This idea, or something like it, has been hanging around for a while – the worst thing about finally getting it on paper was the fact that I actually had to watch some Jerry Springer. Not sure I watched enough of it to get the feel quite right – but there are limits to what I will do for my art.
Show and Tell (982 words) "Aand heere's your host!"
"Gunnar! Gunnar! Gunnar! Gunnar!"
Gunnar Bateman surfed onto the stage, cresting the roaring applause.
"Today we’re going to meet Darleen and Chet. They’ve been married some time, and Darleen claims that Chet has changed. That the same things that attracted him about her, he doesn’t like any more." Oooh, from the audience.
"Chet says Darleen isn’t acting like a proper wife, like a proper mother. Who’s right? Who’s at fault here? Let’s find out, shall we? Let’s hear it for Darleen Lubowski!"
Darleen was blonde, toned, tanned, pumped, glossed, and cantilevered. She swayed up to Gunnar on vertiginous heels for her air-kiss and slid into one of the chairs with catlike ease.
"So, Darleen. You and Chet have been married for how long?"
"Ten years, Gunnar." She had the voice of a gin-soaked angel.
"You told me that you were on the verge of a divorce. Why is that?"
"Well, I’ve always attracted men."
Woooo and a few, "You go, girl’s," from the audience.
"He said he liked that," Darleen said, pouting. "He said that I was the first sexy woman to go for him. But now, it’s all, ‘don’t wear that, Darleen. We’ve got children, Darleen. What will the PTA think, Darleen?’"
"Well, let’s hear Chet’s side of the story, shall we? Here he is, Chet Lubowski!"
Chet blinked his way onto the stage, leaning forward as though the applause were a high wind. Scrawny, with big hands and a bad combover, he looked at least twenty years older than his wife. Out in the distance, a bulb popped, and the tech crew hurried to deal with it.
Gunnar shook Chet’s hand, gestured him to his seat.
"Can you tell us a bit about your marriage?"
"We married pretty young. Darleen was always kinda wild. That’s was OK. But we’re older now. I just think she should, you know, stop trying to look like she’s sixteen. And stop flirting with other guys. We got three beautiful kids. It just isn’t right."
"Are you saying I don’t love our kids?" Darleen started up, eyes flaring.
Chet glared. "Do you?"
"Don’t you dare accuse me of being a bad mother!" She turned to the audience. "I just about brought them up by myself, they never see him!"
Oooh!
"I work hard!"
"OK calm down," Gunnar said. "Now, Darleen, you’ve got something to tell Chet, haven’t you? Something you think will help explain everything?"
"Yes, Brendan."
"Why don’t you go ahead."
Chet’s lower lip started to shake; he got that rabbit-in-headlights look. The audience leaned in, hungrily. Darleen stared straight ahead, glowing. "Chet, you always said you thought I was a sexy woman, now, you don’t like that about me any longer. But it ain’t gonna change. I’m a succubus."
Woooo, from the audience. Chet blinked, gasped. "You…you bitch! You never told me! All these years, and…no wonder I lost so much weight! No wonder I was tired all the time!"
Darleen crossed her legs, endangering several marriages out front, and shrugged. "You never had it better, Chet. Lots of men would be grateful."
Ooooh, the audience moaned.
"Besides, I never complained. Did I ever complain about your little secret? Hmm?"
"Oh don’t you dare," Chet said. "My friends watch this programme!"
"And you never had the guts to tell them," Darleen said. "I married a man with no guts. I married…" she drew the pause out like a pro, "a gremlin."
"You - bleep!" Chet launched himself out of his chair. One of the legs collapsed, and the stage crew whipped another chair into place, while security – a burly priest and even burlier ex-cop, both armed with water-pistols loaded with the show’s special mix of holy water, silver leaf, crushed garlic and obscure West African herbs – grabbed Chet. One of the water pistols exploded, drenching the front row of the audience, causing screams, howls, and a disturbing bubbling sound.
"Look at that!" Darleen shrieked, leaping up, pointing a trembling, perfectly manicured finger. "That’s what it’s like living with you! I never had a TV last more than a week! We pay more in insurance premiums than most people earn! And you complain because I look good? Well bleep you, Chet Lubowski! Bleep you and the kelpie you rode in on!"
Gunnar strode out front – stepping around the remains of one of the more drastically drenched members of the front row. "Let’s hear from our audience. You, sir?"
The sir in question was large, and hairy, and had a snout. "Seems to me she can’t help it. I mean, hell, I was coming home to that, I’d be grateful. In fact, I wouldn’t leave the house."
Chet lunged for him, and was restrained. Darleen smirked and waved her fingers. Another bulb exploded.
A large woman with a terrible perm and tusks said; "Once you’re a mom, you gotta change. You can’t act like a high-school kid no more. Lady, you need to get serious."
"Oh yeah?" Darleen said. "What’m I supposed to do? Pretend to be someone I’m not? Dress like you, maybe?"
Oooooh! Flecked with a few miao noises. The large woman headed thunderously for the stage, and was hauled back.
Gunnar got the nod from the wings. Time to wind up. He made a ‘quiet down’ gesture. "We all think we know somebody when we marry them. But do we ever really know them? And can the secrets at the heart of a marriage ever be something we should keep? Until next time; don’t you go changing." He’d used that line for years, and he wasn’t altering it now, however much the lycanthropy rights society complained.
In his dressing room, he found a message lying next to the mirror.
Great stuff. You bastard.
Odin.
Gunnar – aka Loki - grinned to himself. He’d found his niche. He was a god at peace with himself, if not with anyone else.
This story got started as I was falling asleep and a bad pun on flowers/flours popped into my head.
Although the bad pun got me started, in the end it had to go. (There's an anecdote in Robert McKee's "Story" about the screenwriters who started with a body behind the sofa, wrote the whole film round it and then realised it had become irrelevant.) The Baker's Bargain (981 words) Tom had half an hour to spare to try a new recipe before he opened the bakery. He had a whole rainbow palette to work with: pastry and dough, fruit peel and flesh, juice and jam, seeds and herbs, honey and treacle and custard and chocolate. He could spend a lifetime finding the perfect combinations of substance and flavour. It was a wild, gusty spring morning that made him think of freshness; he’d try cinammon rolls with cloves and mint. The clock’s hands whizzed round as he measured and stirred. When the rolls were in the oven he phoned Anna around the corner. She was always up at sunrise.
The bakery door opened, letting in the tinkle of a far-off bell. A slender young woman in a bright green velvet coat blew in, a smattering of sleet skipping around her shoes. The smell of cut grass filled the shop.
Tom smiled. “Hello again, Flora," he said. "Let me guess. A dozen honey cakes?”
“They are so very good. And such kind service. Perhaps one day I will be able to offer you something that you like as much.” A blush burned Tom’s face. He avoided Flora’s lime green eyes as he took her money.
The door banged open again and Anna limped into the bakery, leaning on her cane, a box tucked under her other arm. Her brown hair was tangled, her cheeks whipped pink by the wind. Mud stained the knees of her jeans. Flora smiled at Anna as she passed. Anna glared her out of the shop.
“That was a fey,” said Anna. “Most of them have got a sweet tooth. One day she’ll come in here and offer you a bargain. Don’t take it. The fey always trick you on the price.” She tapped her cane irritably.
“The fey. Right, I’ll be careful.” Tom hurried round to take the box. The honey from Anna’s bees had flavour that stretched for miles. He was willing to put up with some New Age nonsense for the sake of his cakes.
Anna sniffed. “Do I smell cloves?”
“Yeah. One of my experiments. Want to try?”
Anna clambered up onto a stool at the counter to eat the warm roll. “Not a success, this time,” she said. “But my teeth feel nice and clean now.”
“I have these ideas. It’s always so clear in my head, and then I try and it doesn’t work.”
Anna smiled. “That’s the nature of experiments. Sometimes there’s happy accidents too.”
“I wish it would turn out how I imagine it. If I could just got the proportions right...”
“You will. Knowledge requires sacrifice and all that. Remember the cheese and chilli scones?”
“I'll give you some to take with you. Looks like you’re busy,” he said.
“You caught me sorting out the raspberry canes. It’s new moon, the best time for planting.”
“You don’t seriously believe all that stuff do you?” Tom blurted. “I mean, new moons, fairies, aren’t you a bit old for all that?”
Anna slid off the stool. “She will come back. Whatever she offers you, the price is always too high. Don’t have anything to do with her. You can drop my payment through the letterbox.” #
Flora did come back, when the weather was all blue skies and warm breezes. She ordered her honey cakes and said, “Perhaps I might offer you better payment than money.”
“Er...”
“Be bold, Tom. Many things are possible.” The scent of flowers drowsing in sunshine flooded over him. The wooden floor of the bakery creaked and groaned as it thrust out green shoots. Flora smiled at him, her lips as red as the depths of a rose.
“Surely, you must have one heart-felt wish?” she asked.
“Yes. I want to be able to bake everything perfectly, every time.” Tom blinked in surprise as the wish leapt from his lips. “I want the flavours to come out just as I imagine them.”
“Your wish is to have every bread and cake and pastry turn out exactly as you plan?”
“Yes. Although, I was told, there would be a price...”
“My dear Tom, I am offering you payment. How can there be a price?” #
Tom woke tangled in the trailing ends of a nightmare. He felt drained and woozy as he began baking, but his loaves and pastries were better than ever. He made the cinnamon, mint and clove rolls again, and phoned Anna.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “I knew you’d get it right.”
“They came out exactly as I imagined,” said Tom. #
Tick tock, every day perfect loaves and pastries. He set the oven too high, he put in too many spices, he left the flour or the yeast out. It didn’t matter. Every new recipe turned out exactly as he imagined it. No surprises. No happy accidents. As he baked, his mind imagined a lifetime of tick tock, idea to realisation, no matter what he did or didn’t do. The clock hands crawled. Every morning he picked up the phone to call Anna, and changed his mind. After a fortnight, she came to the bakery anyway.
“You took the bargain, didn’t you?” she said.
“She said there was no price!” Tom wailed.
“Tell me exactly what was said.”
When Tom finished, Anna said, “Oh, that old trick. She’ll be back to offer to take it away, for a price. She’ll ask you for something like one blink of your eye. And you’ll think ‘What harm could that possibly do?’ And that blink will happen at the very moment when you need your eyes wide open, and then, wham!” She waved her cane. “You'll be bleeding in the gutter. I'd learn to live with it, if I were you.”
“How?”
“She wasn’t that clever.” Anna patted his hand. “If you can’t be a baker, find something else to cook. Now, I must get back to my bees.”
Little Red Hoodie (706 words) "Now don't forget the bag for your Nan." The woman looks into the shopping bag, shudders, and closes it again. “Sometimes I wonder what I married into.”
Red sighs and does an exaggerated, adolescent shrug. She’s heard that before.
"And don't go by the Whitman Estate. And stay away from that old tramp by the off-licence."
"Mu-um."
"I don't want to be phoning the hospitals. Or the police."
"I'll be late."
The woman looks out the window. "Oh, blast. Yes. Hurry. Wait, have you got your mobile?"
"Yes, Mum. And yes, it's got credit, and yes, it's switched on."
"Don't you give me that voice, young lady. If that plumber had turned up when he was supposed to..." she rolls her eyes towards the upstairs, where there is an ominous, constant dripping sound. “But I have to keep emptying the bucket.”
Beyond the kitchen window, the moon is rising over the rooftops, fat as a cheese, smoky autumn yellow.
"Can I just go?"
"You ring me the second you get there. Tell your Nan I said you're to stay overnight. And if she gets out of hand..."
"I know. Anyway she can't help it."
"Sometimes I wonder. Just make sure her chain's on. I know what she's like."
She grasps the girl’s wrist as she’s about to leave. “Red, be careful,” she says. “You’re old enough…”
With one final, eye-rolling, “Mu-uum,” Red escapes, swinging the bag with Nan's supplies in one hand, tugging at the neck of her jacket with the other. It's too small, really, but she likes it. She pulls the hood up and pretends she's one of the lads from the estate, all droopy trousers and bravado, and giggles to herself as she walks.
She’s still, mostly, a child. She doesn’t hurry. She wanders and looks in windows and makes up stories about the people behind them; but her musings are interrupted by the crash of glass, a straggle of drunken laughter. She looks up; the moon’s lost its yellow. Suddenly it’s a bone-white eye.
She starts to walk faster.
Red isn't very interested in cars, and doesn't notice the sleek black late-model Jag cruising like a shark; even when it comes past her the second time. Slower.
The streets are almost empty. The car stops. The window slides down, electrically silent.
"Excuse me?" The voice is smooth. "I'm looking for Laburnum Drive."
If she'd been watching, she would know the car has already been down Laburnum Drive; it turned out of it, just now.
She pulls her hood further down, her voice comes out gruff. "I don't know."
"I've got a map here...perhaps you could show me? Come on, you can't see it from over there." A pause. "I'll give you some money, if you like...for your trouble."
She shouldn't get too close. But by the time she realises she shouldn't, it's already too late.
***
Nan's bungalow sits with three others at the far end of the estate; a last decrepit clutch at suburban respectability before the motorway. Her garden is overgrown. In the morning light, the girl's mother pushes frantically through the nettles, ignoring the stings. "Nan!" She hammers on the door. "Nan!"
Eventually, slowly, it opens. The old woman looks out, blinking. "Oh, hello, dear."
"Where is she?"
"Inside. She’s…”
But the woman shoves past her, into the house, and sees Red curled in the old chair, tugging idly at the buckle of a studded dog-collar attached to a thick, heavy chain.
"What happened? I phoned and phoned..."
"I'm sorry, Mum."
There is a streak of darkness on Red’s jacket; her face has changed, suddenly older, as though years happened to her last night. Or centuries. She is remarkably calm.
"Honestly," the old woman says. "Sending her out on full moon, and her all of twelve! You should have known."
"Who was it?" Red’s mother says.
"Some perv. Don't worry.”
“Don’t worry? What do you mean don’t worry?”
“We disposed of it. I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing a long time, dear.”
Nan grins. Her teeth are long, and white, and sharp. “If you’d been one of us, we’d have saved you a leg.”
Warning: This story contains rude words.
It was hand-written at the Friday Flash Fictioneers' workshop at Eastercon. I then promptly lost it. I've rewritten it from memory and polished it up a bit.
I find with flash that I'm more willing to dive in and see where the story takes me, and trust that my brain knows it's got 1000 words (or fewer) to pull something into shape. With this one I also managed to get a terrible joke into the title, which always makes me happy.
A Stupid Place to (Jurassic) Park (656 words) “What kind of arse-brained idiot parks a steg next to a T. rex?”
“Maybe they just popped in for some milk or something,” says Alison.
“Look at this shit-awful mess! I hope their insurance covers this.” I wave at where the stegosaurus is placidly chewing the cud and still swinging its club-ended tail, scattering a few drops of blood. Rover’s snapped chain and the stamped-flat scrubby carpark bushes were no doubt just the first steps on a trail of destruction.
“Oh dear. You can’t blame the steg for defending itself. Our boy’s had a go again,” says Alison. “We really need to put a stop to that.”
Alison just doesn’t get it. If I left it up to her, we’d be plodding around on a triceratops. Safe, solid, oh so slow. Give me a carnivore every time.
“It’s in his nature,” I say. “He’d be fine if some cock-knocking moron didn’t park a stupid herbivore next to him. And now I’ll have to try and catch him.”
“Have you got any spare Trexie treats?”
“Of course I’ve got spare Trexie treats. I’m not the cock-knocking moron. But the spare Trexie treats are where they always are. In the glove compartment, strapped to Rover’s back. For crying out loud Alison!”
“Sherbet lemon?” She pops open the bag and holds it out to me. “If you’re going to work yourself up into one of your rages, you’ll need the sugar.”
“I don’t want a fucking sherbet lemon! Do you hear that? That din is Rover rampaging down the High Street, destroying our credit card balance. Come on!”
I sprint off, glancing back to see Alison sauntering behind me, sucking ruminatively on a sweet. As I scramble round the corner, I tot up the damage in my head. Broken glass, flattened bins, scattered brooms and buckets, a butcher waving a gnawed haunch of something at me. “Shut your door next time,” I shout as I sprint past.
I teeter at a road junction and look around. For fuck’s sake! There’s Alison down the street outside a shop, standing in a plastic avalanche of laundry baskets, exercise balls, storage boxes. She’s handing some cash over. I can’t believe she’s actually shopping! That woman just does not understand the concept of immediate action.
Looking the other way, I see Rover bounding down the street and I take off after him, full tilt. He skids to a halt at the mall doors, scrabbles round, tail windmilling madly, then charges back past me. I spin on my heel, flailing my arms for balance, and follow. Alison waves as I run past. She waves again as we repeat the maneouvre at the other end of the street. Rover’s tail is bouncing half-time now. He’s a hunter, a sprinter, not an all-day plodder like the pathetic herbis. The third time we pass Alison, Rover’s breath huffs out in hot gales. He staggers to the end of the road and flops, sides heaving. I lean on an unbroken lamp post, red-faced and gasping.
There is the spanging sound of over-inflated plastic smacking off pavement. Alison wanders up the street, bouncing her just-bought exercise ball. Rover’s head snaps up and he clambers to his feet.
“Good boy,” said Alison. “Who’s got a new toy then?” Rover tilts his head and trots towards her. “Let’s go home and you can play with your new toy. Come on, it’ll be nice.” Our T. rex follows Alison, placidly as you like, tail waving happily.
“Are you alright?” she asks me.
“I’m worn out. You could have helped.”
“Sorry,” says Alison. “You know I’m not as quick as you. Let’s go home and I’ll make you a big steak dinner. Come on, it’ll be nice.” She smiles her wide sunny smile.
And I smile back, secretly pleased. Of course I’m the cleverest, but it’s nice to have it acknowledged once in a while.
An Experiment (539 words)
The question before us, ladies and gentlemen, is: how much can the subject take?
Red and pink. The colour of valentines, love-hearts, babies’ skin and little girls’ bedrooms. The colour of blood and peeled nerves, sizzling in the raw air.
Earlier experiment has shown that this amount of trauma applied at once tends to result in massive shock and almost immediate termination. As you will notice, gradually increasing the amount of trauma over a period of time permits the system to adjust. Some nerves are destroyed. Scar tissue is formed. Note that the scarred areas lose their sensitivity not only to pain-stimuli, but to pleasure. Note the lighter, rose-pink colouration of these areas.
Increase the nutrients, please. We do want to keep this going as long as possible.
Love hearts, lace, valentines. You can’t love scar tissue, and scar tissue can’t love. Yet who would want to go on feeling? Surely, in the end, you must become numb.
But what if that isn’t true? Sometimes you can’t stop feeling, even if you long to. Even if that’s your greatest desire. Instead, sometimes, perhaps what you feel…changes. It mutates like a virus. If you can’t find love in a laboratory, an end, a cessation, seems all that’s left to aim for. But after enough of the essential nerves have been severed, enough scar tissue has formed, the desire for oblivion can transmute into - something else.
Please note that the pattern in which the stimuli are applied is almost as significant as the intensity. If this is done correctly, the survival period can be extended far beyond what was originally considered possible. The subject’s system continues to adapt. What one might term ‘the survivable level of trauma’ becomes greater than was originally considered possible.
We have experimented on a great many subjects in order to gather this information, but there is still more information to be gathered. The question remains, ladies and gentlemen. How much can the subject take? At what point does survival become pointless? At what point does the system simply give up?
Old habits die hard and almost invisibly, draining away, leaving a hollow place. What fills it? The last fragments of the old self are seared away. Heat cauterises. Once you’ve learnt to take enough pain, perhaps you can learn to take…everything.
The subject’s responses have altered. This is interesting. Note the increase in adrenalin levels, the bunched muscles. I do believe our subject would be baring its teeth, if it still had lips. We have of course seen this before, if you look at your notes. There is sometimes this last-minute surge of physiological activity before the inevitable end. Gather round a little closer, please....
It’s been a long time since I had vocal chords. Now…I scream, not with the throat but with the entire body. To feel stripped muscles snap their chains is like exploding into a new universe, like becoming another order of being. I am transmuted, translated.
There is nothing left of what I was.
It doesn’t matter if the figure on the table was one of those that originally strapped me down. All hands are shaped for scalpels, including mine. The question remains, ladies and gentlemen...how much can the subject take?
Sarah says:
I tend to write long. Things that I start as fun little breaks from long projects usually haul in characters (often orcs, we like orcs) and plot twists and end up being novellas. So flash fiction is a really refreshing change for me - the satisfaction of finishing something within a few days instead of months.
My first attempts came from exercises in flash at our writers' group workshops. Half of this story was written at Eastercon when I was buzzing with enthusiasm after attending the Friday Flash Fictioneers' workshop. I picked up a valuable piece of advice there about suggesting the world around the story, and that's what I'm trying to achieve here.
One last thing: it was inspired by reading the list of ingredients on a packet of processed cheese. Liquid Smoke (100 words including title)
Liquid smoke for wood and water, the places my revenge seeks him out. A dragonfly's wing for swiftness. Steep in moonlight and the spell is done.
Liquid smoke twists in the air as rope twists. It will bind as rope binds. I was the slowest of my sisters in that dark forest flight, my breath burning, lashed by the sound of his pursuit.
Liquid smoke presses him down and forces itself in. He does not breathe but to utter my name. My love potion spreads its happy poison through his veins and I have my lifetime for vengeance.
Gaie says:
When I first heard of flash fiction, I was, I admit it, sniffy. How could anyone possibly create something worthwhile within such a limited wordcount? Of course, I was struggling to finish a novel at the time and was not in the mood to admit that maybe you could produce good fiction without taking two years and an inordinate number of words to do it.
But then there's poetry, my first love. And poetry, with some epic exceptions, encapsulates an idea, a moment or a feeling within a very small space. It struck me (slowly but with some force, like a doped grizzly) that flash fiction, like poetry, isn't about being lazy, but about being precise.
So I started reading some flash, liked some of it a great deal, and realised I wanted to have a go at writing it.
Folie a Deux might be considered cheating. It was originally a 3,500 word story, and has been cut down to flash size. But there was a great satisfaction to be had from trimming out everything that didn’t need to be there. I may yet do this with other bits of the unpublished back-catalogue I have been keeping in the vague hope they might Come In Useful, like string.
But for those who would consider it cheating, I’ve also got some new ideas; in the same way that reading poetry makes me more inclined to write it, reading flash does the same.
I hope you enjoy the following. And if you don’t, well, at least you won't have wasted a lot of time… Folie A Deux (829 words) “I’m getting married,” Marty said.
“Married? To Jeff?”
“Yes. Full commitment.”
I felt my insides clench. Marty was always such a free spirit, it was the last thing I would have expected from her.
“Let’s meet up!” She was all bubbles.
“Great. Um…”
“The Pig in Clover? Tonight?” ***
Too late I remembered the Pig in Clover was where I’d had my final never-darken-my-psyche -again row with Jane. Of course, the only booth left was the site of the row, and of course the place was wall to wall couples.
Marty glowed, she really did. “Jeff, darling, get Kate, oh you have, there you go.”
Jeff put our pints down, and sat, and smiled at me. I wanted to hate him but it probably wasn’t even his idea. Marty’s always had what you might call a whim of iron.
“So,” I said. “You two. Eh?”
Yeah, I know. Brilliant.
“You look funny, Kate,” Marty tilted her head like a puppy. “Oh, don’t say you disapprove, honestly, I’ve had that from my Dad. He just doesn’t get it. You’ve been in love. This is the, like, ultimate. You know?”
“Your Dad must have been in love once,” I said. “And as for me…”
Yes, I’d been in love. In love enough to move in, though never quite in love enough to sign papers. Enough to run along beaches at midnight, but not enough to move to Hawaii. In love enough to do what they were contemplating? Not on your life. “You’re serious.”
“Of course we’re serious!” And she turned to look at Jeff and just beamed at him and he beamed back, a full-on daffy in-love grin.
They really meant it.
“It’s going to cost a fortune, Marty.”
“Oh, Kate. Always the accountant.”
“It’s my job. I mean, seriously, where are you going to get the money?”
“We’ll find it.” She took Jeff’s hand. “People are going back to this kind of commitment, Kate. After all, how else are you supposed to prove how much you love someone?” ***
The months leading to the wedding were horrible. It got so bad I even phoned my ex, Jane.
“Uh, how are you?” I said.
“Over it.”
“Good! I mean, Jesus. Jane, I’m sorry.”
“Yes, well. Oh, come on, you silly cow. What’s up?”
So I told her. I managed to keep the swearing and ranting to a minimum, pretty much. But there was still this long silence at the end.
“They’re going to do it then,” she said.
“Seems like it, yeah.”
“OK. Well, I can get why you’re upset. I mean, I think it’s yuck. But there’s…you know. The other aspect.”
“What other aspect?”
“You know what I mean, Kate.”
“No, I don’t,” I said.
“They want to do it. They’re…committed. We were together three years and you wouldn’t put me on your car insurance.”
“Oh come on!”
It didn’t go well, on the whole. ***
I went away, I told Marty I’d booked the holiday the previous year. I couldn’t face the wedding. I spent a lot of my savings. I slept with a few people, including a pair of identical twins I met in a Cairo bar.
That didn’t end well either. There was this moment when I looked at them and thought, Jesus, they’re not really two separate people at all, and I threw up all over the bed.
Some of that was probably the dope, which was another thing I wasn’t used to. But it definitely put a damper on the evening.
I’d only been back a few days when I got the phone call. I was in that disembodied state you get after a lot of travelling, and I picked up without thinking.
“Kate! You’re back!”
I knew who it was, of course.
“Yeah, I am. How…how are you?”
“Great! Still a bit…you know. Let’s meet up!”
It was the Pig in Clover, of course.
I got there too early. Not early enough to be as drunk as I’d have liked, when the door finally opened and somehow I knew who it was. I kept staring at my pint until I heard the chair being pulled out.
“Hi Kate.”
I looked up.
It was tall, and smooth, and androgynous. Good-looking, I suppose, objectively. I recognised Marty’s mouth, and Jeff’s eyes. But it was a bland, blunted face.
My own felt utterly frozen, I don’t know how I spoke at all. “I don’t know what to call you,” I said.
“Well,” the thing said, “We decided on Jeffmar, in the end.”
I started laughing. I couldn’t stop, until the paramedics hit me with the second syringeful.
Jeffmar. Jesus, Marty. You never did have any taste.
*** I sit at home with the phone on my lap, and wonder who to call.
Exes. Friends. People who might be more than that…or not. So many possible combinations, so many possible conjunctions. I wonder about calling Jane.
But in the end, I don’t.
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