Captain Powell as soon as he checked into the hotel.
The Island of Oahu was ten times more beautiful and colorful than all the brochures I had seen. Like in the movies, the traditional beautiful hula dancers greeted us, putting lei’s around our necks, welcoming us to the Island.
‘Aloha’ is the Hawaiian word for ‘love and goodwill’. Traffic was chaotic and worse than the worst of New York City. The flight was forty-five minutes late, and it took us two hours to clear Customs, 11:13 p.m. Pacific time. Our cab driver got tired of waiting in traffic on Highway 1 and exited at the first exit off the Highway.
This was not a very good sign I thought, peering out from my cab’s window.
The cab driver said he was taking a shortcut. Along the route, I observed varied shaped leaves of trees and plants, that displayed a kaleidoscope of greens. Golden-hued coconut trees. Crotons. Variegated screw-pines. Frangipani, both red and white. Palms, including the bold towering royal palm, which stood in regal splendor as the ruler Palm dominion. As the cab drove on, thatch palms in military elegance, swiftly filed pass as majestic palms. Treated with carefully spaced stones and boulders, rose graceful and tall. Parapets lined the embankment, with clay-colored cut stones, that…
