Category: Flash fiction

This piece came from a memory of a classic tv commercial for Yellow Pages (long before Google!). Some people have suggested putting the link at the end, but I leave it to you to decide in which order you view the two ‘versions’ of the same story.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&ei=UTF-8&p=french+polisher+yellow+pages+ad&type=E211US714G0#id=1&vid=36820ae76e43e944fb909cb8fa38dde5&action=click

Gary woke up sprawled across his parents’ bed. It took him a while to work out exactly where he was because his head was spinning and it was hard to find any fixed point of reference in a room that was at the same time familiar, but not. He raised himself on one elbow, squinting against the light coming in through the window’s open curtains.

He caught a flash of bright pink fabric on the ottoman at the end of the bed and pushed himself further up for a better look. Fuck. Who was she? A woman lay on her side, one arm dangling, the other wrapped around her shoulder. Even with her face obscured by the long blonde hair that streaked across it, Gary knew that he had never seen her before. He stumbled to his feet, but she didn’t stir at the creak of the bed and the thud of his feet as they struck terra firma. The spinning subsided a little as Gary swayed but remained upright.

He looked around. Apart from the girl, everything appeared to be in its place. Bewildered, Gary tiptoed carefully onto the landing. He was assailed by the overpowering stench of stale tobacco and spilt beer. Jackets and coats were thrown carelessly over the bannister. That did not bode well – either their owners had left, braving the cold night without them, or…

Making his way downstairs, he was met with his worst nightmare. Bodies were curled, stretched, or collapsed in heaps all the way through to the sitting room. Some of them he recognised from campus. Others were complete strangers. Some were stirring, groaning, and looking round, dazed.

By now, the fog in Gary’s fragile brain was clearing and the events of last night were coming back to him. Someone, not him, had shouted ‘Party at Gary’s place!’ He remembered a resounding cheer going up and playing Pied Piper as he led them all back to his folks’ house. Gary was dog sitting whilst they were on holiday in Spain. Due back soon. Gary shook his head and tried to recall exactly when. What day was it today? Fuck, Monday. It was Monday and his parents were due back this morning.

Despite his delicate state, Gary was suddenly galvanised into action. He shook shoulders and kicked legs in an effort to rouse his unwelcome guests. He rushed into the kitchen which had evidently been the epicentre of the party. He took in the debris and pulled out bin bags, polish, cloths, filled a bucket with warm soapy water and began barking orders at anyone who would listen.

Gary was like a whirling dervish, emptying, wiping, supervising, righting upturned chairs and checking for collateral damage. The dining room table had a deep gouge scratched across its surface. A deep crimson red wine stain was seeping through the cream shagpile rug in front of the fireplace and one of the cushions on the sofa had a gash in it and was spewing out its foam filling.

Gary dug into his jeans pocket, fumbling for his cell phone. One bar of battery left. He googled ‘French Polishers’, ‘ Upholsterers’  and ‘ Carpet Cleaners’ and called them one by one, begging for their soonest assistance and impressing upon them the urgency of the situation.

Two hours later, all the guests had evaporated. The last one to leave was the blonde in the pink top. The house was a hive of professional intervention, overall clad men fixing, rubbing, stitching and blotting the evidence of the impromptu party away.

Wincing at the cost of the aftermath, Gary tapped and swiped his credit card as each service provider proffered their invoices, loaded with emergency call out charges. The last thing Gary mopped was his brow, heaving a massive sigh of relief as he saw order had been restored, and his parents would be none the wiser. Even the dog had reappeared from wherever it had been cowering and was curled in its customary spot on the recently cleaned rug.

At exactly the same moment as Gary heard his parents’ key in the front door and heard his mother’s cheery ‘hello’, he looked up in utter horror. The portrait of his sister which hung on the wall above the mantlepiece had been defaced – a moustache, a pair of glasses and a large nose drawn with bold, black felt tip pen had left her looking faintly reminiscent of Grouch Marx.

Gary braced himself.

The first of our writing exercises for 2021 required the inclusion of the word (or indeed just the concept) of ‘ freedom’. This story came from an article I read about a young Korean teenager who entirely blamed her parents after she became embroiled in an online child porn site. How does this happen? Possibly like this…

“They called it giving me freedom,” Kerry told the lead investigator when asked about her relationship with her parents. “When what they meant was, they didn’t have time for me, so just left me alone.”

“We tried to treat her with maturity and gave her freedom and privacy,” Carole, her mother wept, when questioned about her daughter by the same inspector from the digital crimes squad.

“We brought Kerry up in a good home. Why did she do this to us?” was all Alan, Kerry’s father, could manage, laying the blame squarely for all this at the door of his 14 year old only child.

The police had seen it all before.

* * *

Carole’s career as a top attorney and Al’s as CEO of a multi-national retail chain were almost all consuming which lead them to the decision early on in their marriage only to have one child, on whom they could lavish what time and attention they had to spare. Now they were reaping the benefits and could afford their lovely home, two overseas holidays a year and private schooling. Life was comfortable for their small family. 

But Carole suspected for a while that something was wrong in Kerry’s world. Until a few months ago, they all rubbed along with each other just fine, but then the rows had started and she began to miss her sunny, bright little girl. But Carole had equally long been expecting the onset of the difficult teen years and so chose to put Kerry’s sulky withdrawal with sporadic angry outbursts down to adolescence.

Alan blamed it on the cell phone, Kerry’s friends (faceless and nameless), and social media. Carole didn’t know who to blame.

“My husband was dead against getting Kerry a cell phone, but after he gave in and we got her one for her 12^th birthday, communication in the house was reduced to a minimum,” Carole told police.

Carole remembered hers and Alan’s fights, before the ones with Kerry started.

“She doesn’t need a cell phone. What does she need one for?” Alan had demanded.

“It’s a convenience thing, Al. If extra murals change, she can let me know. You don’t spend hours in the car fetching and carrying. Those are billable hours that I’m losing.”

“But that won’t be all she’ll use it for, you can be sure of that,” Al retorted. His last word had been that it was on Carole if the phone became a weapon that Kerry would later wield against her parents. How prophetic his words seemed now.

Carole had taken Al’s capitulation to Kerry.

‘About that cell phone…”

Kerry had immediately assumed her mother was going to adopt her usual anti- cell- phones- for -12 -year -olds stance and had pushed past her into the kitchen. She pulled out bread, peanut butter, jam, and a bottle of milk deliberately provoking Carole, since supper was moments away.

“You and dad are just so out of touch, it’s pathetic…Every single one of my friends already has a phone.  Gemma has had one for more than a year. Her mum gets her.”  Kerry snarled.

“If you’d just let me finish…” began Carole.

“I wish you’d never started…”

“I was going to say…. dad has agreed and I thought we could go and sort a phone and a contract out after school on Friday.”

Kerry’s response had been a mumbled apology and a discernible smirk of triumph. And so, the journey from present daughter to permanently closeted belligerent teen had begun.

“I was lonely,” Kerry revealed in a family session with the social worker allocated to her case. “My parents were always at work and when mum picked me up from school, she was always on her phone. She hardly had time to ask me how my day was. And after she dropped me at home, she raced back to the office. Dad never got home before supper and his laptop was like an extension of him. And I wasn’t allowed round to friends’ houses on school nights, so I just went online.”

Carole and Alan saw less and less of Kerry in the evenings as she was holed up in her room, gobbling up the wifi. Carole had read all the literature around managing children’s screen time, and cell phone usage. She decided to be a responsible, if unpopular parent and had started by removing the phone as soon as Kerry’s light went out.

“Mom!” Kerry shrieked every night. “What the…I’ll put it on silent, pleeease, just let me keep it.”

“Nope. You think I don’t know that you’ll switch it straight back on… the alerts, beeps, and the messages…”

Carole also tried to argue that by virtue of her being the one that paid for the phone she therefore had the right to access Kerry’s online activities, but Carole was unable to prevent Kerry from changing her password with alarming frequency, shutting them out of her Instagram and TikTok accounts and who knew what other sites. They would find out about those chat rooms soon enough.  

After eighteen miserable months, the tension at home had become unbearable. The triangular arguments escalated to breaking point. Carole finally confiscated Kerry’s phone, convinced that it was the source of their collective misery. She told Kerry that if she didn’t reveal her password, she would simply engage the services of an expert and they would access her accounts that way. Carole wasn’t sure such a person existed, but Kerry seemed to take the threat seriously, and broke down.

She told them just enough to convince them they needed to go to the police but for more than a week, they were paralysed by indecision. Carole and Alan blamed each other for creating the circumstances in which Kerry had unwittingly become involved in activities on the dark web, discoverable only by those in the know who were prepared to pay large amounts of money to access images of gullible and vulnerable young girls like Kerry.

Finally, emotionally and physically exhausted, they found themselves at the regional police headquarters being questioned by the inspector from the Digital Sex Crimes Unit. Kerry agreed to her parents being present when she was questioned.

“He said he went to the boys’ school up the road and made friends with me on Insta. Then he invited me to a chat room, with his mates. Some of the girls at school said they were on it, and it was fun.”

“And what did you talk about?” the inspector prodded in a low, gentle voice.

“Just… homework, parents, you know …”

“And when did things change?”

“Last year sometime…He gave me a password to another site and asked me to meet him there…” Carole watched as her daughter pressed her lips together in an effort not to cry, but the tears spilled down her cheeks, then her chest heaved.

“He introduced me to some other guy. He said he could get me stuff.” Kerry managed between gulping sobs.

“What kind of stuff?”

“Clothes, stuff I wanted…”

“How did that work?”

“He sent me vouchers to spend online.”

“And what did you have to do for him to get these things?”

“You’ve SEEN the fucking photos, you KNOW what I did, all right?”

Carole flinched at her daughter’s outburst, but the questions continued. Kerry’s answers were graphic and shocking.

Their nightmare had only just begun.

Photo credit: Cadbury’s Smash tv commercial

I have rarely ventured into genres such as sci fi or fantasy (and honestly, I don’t think this qualifies as either) but when you are given the prompt ‘Area 52 ‘ to work with, the best thing to do is to try and go with it, so here is my humourous attempt at sci fi. The tinny aliens made me think of the wonderful series of Cadbury’s Smash instant mash potato ads of many years ago, hence the photo. As for the subject matter, it was very topical, and in fact almost a month after the US elections, we all live in hope…

The alien tapped its metallic digit on the images of the planet Earth where the ten chosen ones would land on what would be their 34^th mission, although none amongst them had been before. The rate of attrition of their early explorers, many of whom failed to return on completion of their assignments, had at first alarmed the Command Council, as Earth offered a comfortable alternative to their planet with its shrinking resources. Then they saw the benefits of having members of their race walking undetected amongst humans and so a sanctioned programme of infiltration had begun.

They now had one of their own planted at the highest levels of leadership in the human world, but they were struggling with an unstable skin pigment and language patterns as the agent, despite a number of recalibrations, made wildly inaccurate statements and his hair tones and hues were ever-changing.

The objective of this trip was his extraction and decommissioning. During his time as leader of the free world he had failed to win the hearts and minds of the people with whom they had hoped eventually to engage. Their goals had been set back as those humans that followed their agent did not have the intellectual capacity to understand and accept the existence of an advanced alien nation.

The screen switched from the map to visuals of the agent, in full human form, holding forth at a large meeting with much flag waving and shouting. Proficient in the language of the humans, they listened, ashamed, as one of their own made nonsense of his important role. As a race, they prided themselves on their sophisticated and advanced skills, but inexplicably, Agent DT had not risen to the task he had been set and had let them down badly.

How were they to have any credibility when they made their presence known, and it was discovered that this man was one of them? They had hoped to erase his poor performance from the memory of the world and so together with members of their own who had previously defected to Earth, they had been working in the desolation of Area 52 where all their previous missions had been able to come and go without challenge, on a virus that was meant to do just that. However, the humans had reacted badly, and the experiment was going horribly wrong. They got sick with a breathing disease, and many were dead. This had never been the aliens’ intention.

Agent DT was mis-managing the entire epidemic and had not responded to their instructions.

They were now working furiously on an antidote, but their efforts were being thwarted by Agent DT’s backward claims that bleach, UV light and other primitive technologies could help arrest the pandemic.  

Their leader turned to the gathering.

‘Agent JB, are you up to the task? Have you taken the lessons learnt from the mistakes of Agent DT? Let’s go over that acceptance speech once more. We cannot afford to fail, this time.’

A recurrent theme, then, Jealousy. There’s ‘Your Colour is Green’ over in the poetry section and I recently found myself going even further with this…

They met in of those city pubs that start to fill as offices empty, but that thin out early as commuters drift home to the suburbs. Julia, vivacious and lively, was with colleagues from the recruitment agency at which she worked as a senior administrator, managing schedules, contracts and commissions with organised ease. Clients, candidates and staff all loved her. Dan was a trader in the city.  He was charming and witty, and they soon became an item, occasional dates becoming more regular. Their future together looked assured.

The irony is, it was Julia who was born under the sign of the Scorpion, one of whose character traits is well documented to be jealousy, but it was Dan’s green streak, running deep and wide that destroyed her.

Julia had seen it coming, if she was honest, but she was blinded by love – her own for him and by the belief that it was his passion for her that led to what at first were petulant outbursts. The first time, early on in their relationship, was endearing. They were travelling home together on the 17:43. They rarely managed to catch the same train, but today they had collided at the barrier. They had been thrilled to get their timing right, and to find seats together.

Then she glimpsed a regular commuter on the train over Dan’s shoulder, acknowledging him with a small nod and an almost imperceptible smile. Dan observed her facial expression, swung around to check in the direction of her look and saw the object of her silent greeting.

 ‘Do you know him?’ He fired at Julia as he turned back to her, stony faced.

‘No, of course not. I just see him most evenings on this train. We’re fellow travellers on the ride home, which is dreary when you’re not here, my love.’

Mollified, Dan nevertheless pushed his point home, ‘I could have sworn you flashed him one of your special looks. I thought those were only for me.’

‘They are,’ she said, squeezing his knee and dismissing the incident.

But the frequency and intensity of his outbursts became more pronounced. The provocations became more irrational, until even fictional characters, and once, an actor, became the object of his rage – or rather she was the object of his rage because she had dared to admire them, or comment on them in a favourable light.

‘So if Brad Pitt walked in here now, you’d leave me for him…is that what you’re saying?’ had been the nonsensical direction of one of his arguments.

‘Don’t we all have a hall pass for someone?!’ Julia tried to make light of it but in truth was dismayed at the absurdity of having to defend herself against the likelihood of Brad Pitt appearing in her apartment and whisking her off her feet.

‘You can have one for Charlize Theron, anytime she calls you for a date!’

Dan simply glared at her, withering her with his disapproval and the subject was closed. He moved on, leaving the incident to rankle and fester. Afterwards, there was always a belated apology, contrition and make up sex that was the pattern of these verbal engagements.

Julia began to question herself and to have an apology ready for whenever she transgressed his boundaries of acceptable actions or words. She knew the triggers and tried to avoid them, but somehow the occasions on which she slipped up were alarming. Dan’s reproaches grew more menacing although he never laid a finger on her.  Their interactions were reminiscent of those with her mother, whose words and facial expressions but no physical threat, had been more than enough to instil fear in Julia as a child.

Dan began to exert more influence over her. It was insidious, and she barely realised its impact. He accompanied her on shopping trips, whether for groceries or personal items. It went without saying that clothes couldn’t be even remotely revealing. Or her cosmetics too fragrant or colourful. Her accessories became subdued and she stopped wearing the flamboyant outfits for which she had once been known.

After the changes to her outward appearance, changes in her behaviour and confidence became more marked. She was more withdrawn and less talkative. She had started to mould herself according to Dan’s expectations of appropriate behaviour.

She retreated into herself and was afraid to speak up. Her work began to suffer as she was often distracted. Even her time keeping became regimented as Dan insisted they travel into and home from work on exactly the same train. Getting ready in the morning became a nightmare as she dared not be late for the 8.10. Getting out of the office each day at exactly the same time became a bone of contention with colleagues, as she sometimes left work unfinished, promising to complete it in the morning as the 17:43 became a daily ritual not to be deviated from.

Dan spent more and more time at her flat – popping home infrequently, for a change of clothes, to pick up mail or to check on his own apartment. His financial contribution to her expenses meant that the influence he exerted over her now extended, by virtue of his paying for it, to what they ate, or more important what she ate and how much she could consume. He monitored her every mouthful, claiming that he cared how she looked. She wondered what difference it made if she grew fat or thin, since he was the only person that saw her, as in between home and work, they had no social life.

She stopped seeing people or going out alone. Her friends had stopped calling and asking to meet, after two or three occasions on which Dan had insisted on joining her.  His need to control the evenings’ narratives had been evident, and Julia’s capacity to speak for herself so diminished that old acquaintances no longer sought out her company.

Their solicitous phone calls yielded only assertions that she was fine and happy and that hers and Dan’s relationship was a meeting of the minds and that she wanted him with her at all times.

In reality, she was completely and utterly stifled and unsure of how to extricate herself from a relationship dominated by his petty jealousies. She decided there was no easy way and that she simply and clinically had to break it off.

The day after the showdown – for there was no other way to describe Dan’s ranting and railing against her, how she was unworthy, was ugly and useless and that she would not find another man ever, she managed nevertheless to drag herself out of bed and prepare to go to work. She was drained from the protracted monologue he had spat at her, and from his vitriol but devastated at his final departure from her life. As much as she wanted the torture to end, she still loved him.

On the platform waiting for the 08:10 – the old habit was going to be hard to break – she saw him making his way, head down towards her. Then, she lost sight of him in the morning crowd, relief flooding through her that he was avoiding a confrontation She saw the train in the distance, curling its way around the final bend to the station. The next minute there was a hand in the small of her back, a push and the last thing she remembered was the rails rising up to meet her and the screech of the train’s wheels.  

In the depths of winter , the 10th May, to be precise, we were given the prompt ‘Pink’ for our Keep Writing Challenge, with 300 words to work with. Not being a pink girly girl at the best of times, I was bereft of imagination. Then I looked up from my blank computer screen and realised I had been looking at it all along. The picture by an old acquaintance, Renee Johannes called The Whore’s Pink & Orange Handbag hangs on the wall above my desk. Now the trees are full of pink blossoms and so I remembered this piece.

‘The Whore’s Pink and Orange Handbag’ hangs above my writing desk. It is a serigraph bearing only as passing a resemblance to the outline of a handbag and its contents as you could imagine. I have another piece by the same artist called ‘The Artist’s Underpants’. I like her predilection for the slightly outré.

The Whore’s Handbag looks like the images on the monitors as your luggage passes through security checks at the airport and is screened for prohibited items. I have stupidly lost a bottle of expensive perfume, my favourite pair of nail scissors and a stoneware jar of Dijon mustard through sheer carelessness. The security personnel are uber vigilant sitting for hours on end, eyes glazed, watching our private lives paraded before them, but still manage to catch us out.

Between bursts of typing and when I am bereft of ideas, I glance up and gaze at the picture. What would a whore keep in her handbag? I am free to allow for flights of fancy, since the print tells me nothing. The answer is probably the same as any other woman.  A lipstick, the keys to the place where she takes her clients. Her phone. A purse. I am reluctant to ascribe other tools of her trade to the indeterminate shapes which are more burnt amber than pink or even orange.

I make up journeys the bag is going on, via that airport conveyer belt, to be tucked under the aircraft seat or safely stowed in the overhead locker. Or perhaps it’s a Hermès Kelly or Birkin bag, timeless styles famous for adorning the arms of actresses and models since the 1960s.

I look closer at the detail. I can discern the handle but for the rest there is no shape or form. Inspiration is in short supply.   

This week marks the 8th anniversary of the so called Marikana Massacre. The stand off between striking platinum miners, private security and the police culminated on 16th August, 2012 in the death of 34 miners. A long and drawn out Commission of Inquiry yielded very little in the way of actionable findings and the entire episode remains a scar in the memories of many.

I had just started work as a radio content producer on a leading drive time show, and it was my first time experiencing such a huge event in a busy newsroom. I learnt a lot that week.

This short piece of just 120 words was written in response to the prompt ‘Platinum’

Photo Credit: Times Live

The miners were uncertain. Tensions were escalating, the unions urging them to stay out, the shift bosses calling them back underground, their wives anxious simply to keep the peace. The employer’s menacing demands to put an end to their unprotected strike resounded in their ears.

They knew the power lay with them for now, but their sense of unease said this would not end well and their conviction began to waver.

The young man, wrapped in his trademark green blanket, emerged as one of their leaders. They took their cue from him and their belief in the cause was reignited. By the end of the next day, green would be streaked red, the blanket’s owner dead, along with 33 others.

I walked through my Jozi suburb with a heavy heart last week, seeing the many shop fronts – mostly bars and restaurants – that have fallen victim to the stringent lockdown measures imposed on them by the South African government. Like all businesses, they were closed during the initial stages, but even as they were allowed to open again, they were not permitted to serve alcohol, and our evening curfew, recently extended from 21h00 to 22h00 means service has to be over over quickly and early. We hope that our favourites will return after all this madness is over, but too many are faced with insurmountable financial obstacles and may never open again. This piece of flash fiction responded to the prompt ‘Canopy’ in 200 words, but it speaks to the sadness of any businesses closing down.

She inserted the metal crank into the slot and began winding in the canopy. The fading late afternoon sun washed out the pinks and yellows, the bold black scrolling font a shadow of its former self. It used to stand out along the row of neighbourhood shops, now mostly shuttered and closed.

Carol’s Cakes and Confectionary, the sign read. She loved the uncontrived alliteration, after all, Carol was her given name. She regularly treated friends and family when she was perfecting her art, happily fulfilling any requests at no charge. When the shop premises became available, she took a leap of faith and opened her business, which was rewarded handsomely with the support of the local people.

In the past thirty or so years, she had hand crafted and decorated a cake for just about every family in the community. Her order book was like a social history of the town, every birth, christening, engagement and wedding recorded, names meticulously spelled out in her neat handwriting in the margin next to where the customers had penned their chosen greetings.

Now the high street is dead and she is going through her daily ritual of closing up for the final time.

As lockdown begins really to bite and we get increasingly restless and fed up of our own four walls and the same route between home and the supermarket, here are two short travel pieces, one written in response to the prompt ‘Tripod’ and the other to ‘Nonsense’ (it’s strange where your brain takes you with just one, simple word!)

The Tripod piece is actually a mash up of two places, both in Namibia, which is one of my favourite countries. The actual telescope of the story was set up in the then Sossusvlei Karos Lodge which I visited in 1998 – in fact we were there when news of Princess Diana’s death came through – but the place I also had in my mind’s eye when writing this is a lodge in the Kalahari where I spent new year’s eve 2017 going into 2018 and where the below photo was taken.

The second piece is also a mash up of a lot of different bush experiences I’ve had, although I have NEVER taken the plunge…

As Far as the Eye can See…

The telescope was permanently installed on the boundary of the camp. The hard, dusty ground was pitted from the legs of its tripod as each day, it was shifted a little to the left, a little to the right, to be trained on its day or night-time quarry.

Its lens captured a myriad of sights, despite the desolation of the lodge’s location.

In the early mornings and evenings, meerkat burrows teemed with families scurrying back and forth, but were quiet under the noon day sun.

From time to time, small herds of zebra ambled across the horizon, shimmering in the searing heat of the desert. Less frequently, a single oryx would move slowly into view, stopping every so often to look around at a landscape that never altered.

Sometimes a dust cloud approaching from far in the distance alerted staff to arriving guests, but such was the vista and for so far could you see, that there was ample time to ready the room before they arrived, hot and thirsty from the drive.

And for an hour or more after bills were settled and goodbyes had been said, a similar trail of gritty sand followed behind the retreating cars of departing visitors.

At night, the sky was a canopy of blinking stars, and the telescope would track Venus or Jupiter, Mars or Mercury or just gaze upon the moon. The telescope had to be recalibrated frequently to follow the shifting planets.

The vast desert and sky were full of life.

Taking the Plunge…

It had been an action-packed holiday and I had been pushed to my limits.

We had spent days walking in the African bush with only the protection of a youthful looking game ranger, who looked as nervous as I felt. He kept his rifle cocked at all times, ready.

We slept under the stars, the silhouettes of visiting hyenas flickering in the campfire light on the walls of our flimsy tents.

We were mock charged by an angry elephant, who flapped his ears frantically warning us off. We didn’t need to be asked twice, and we retreated cautiously, never turning our backs.

We ate antelope steaks, impala and kudu. It made me sad after we had seen so many of these elegant and skittish creatures grazing peacefully on the open plains.  

We travelled along the complex waterways of the Delta by mokoro, hunkered down deep in the traditional dugouts, vigilant for hippos whose aggression is legendary.

But now I was facing my biggest challenge yet.

‘I can’t. Please don’t make me. I’m too scared.’

‘Nonsense, you’re going to love it.’

I dithered on the edge, hobbled like a cow at the ankles, trussed like a turkey in the harness.

The waters of the mighty Zambezi swirled over enormous rocks far below and the speck of a rubber dinghy bobbed up and down, waiting.

The operator was encouraging but firm and I felt a gentle nudge in the small of my back. My stomach flipped. I heard the primal scream, ‘Bungee!’

Because this. Exactly one year ago. Although we weren’t married. That’s poetic licence to respond to the prompt ‘The Signature’ in 1 000 words. The rest is real, but I’m over it, finally.

She was already up, curled on the sofa with her morning coffee and the Sunday newspapers when he emerged, hair mussed up and still blinking against the light. She looked up and smiled, watching him make his way down the stairs to join her.

“Good morning, Lovely,” she greeted.

“Morning.” Subdued. The rest she can barely remember. Only fragments came back to her later as she replayed the moment in her head, and then out loud to others.

He sat in the armchair opposite her, and launched, without preamble into what he had probably been rehearsing for some time.

“You might have noticed my behaviour has been a little strange recently.” (she hadn’t) “The thing is, I have lost my romantic feelings for you.” After that, if he said anything else, she didn’t hear him. But that was the gist of it, no explanation, no frills, no fuss. Just like him.

 Interminable silence. He refused to fill it and sat looking at anything but her.

“And so now what?”  What was supposed to happen next? What was she supposed to do now? He hadn’t elaborated on the consequences of his bombshell.

“I’m sure we can continue to live here in a civilised fashion until you can move back into your house.” Rehearsed. Cold. Self-protection.

They had been married and living together in his house for exactly 5 months, creating a home from his former bachelor existence and now he wanted her to move out again. Their short marriage, the idyll, was over. It was inconceivable. 

She fled upstairs leaving him alone with his relief. Still in shock, she pulled clean linen out from the cupboard and hauled it into the spare room. It would be intolerable to lie next to him from now on, knowing he no longer wanted or needed her in his bed. Her bed, actually. She did a mental inventory of everything she needed to do in order to disentangle their lives, which had become intertwined over time, but pulled apart in a mere matter of moments.

She would need to tell her tenants and give them notice. How they loved her house, their first independent, grown up home after university. But it was her home first and their feelings were secondary to her desperate need to now be gone from this nightmare that was her world crashing down around her.

The next few days were a blur. He tried to maintain a veneer of civility and adopted the friendly tone of a house mate, asking after her day, enquiring if she was in for dinner. How did he even do that? She in turn railed against him, crying, shouting, pleading, wheedling. He was immutable and met whatever came his way with the same answer.

“I’m so sorry it came to this. It’s nothing that you did or didn’t do. I cannot tell you anything different. These are my feelings and I can’t help them or change them.”

What was incomprehensible to her was the apparent ease with which he accepted his own loss, never mind hers. There had been no signs, no conversations, nothing. If he had wanted, he could have voiced his doubts earlier and found a way to work whatever he was feeling out. But he seemed simply to have flicked a switch, turned off the love tap, and moved on, leaving her unprepared to face a future without him. Talk about the rug being pulled, the ball from left field, so many clichés but only one heart break, and that was hers.

She started spending the evenings packing boxes. He assiduously ignored the sounds of the reams of wrapping paper required to swaddle her breakable goods and of the lengths of sticking tape she ripped off the roll to seal up each box, meticulously labelled for its journey back from where it had so recently been transported.

Each time he walked past the hive of activity that was her furious efforts at getting out with her belongings, sanity and dignity intact, she threw a snide comment his way. She simply couldn’t help herself. There were no visible signs of disturbance in his routine or in his emotions. He seemed impervious to her distress and she couldn’t even determine if underneath he felt a shred of regret or sadness.

On the day she moved out, he got up early. She heard him moving around and thought to get up to say goodbye, but who needs a scene at 05h30 on what was going to be one of the toughest days of her life. She let him go, listening out for the final sliding to of the front gate.

 And then the day came when he asked her to meet him at his attorney’s office. She knew from that moment that there would be no going back. His decision was irrevocable and there was no room for her in his future. He had excised her from his life with all the expertise of a surgeon lancing a tumour. Clean. Clinical.

When she arrived, he was already sitting at the attorney’s board table, holding his glasses up on his forehead, not necessary for the reading of the document she knew he was about to present to her.  She had pre-empted his legal move and had drawn up her own version of the final chapter of their relationship. Why should he be in charge of the entire narrative, from the moment he delivered his coup de grace, to asking her to agree to his terms and conditions. Well she wasn’t about to make it that easy for him.

He stood up to greet her, leaning in for a conciliatory? affectionate? nostalgic? kiss. She ignored the gesture and sat down. She finally felt in control and slid her document across the highly polished surface towards him.

“One or the other of us needs to put their signature to one or the other of these documents and put an end to this.” He asserted.

“Be my guest,” she retorted. 

The 2020 Wimbledon tournament should have started today but it was cancelled back in April – for the first time only since World War II. Novak Djokovic of course wouldn’t have been there anyway, given that he went ahead with his own tournament amidst the pandemic and promptly contracted COVID-19, along with a number of the other participants, and his wife. Let that be a lesson to us all.

I lived around the corner for a few years from The All England Lawn Tennis Club which hosts Wimbledon, but have never had the pleasure of attending, so this short piece written for the prompt’ Lawn’ in 150 words is culled from imagination and the boasts of friends that have.

A swathe of purple and green throngs the pavement. People push towards the turnstiles.  Touts hold out tickets, naming eye watering prices. Few people take notice, whilst others haggle in the hope of accessing the hallowed grounds.

Inside, the maze of courts spreads left and right. The majestic Centre Court commands attention.  

Some visitors enjoy an exorbitant bowl of strawberries and cream or a glass of Pimm’s to say they have. Then walkways begin to thin out as the flamboyant parade of hats, dresses, jackets and ties makes its way to the stands.

Score boards come alive and blink the players’ names for the first matches of the day.

At two thirty sharp, umpires are atop their perches, players emerge from the change rooms to the crowd’s gentle applause and the familiar sound of tennis balls being pounded back and forth fills the All England Lawn Tennis Club.

Iconic Wimbledon.