Drabbles

In a train station at rush hour, you see a familiar face.

Over the noise of the crowds, the hissing doors and your own pounding heart, you call a long-buried name.

The well-known face looks back frowning. Yanked through time you see that face smiling, laughing.  But then your ears echo with crying and stomach fills with loss.

Tensing, you wait for recognition, joy, anger, anything. But when your eyes lock, the face you remember only shakes and turns away.

He doesn’t know you.

Falling back through time you land painfully in the present, and watch him walk away, again.

Fuelled by Weetabix, teeth shining and shoes on the right feet, he’s ready for his high-powered morning.

Spotting a break in the railway-line, he consults Mr Bear and orders a repair crew.

“We’re late,” calls his PA.

Zooming out the door, he races to catch the train. He arrives in time for a swim and advises the staff about a broken cupboard.

Next, he goes to meet the team on the water and offers greetings and sustenance.

Back at the office he eats lunch during a video conference, then successfully negotiates for a biscuit.

All this before his midday nap.

I’m hanging out on an oak tree with my lady friends, when a warm wind blows me onto a giant pink leaf.

I’m caught. I think, this is the end.

But gathering my spots, I examine the big pink leaf. It tastes salty and moves so quickly the world blurs into shades of brown and green. A booming and bellowing sound pins me down. When it stops, I’m about to fly away but then I’m lowered onto a nest of tasty green leaves.

“There you go Miss Lady Bird,” says a little girl, smiling like the sun. “A new home.”

The empty, white cup sits alone on the table.

Having stained the inside of the unremarkable white cup with the black coffee she insists on drinking, she left it behind.   Uncollected, it’s a monument overflowing with her absence and filling the air with echoes of her laugh and mirages of her smiling face.

He glares at the empty cup, because she left him behind too. To sit alone marked by her presence but full of her absence.

The cup will eventually be collected and washed clean. But removing the stain she left on his own heart, is not as easy.

The air is wet. The ground is wet. The stones of the castle are wet and the bench I want to sit on is also wet.

The view from the wall is hazy because of the moisture in the air.  Below hammers and saws thump and buzz through the mist fixing things. But the river is still and the boats hibernate in dry dock, under the faded trees.

A few people stroll like philosophers, through the castle grounds. Thinking about their next step.

A train rattles over the bridge slowing down, changing tracks.

The world is a work in progress.

I want this job.

I think I want this job.

I want this, if they want me. But if they don’t want me? I wouldn’t want it.

Thoughts whirl like a carousel, round and round my head.

My mind is a haunted house where ghosts of past failure flock round me. Werewolves howl demands as they transform from ordinary colleagues to monsters of time-management. Mummies stumble about, unravelling all my hard work. Workaholic vampires suck every minute out of the day. Then there are the three witches, brewing, boiling and bubbling around the kettle.

“Elven Steel, you’ve got the job.”

Out of the kitchen window, a small terraced garden lies in the sun.

The backdrop is leaf-green and wood-brown, the performers are kaleidoscopic bursts of colour.

Hot pink, bright red, navy blue and white-violet pansies skip in between yellow sunflowers, that stretch like ballerinas. From terracotta pots burst purple stars, blood-red drops and pink and yellow carnations.  

Herbs march up stage-left and emerald grass glistens, in centre stage.

But down stage, lies a pot on its side, and there’s a lump in the middle of perfection. The helper has replanted the nut.

It’ll be a beautiful centre piece one day.

For many years, they walked up and down, back and forth. A migrating flock in the morning. A charging stampede in the afternoon. 

The younger creatures, in vibrant colours, were pushed along or encased in slings. Older ones were clothed in grey and navy-blue that hung off them like rhinoceroses’ skin, but over time the creatures grew into their colours.

Sometimes they changed their feet, and would kick up leaves, slide on ice, splash in puddles or skip in sunshine.

Then one day, quite suddenly, they stopped. No more morning songs or afternoon races. The walk to school had ended.

A man sits alone. Alone, for the first time in a decade. In a square, black, faux-leather arm chair, which came with the IKEA furnished rental. His new 50” TV blares on the wall but makes no sense for him.

Tonight, the only sound he hears is his left ring finger tap, tap, tapping on the whisky glass. He takes a gulp of the vintage liquid but doesn’t taste it.

Tap, tap, crack.

Pulling off the ring, he drops it in the broken glass, abandons the glass in the recycling bin, turns the TV off and goes to bed.

Alone.

Three children stand around a blanket, on which lies a baby.

Their toes stroke the satin edges as they watch the squirming, pink bundle, wriggle like a beetle on its back.

“We should get some toys,” says Mel, the eldest. Fetching a small yellow ball, he rolls it across the blanket to the baby.  A pudgy hand grabs inexpertly for the toy.

“How about some milk,” says Cas, crawling across the blanket and offering the baby her bottle.

“What’s that smell?” says Zar, holding his nose.  Running away, he quickly returns with scented wipes saying, “The baby’s done a poo!”