A Flash in the Pan Read online

  Lucy ignored his proffered handshake and stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek instead. He bent awkwardly to assist her.

  “I didn’t get any taller, that’s for sure.” Her laughter was still like music. “So, Tom, why don’t you want to be here? Are we so boring now that you’re a big shot?”

  Tom shuffled uncomfortably. “Not at all, it’s just me. I’m out of the loop here. I don’t know what’s going on any more. It’s been a long time.”

  “Twenty-five years – yeah, that’s a long time. Are you on your own tonight? I thought you might have brought your wife.”

  Tom shook his head. “Ex-wife. We’ve been divorced for two years.”

  “I’m sorry …”

  “No need. I’m not. It was all a big mistake. I suppose you’re living the small town dream – husband, kids in college, white picket fence?” He regretted the acid in his tone as soon as the words were out.

  “Not exactly.” Lucy wasn’t looking at him now, but gazing out of the window. “Single mum, grown-up daughter, apartment above the greengrocery. I’ve done well for myself, haven’t I?”

  “I didn’t mean … oh shit! I knew I shouldn’t have come. I’m sorry, Lucy. Can we start over, or should I just leave now?” He offered his hand and this time she took it.

  “Don’t go,” she said. “Buy me a drink and we’ll start over.”

  That was all it took. Later, lying awake, listening to her soft breathing as she slept, he knew he was home to stay.

  He wondered how things would have turned out years ago if he’d said “I’m sorry” and she’d said “Don’t go.”

  7. The Sorting

  “Belle, wake up. It’s time!” Martin is shaking my right arm.

  “Leave me alone, Marty. Go and play in your own room.”

  That’s not right. I’m forty years old and my ‘little brother’ is only three years younger.

  I open my eyes to the sight of my bedroom, the one I slept in as a child, not the one I’ve shared with my husband for the last fifteen years. My eight-year-old brother sits on the end of my bed, swinging his legs.

  “At last!” he says. “Get dressed; we have to go to the sorting.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s the sorting?”

  Marty rolls his eyes. “It’s time for the sorting. You know, Father John told us about it last Sunday – when they sort out the sheep from the goats.”

  His face looks funny and I giggle. I swing my legs out of bed, young legs, not the legs of a woman with the beginnings of varicose veins. It dawns on me that I am eleven years old and Marty has come to take me to the sorting. His ideas are always the best; that’s why I love him so much. He turns his head away while I pull on my jeans and sweatshirt.

  What is the dress code for the sorting? Father John didn’t tell us that. Maybe we should be wearing bed sheets or something?

  Marty takes my hand and we leave the room. There’s not much left of the house. We can just about get down the stairs; everything is in decay. Outside, things aren’t any better. The street lies in ruins and we have to skirt the huge potholes that have appeared in the road. There’s no traffic. Cars sit abandoned, doors hanging open, as if their owners left in a hurry. I’d be worried if Marty wasn’t here, but he always makes everything fine. I’ve missed him so much since … since?

  Since he died; that’s right. Marty’s been dead for four years. He never got to celebrate his thirty-third birthday.

  There’s a silvery mist descending on us. It settles on our faces and hair and we glow. I squeeze my brother’s hand and he squeezes back so I know all is well.

  “Not far now, Belle. See – the others are coming.”

  We are ascending a hill in the park. We used to run up here and then roll all the way down in the summers of our childhood. In the winters we’d drag the toboggan up, then jump on together to hurtle through the snow to the bottom. Now we are climbing to the summit for the sorting and I still don’t understand, but Marty does.

  Our numbers are growing; ragged people of all ages and races make the climb. At last we reach the barrier where the shepherd stands to greet us. He indicates which way each person must go – right or left.

  Now I understand what Marty has been trying to tell me. This is the sorting that Father John told us about, but he called it Judgement Day.

  “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.” (Matthew 25:31-33)

  “Marty, I’m scared. Don’t let go of my hand.” I can feel him being pulled away from me as we approach the shepherd. I’m not a child any longer and I feel old and alone as little Marty is ushered through the gate and disappears. I raise a withered hand to my eyes to wipe my tears away as my turn arrives. The shepherd looks at me. I am sent to the left and I hear a voice from the mist saying familiar words:

  “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:2-4)

  8. Joey

  Joey was the real deal. He wasn’t one of those jerks who dressed up to entertain at some kids’ party on a Saturday afternoon. He was a circus clown and had spent his youth on the road, living in his brightly painted motor home and spreading joy twice nightly with matinees on Wednesday and Saturday. He loved the sound of laughter when he entered the ring in his enormous shoes and baggy trousers. He loved to watch the crowd duck as he picked up his bucket of ‘water’ to throw at them. But most of all he loved the kids who waited around at the end of the show to have their photos taken with him and ask him to sign their programmes. He couldn’t imagine any other kind of life. He would have liked kids of his own, but it wasn’t to be. At twenty-six, he’d met Kitty and fallen in love. They had married and after six months she dropped her bombshell.

  “I don’t want children – nasty, dirty, noisy little beasts. That’s an end to it, Joey. Oh, and I’m sick of living this way. I want to settle down in a house and I want you to get a regular job and stop making a fool of yourself for a living.”

  So Joey put away his greasepaint and the trappings of the circus. They moved into the city and he found work in a factory. Kitty ruled him with a rod of iron and every day his heart died a little. Sometimes, at night when he couldn’t sleep, he’d creep into the spare room and dress up for old times’ sake, carefully applying his make up in front of the old mirror that used to hang in the ‘van.

  As time went by, his stocks diminished and soon he had nothing left but an empty tin and a few wrappers stained with the colours they once held. Joey wept as he smeared his face with the pathetic remnants of his happier days. He hugged himself against the chill that was emanating from inside, but nothing could disperse the cloud seeping into his brain.

  “What have you done to me, woman?” he yelled at last, no longer afraid of disturbing the cold-hearted vixen who had stolen his joy with the promise of love, but had consistently failed to deliver.

  Her laughter, as she stood in the doorway, cut him even deeper.

  “You look ridiculous! I married a madman. They’ll lock you up and throw away the key, you old fool!”

  “You took my life! You took my life!” His tears were washing away what little colour he had been able to apply.

  Kitty laughed harder. “What life? Playing the fool every night for the admiration of little brats? I’ve given you a nice home and a comfortable life. What more did you want?”

  Joey screamed as he flew at her and locked his hands around her throat.

  “I wanted to be loved. I wanted children. I wanted respect. You gave me none of those.” With each sentence he squeezed harder, banging her head against the wall, until at last her body went limp in his hands and he released her.

  Methodically, he checked for signs of life. She was still breathing. He had kn
ocked the mirror over during the struggle, and the floor was littered with broken glass. He picked up a large shard and plunged it into Kitty’s throat. Her eyes jerked open as the blood gushed out. She opened her mouth and a gurgling sound escaped and then her life was over.

  Joey leapt to his feet and ran for the bathroom where he vomited and then washed his face. He took his shaving mirror back into the spare room with him to repair his make up.

  When the police arrived, in response to Joey’s call, they found the bodies lying side by side, in a pool of drying blood. Two clowns with huge red-painted mouths and noses – the man’s wrists had been slashed and the woman’s throat had been cut. Forensic evidence confirmed that their faces were expertly painted with the woman’s blood.

  9. Fifteen Minutes

  “The world, as we know it, will end in fifteen minutes.” The newscaster’s voice trembles.

  As kids, we used to play a game like this. Fifteen minutes to live, what are you going to do? Most of them interpreted that as who will be shagging whom, when the lights go out forever? I was too shy to admit that I’d ever thought about shagging anyone. My answer was always the same.

  “I’ll just make my peace with my Maker and pray for all you sinners.”

  They would all laugh at that and think I was a great joker, but I was only half-joking. I always thought that my last action before dying would be to beg forgiveness for my misspent life. As a teenager, I really hoped I’d get to do some stuff that needed forgiving.

  Now, here we are – a mixed bunch of writers, meeting in the flesh for the first time. All afternoon we’ve been drinking and laughing, getting to know the reality of the cyber people who have only lived in our computers until today. None of us knew this was destined to be the last day of our lives.

  Now the guy who’s been making us laugh forever stands up. He’s swaying slightly, maybe from shock, maybe from the vodka. He looks at his watch.

  “Ten minutes left. They’re gonna delete the world in ten minutes.”

  From somewhere behind me, I hear laughter. They don’t know it’s for real.

  “So, who are you going to shag?”

  Around the room, names are called and laughter greets each one. I sink into my chair and try to be invisible as I watch them pairing up for the end of the world.

  I take out my Blackberry – Facebook’s down; Twitter’s overloaded; the landline at home is unobtainable. There’s a solitary ‘ping’ as the screen fades to black. There is no help; they’ll ask me the question any minute now and I still won’t be able to answer.

  An old man jumps onto the table, waving a book above his head. “I’m sorry it’s not better news …” he begins.

  Everyone ignores him.

  There are arguments; there’s more drinking; there’s random flirting and full-blown sex going on all around me.

  With five minutes to go, my Muse comes to me. He takes my hand and I stop shaking.

  “Let’s do it,” he says “for the last time.”

  So as the world moves towards deletion, we write our last piece of flash fiction.

  Forgive us our trespasses.

  10. Irreconcilable Socks

  It started with a kiss at her twenty-first birthday party, back in the days when twenty-one was considered your coming-of-age. He came with mutual friends, a couple she’d known for years. He was ‘playing gooseberry’ as they used to call it back then; a single guy, dateless on a Saturday evening, tagging along as the spare wheel. Perhaps she should have read the warning signs. No, that’s not fair. There was nothing wrong with him. He was fun and they fell in love, and got married and had kids and all that, just like in the stories.

  So, did they live happily ever after? Does anyone?

  Years down the line, unloading the washing machine before going to collect the kids from school, she had a revelation. None of his socks matched. They used to – she was sure of it, and hadn’t she been sorting them week in, week out for years? It was as if they entered the machine as couples and many of them came out single. That was it – the washing machine was a divorce court that produced a regular quantity of irreconcilable socks. Suddenly her life seemed like that. She sat on the kitchen floor and cried for a while, wondering when she had stopped being happy.

  “Mummy, why are your eyes all red and puffy?” They were outside the school gate and Jason was struggling to fasten his coat.

  “I think I’m getting a cold, sweetheart. Now hurry up. The Juniors get out in five minutes and we don’t want Lizzie to think we’ve forgotten her.”

  Outside the junior gate, Lizzie posed the same question.

  “It’s just a cold, love.”

  The eight-year-old was not convinced. “Well, it looks like you’ve been crying.”

  Ben hung his jacket on the back of the chair, loosened his tie and sat down at the table, reading the evening paper until she placed his dinner in front of him. He looked up, as he folded the paper.

  “Got a cold, love? You look a bit rough. Pass the salt.”

  In silence, she passed the salt to the Prince Charming who had stolen her life.

  After a hot bath, she decided to have an early night. There was football on TV, so Ben would be occupied for a while. She picked up the romance she was reading and climbed into bed. Five minutes later the bedroom door opened and Ben stood there, grinning.

  “I know how to make you feel better,” he said.

  Needless to say, he didn’t.

  11. Exit

  Laura looked at the line of pills beside her cereal bowl; six tablets of different shapes, sizes and colours each with a different function that she couldn’t quite understand, lying alongside the “pen” syringe that she used to administer her Insulin.

  Not for the first time she wondered if anyone would care if she stopped taking them. How long would it be before she started to feel strange? Would she die, or would she have to be more proactive to make that happen? She took the medication like she always did, but made a mental note to ‘Google’ the outcomes of failure to follow instructions. She didn’t want it to appear deliberate, that would invalidate the life insurance and the kids would have to fork out for her funeral! In other words, she’d be cremated and scattered to the four winds without even a prayer over her ashes. She washed the pills down with a glass of water containing the recommended 75mg of dispersible aspirin as recommended by the doctor.

  “I’m not even old!” She cleared away the breakfast things and took a cup of coffee into the study.

  Google provided much of the information she was seeking. Now all she had to do was decide what she really wanted to do. Cold coffee, cold comfort. Laura stared at her notes.

  The rattle of the letterbox announced the arrival of the morning post. She rose from her seat and went to pick up the mail. More window envelopes, marked ‘private and personal’, more demands for money she didn’t have. She placed the letters unopened on the table with the others. They would soon be someone else’s problem. The thought filled her with sadness and something else … shame? But why should she feel ashamed?

  “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t bring it on myself,” she cried as she sat down on the floor. The pain in her chest nagged away and her breathing was laboured. She really wasn’t supposed to get upset, but what could she do? She’d just sit here for a few minutes until she felt calmer and then maybe go back to bed for a while. Feeling in her pocket, she retrieved the small bottle that she carried everywhere these days and sprayed the reddish liquid beneath her tongue, closing her mouth firmly and trying hard not to swallow. She recoiled at the taste which reminded her of peppermint and aniseed. She knew she’d have a fierce headache in a few minutes, but at least her heart would keep pumping. It was all about the swings and roundabouts. She read the label for the thousandth time. “Nitro-fucking-glycerine! I always thought that was an explosive.”

  The voicemails Laura left for her son and daughter, both too busy to take her calls, told them not to worry; she could take the bus to
the shopping centre since they’d both forgotten she needed to go there today. She didn’t want to be a bother to them. She wouldn’t trouble them again. At supper that evening, Laura lined up her tablets and swallowed them, then primed her injection.

  Her reading glasses lay broken on the kitchen floor. The doctor thought that must be how she had somehow managed to take three times her regular dose of insulin. She obviously hadn’t been able to see the figures on the dial.

  12. The First Time

  The kiss was the sweetest she had ever tasted, as if the snowflakes on his lips were sprinklings of icing sugar.

  They were walking through the city at the time, on their way to catch the late showing of a film at the Scala. He told her a joke and she laughed. Then it happened – the kiss; the sweet, sweet first kiss when friendship turned into something else. He bent his head and brushed his lips against hers. She didn’t mind.

  “Where did that come from?”

  “I love the way you always laugh at my jokes.” He had his arm around her shoulders now and it seemed natural to lean against him.

  “Well, you’re a funny guy. The funniest.” This time, she was prepared and tilted her head back as he kissed her again. It was longer, stronger and to an eighteen-year-old, significant. A night out with a friend had just become a date.

  So many years later, she’s forgotten the name of the film they saw that night, but she remembers the kiss. She doesn’t know how they got home through the blizzard that was raging when they came out of the cinema, but she can still see the old blue quilt her mother produced so Zac could sleep on the sofa. She can still hear how the stairs creaked as she crept down in the small hours. She recalls the details of the next two hours perfectly, and as she lies on her hard, narrow bed, her fingers help her to relive those sweet and tender moments.