Short story

Stealing the country

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They would not accept a crushing bloody defeat. 51-49 or 52-48 would give fire in the belly for the fight to come; 55-45 would be a hurt for a generation. 60-40? That could never happen if Scotland was honest with herself.

Robbie put his cross where his heart was and breathed out. That was it. Let that be an end to it. He folded the paper once, lifted the curtain aside and walked over to the ballot box. As he dropped the paper in, the mechanical buzzing in the box grew louder, died away again. But nobody heard. Not then.

The house smelled of animals

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The house smelled of animals. Perhaps birds, all the windows were closed. Or snakes. The heating was on. Definitely dogs. And at least one cat. But no, there were no animals there. None that moved at least. But.

T thought he would back out quietly, out of the living room, along the hall, backwards through the kitchen and back out through the window. Quietly, very quietly, feeling each backward step as he took it. A good idea but much too late.

He put his foot down in the wrong place.

Trying to explain biros

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Madeleine puffed out her cheeks. She wanted to write something clear, something interesting, something set in the past. And that was a problem.

She knew what biros were, she had used one herself at school. But now, every time she tried to write the word, her writer changed it to ‘bird’. At first it was funny – ‘Calvin tapped the bird gently on his teeth as he thought’ – and then it was not. She tried writing the letters one by one, with spaces in between, and then taking the spaces away, but as she did, the biro became a bird. Life was too short; she wrote ‘writer’ instead and forgot about Calvin’s white, white teeth. Pen would have done, she thought later, but then it was too late.

And then there was the thing with the orange. The orange tan. The big ape thing. She wrote orange tan in the search box but there was no result. But she was sure she remembered them. Big brown apey things with very long arms. But maybe not.

Later in the year the rain stopped and the sun steamed the puddles. Madeleine sat outside the drinkhouse and tried to explain biros to Calvin. But he did not remember or understand. He had always used a writer, hadn’t he? Madeleine drank her drink and gave up. Her feelings for Calvin wrinkled a little. She decided not to talk about orange tans.

Later again she thought about her feelings and wrote in her journal. How did she feel? Well, she lived him. What? No, I mean I live him. Oh, this is ridiculous. I l-o-v-e LIVE him. No. She wrote l-o-v- in the search box. NO RESULT. DO YOU MEAN LIVE? No. Please no. Not this. Please leave us something. NO RESULT. DO YOU MEAN NOTHING?

The smell of gas

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The smell of gas turned out to be a dead neighbour. The news spread around the close immediately. Everyone knew that Murdoch lived alone, and never had a visit until the one from the man who looked like a police officer. He walked up to the door and knocked with something that sounded harder than knuckles. The door opened and he went in. Somebody inside knocked again, twice, then a few seconds later once again. The man came out, looked up and down the road, smoothed his jacket, closed the door and got into the big black car.

“Done?”
“Aye.”
“Sure?”
“Aye. Here’s the photo.”
They looked at his phone. Then the man in the leather jacket shot the man who looked like a police officer in the head. They smashed his face and fingers with a hammer. They took off his clothes. They put his body in the big black car with the hammer, the gun and the clothes and set it all on fire. They watched it burn, smelling the petrol and the meat. Then they walked out of the warehouse and along the river. The woman dropped the smashed phone off the bridge.

When the man from the gas company saw what was in the house, he ran out again. The neighbours watched from their windows. It is not clear how they found out it was Mad Dog because the man from the gas company stood alone and was not speaking. But somehow they all knew. And somehow they all knew not to talk when the journalists, and the people who looked like police officers, visited.

Murdoch. Mad Dog. Murdoch. People asked how he got away with it for so long. Then they understood how and stopped asking.

The consequences of the banana

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He should never have thrown the banana. Bananas aren’t aerodynamic like boomerangs. They don’t come back.

The meaning of the throwing was disputed but the throwing itself wasn’t. Everyone had seen it. Even those who hadn’t been there had seen the endless replays. Better, in slow motion. Like those who used to argue between vinyl and live performance, those who saw it live argued with those who saw it immediately repeated.

But the meaning of the throwing was disputed. He said he was in a corner, standing on a chair under a low ceiling, and the banana was a nuisance. So he threw it to – to – the director. Others saw it as assault.

It was all there, captured on the silent cameras.

The director hadn’t been looking at the talent. The banana hit him just above the ear, on the line between the shaved and the bald. It didn’t knock his glasses off but knocked them slightly askew. It was more the surprise, the shock.

The video of what happened next went viral. Nobody had expected it or could explain it later. It affected so many people for so long.

He should never have thrown the banana. Reputations aren’t aerodynamic like boomerangs. Lives don’t come back.

The Saint’s Day

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Juanì opened the single tap. The pipes shook the loose tiles above the bath, covering the sound of the drums welcoming the saint’s day. Thin clay water poured, then cleared and began to swirl the red dust away.

Juanì fit the broken tile onto the grate and the bath began to fill. Thin dust rose and fell in waves in the water. It sparkled in the light between the roof and the wall and settled in forbidden river beach patterns. When the fresh welcoming water was deeper, the sand would feel reassuring beneath his feet.

The water crashed down like the Angeles cascade, a twisting splitting splashing rope. The tank on the roof must be nearly empty with the rains now so close. Sweat washed streams of dirt from Juanì’s forehead, his temples, and he wiped it away, shook his fingers away from the bath. The water was nearly enough.

He closed the tap and the clear water slowly stilled, a single green filament of weed settling on the rippled sands around the grate.

Juanì pulled off his father’s shirt and his brother’s shorts and stepped into the water. He saw his feet, his ankles, his shins, his calves darken. He sat down, closed his eyes. He stretched out and lay below the water, bubble breathed out through his nose. The drums of the saint’s day grew louder and became the drumming of his mother’s fists on the door.

The door swung open and slammed against the bath. His mother’s mouth was open, black. The rain on the iron roof drowned out her cries, begging forgiveness from the saint, begging him to give back what only he could. The golden red fish hung, nearly motionless, in the clear still water, eyes blank.

Also published on http://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-saints-day-by-simon-williams.html for National Flash Fiction Day 2014

Jazz hands

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She paradiddled, paradiddled, stamped, stamped. She turned on her heel and flamencoed her hand. Light flashed. A shuffle, a shuffle. Her wide wide smile was toothy and white. One more box step – or two, too fast – then stamp! The knife missed the target but hit the man cleanly. Jazz hands!

The Explosion

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Some mid-season tourists were hanging around in the Gardens, waiting for the explosion. It was a couple of minutes to one and that was all there seemed to be to do. The locals were busy with their voting but the shops were open and you could still buy tartan towels and travel rugs.

Jan had sold the experience to the boys as an explosion rather than the One O’Clock Gun. She’d get them to look up to the castle and see the smoke before they heard the bang. But it was five past, ten past, now and the boys were getting bored. Just a couple more minutes, she told them, the soldiers must be having their dinner. And then – it was strange – she heard the explosion but didn’t see the smoke. She wondered why the gun was so late – 13.14, she remembered later – and the boys gave a little cheer.

After the boys had gone to sleep, she went down to the hotel bar. And that was when the gun sounded again, just before quarter past eight. The windows shook and rattled and Jan screamed a cut-off scream into her drink. She worked near the embassies and had been on edge for twenty years. ‘Colonist!’ A man at the bar spat. Jan had no idea what he was talking about. He carried on.

‘No more bowing down to the rich man’s whims and wishes, that’s what it means.’
The barman: ‘Unless they’re Scottish, I suppose. The rich men. Then we’d have to bow and scrape.’
‘It’s started, no matter how the vote goes. Hear the glorious guns of Bannockburn and Independence Day?’

The next day Jan bought shortbread and a Jimmy Shand CD. She was at Waverley in plenty of time but there were no trains south.

(First published in The List magazine’s referendum special 23 January – 20 February 2014)
http://www.list.co.uk/article/58010-flash-fiction-new-writing-inspired-by-the-2014-scottish-independence-referendum/