Tag: Short Fiction

Many a truer word was said, certainly, but, as unpalatable truths go, none less welcome. Or put another way: You prayed for it: You got it. Took no notice of the world’s oldest adage. Be careful what you. Etcetera.  Wishing’s one thing, praying’s quite another. You went for the latter. The result is your current predicament. Circumstances cannot be reversed, annoying as that is. No telling how a prayer turns out; most are lost in the void. But the consistency of your desperation accounted for something, I suppose. You were out of sorts. The car was due its MOT. The sheer Jimmy Dean of it all. Similar stretch of road, late afternoon, early autumn. You’d not been drinking, you were simply in a foul mood. The sun was in your face and you’d forgotten your shades. How often over the years had you forgotten your shades? Approximately never. Shades and you went back a long way. Just as you and juiced up transit vans went back a long way. Back in fact to those days with Mariella, dreams on your sleeves the pair of you, worlds to conquer, the glitz of showtime sure to follow. How did it go, that repartee? One of you’d say ‘See you at the movies’, the other would reply ‘Third row from the back’, both of you knowing of course that neither of you was destined to be a lowly pair of eyes looking up from the dark. That was for the punters. You’d be among those gazed at, ten times your own size, Mariella the Bonnie to your Clyde, you the Abelard to her Heloise. And Mariella seven years dead and you getting by on the doorman gig. What Mariella would have done with Lady Day in your Billie’s Lonely Sunday is for you to imagine, others to ignore or deride or otherwise befoul. How long had you longed to see your name in print, see your own eyes looking up at you from the glossies? Long time, and as I say consistency of desperation does have its currency – especially when coupled with undimmed rage or greatness unrecognized, a state of misery as fresh today as it was back in the sepia. You were not feeling well, and the acid-reflux was back. There’d been no call from your brother, and there’d been words the night before between you and the landlord, his tone ever more peremptory, yours a notch or two up from humble but soon plummeting to the reedily apologetic. Where was the man you were meant to be? There’s six-foot of you. When was it, do you think, you blinked?  A lot of bridge gone under the water. The day marked X. The glory that was yesterday, how small misery would be welcome. You had things, you know ‘things’, on your mind. What comes, be it good or ill, does so in battalions, that old fangle. The car was having problems. There was your tooth, and the clove oil it was taking to numb it. You’ll’ve heard such things are sent us. You took the highway smiling. I’ve seen that smile, the one that says fuck with me at your peril. You don’t mean it of course but not meaning it is not enough. And so, into view came Stupid Person Number One who failed to indicate before switching lanes. Soon enough Stupid Person Number Two slowed to a crawl and seconds later Stupid Person Number Three, a motorcyclist, gave you the finger. Persons, eh? The likes you’d have once called ‘worldlings’. Poor them. Poor you.