12 Short Stories in 2018

This is the place where I post the pieces I’m writing as good practice from prompts for the website 12shortstories.com. These folks are such a lot of fun!

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One Last Time

“That will not be necessary.”

I look up, and raise my eyebrows a little, proffering the card once more. This time I wiggle it a bit. He remains stony-faced.

“OK then, thank you,” I retreat.

I place the black card back in my wallet, and he gives the formal smile you get from reception clerks who ooze obsequiousness as an art form. Like a secret and invisible medal, cloaked by a coating of supposed professionalism, illicitly giving them license to be the superior, whoever was on the opposite side of their counter.

“My pleasure, Madame.”

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Payback Time

The acrid smell and metallic taste in her mouth gave way to a frantic hammering just by her left shoulder. She flinched at the angry, ragged monster berating her from outside. The window exploded as he smashed his way through, in a desperate quest to open the door.

“Out. Out. You have to get out,” he screamed, now tugging at the door with both hands, thighs braced tightly.

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Burned

She climbed three flights of stairs, resting between floors, hardly breathing even then from the stench of urine. She held the four carrier bags of groceries up in the air for fear of putting them down, into who knew what.

Finally, she turned onto the landing and she peered over the ledge as screams stabbed the echoing quadrangle from the desolate gardens below.

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Selling Up

He edged the silver Mercedes into nervy traffic going Eastbound towards the City. Red brake lights sparked all around, as uneasy drivers were spooked by the downpour they were locked into at sixty miles an hour.

It was only after a period of acclimatization to the conditions that Jacob noticed the opposite carriageway, where there was no traffic at all. It wasn’t much further before the cascade of ominous blue flashing lights exploded into view. Here he had to be even more wary, because drivers’ attention on his side was distracted, trying to rubber-neck a chaotic scene they could barely make out.

He noticed the catastrophic damage to the upside-down vehicle, the unusual colour of which made him peer more closely than he should have. In the magnetic spell of the image, he only just avoided the fast approaching back end of a container truck, hastily applied brakes causing it to fishtail a little. He managed to stop within a whisker of his own disaster.

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Lockout

Adele knew the exact moment she noticed something was off. There may have been other occasions secreted in her subconscious that made her more sensitised to it, but this particular occasion was the one she recalled.

It was a Thursday, when he arrived back from Pisa. One of what he described as ‘bloody’ business trips.

His return seemed normal and yet there was something that didn’t quite fit. At the time, it was more of an instinct; an inkling somewhere deep down inside her that gave her a feeling all was not right.

It was only later that night and after they made love, she realised what it was. Jack smelt differently. He’d bought new aftershave and although he was one of those men who had a glass shelf full of potions, it was one she did not know. She looked in his bathroom the next morning after he’d gone to the office. Expensive. Foreign. New.

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Time Served

The starchy white linen cloths covering the tables are fighting an inconsistent breeze that is annoying the street. Tall bland canyons of office blocks seem to be positioned in such a way that it’s always windy here. Hence the name, I guess. Still, it’s bright and warm enough for this time of year, and the scurries of brown leaves chasing the traffic offer me something to look at as I wait.

I nurse my beer and make it last. I’ve got to watch myself these days at lunchtimes. Alcohol and I have always been buddies, but only on each other’s terms. My agreement is to drink some of it and stop, especially this early in the day. Alcohol’s deal is not to pursue it when I’ve decided to stop. In general, it works on both sides. Anyway, I want to savor every moment while I’m with her at last.

She’s dashing across the road, avoiding the lanes of traffic, impatient as they are. She looks both ways, even though it’s all moving in one direction. It’s a one-way street, the thought of which makes me laugh a little to myself, for the irony of our meeting after all this time. . .

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Il Ne Pleut Jamais, Mais Il Verse

He met her in one of those trendy little cafés in Montmartre, where the waiters were snooty when he tried his bad French on them. He went there some mornings, doing nothing more than watch the world go by. Until today, when the girl slipped and fell on a pavement greasy from the drizzly rain that had begun to fall on sun-drenched stone.

He dabbed her bleeding knee with a fresh linen handkerchief. The one he always carried for such eventualities. Just in case.

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A Traveller’s Tale

The flight was late out of Kastrup. The week had caught up with air traffic and at the end of the day, some Friday evening flights were not going to be on time, on any week in the year weeks, especially when Heathrow was at the other end.

Across the lounge, planes of varied colors and nationalities were taking off down the southwesterly runway up and over Køge Bay towards a setting sun. Off to all points of the globe. But my tracker app told me that my tardy flight was still only just landing – let alone departing – in the next few minutes as was expected.

She grasped my attention as I tried to make the best of the complimentary but lukewarm chili – with rice – and a glass of supposedly good quality South African Merlot.

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Bring on The Red

 

Note – some expletives at the very end!

He raised the glasses to his eyes and scanned to the distant horizon. The land was grey and dismal and the sea almost black. Between him and the far coastline hints of squally rain misted his quest for the vessel he was looking for. With the binoculars away from his eyes, he scanned the sky above and to the west and saw the weather was closing in quickly.

The ferry was almost halfway across the Channel now and would be in the docks within the hour. It would take another hour to unload the trucks and tired and out-of-season holidaymakers but today, his target could be off first or last, there was no way he could tell.

“The ship is on its way,” he spoke clearly into the radio as he faced away from the drizzle on the wind and turned up the collar of his heavy coat. It was going to be an unpleasant wait, even though he would be able to get back into the warm SUV for a while until they began disembarking the vehicles.

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Two Rights

The coins jangle in her pocket as she tip-toes along the stinking streets. The drains gave up long ago, so negotiating an acceptable path is not easy. Apart from the odd whimper, the child is silent as she tries to keep up. After the months of unspeakable chaos following the army’s entry into the city, the children became more durable.

There are crowds along the way this morning, though few seek the same destination as these two as they make their way to their particular market.

She has saved from her meagre income for weeks. A penny here; a shilling there, forming a target for her to aim at this day, to overlay the everyday goal of survival. It gave her a focus amid the desolation. Moments of hope in her monotonous and fearful days amongst the hunger and sickness and the air-raids.

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