Flash Fiction (Each story no longer than
250 words in length)
A GRAVE MISTAKE
by
bicballpoint
“Laura I’ve got some
fantastic news, meet me at the La-Scala, we’re celebrating!” David , her
husband, sounded excited over the telephone.
The La-Scala restaurant was
terribly expensive but Laura who ran her own successful interior design
business could easily afford it and David a garage mechanic, had never
shown any sign of macho resentment.
Delayed by an urgent call from a
client Laura realised that she was going to be about forty-five minutes
late getting to the restaurant.
As she drove down the mountain road Laura pressed on the brake pedal and nothing happened. She
stamped on it in desperation, but the car’s speed increased. Laura knew
that with nothing to stop her she would plunge off the road and down the
five hundred foot drop to the river below. Strangely it was the thought
of David’s grief that upset her more than her own imminent death.
There was a car, David’s car,
parked right on the edge of the drop, and just before her own car slammed
into it she saw him peering down over the edge.
Laura awoke in hospital and
later she learned the terrible truth. Her brake pipes had been cut and
David had increased her life insurance cover a few weeks earlier. That’s
why he’d been parked at the drop and looking over the edge, he’d been
looking for her, expecting her to be dead.
“It was a grave mistake,
David” she whispered to him as she sprinkled the earth down onto his
coffin.
Alice knelt down to pick up the envelope which had just dropped
onto the doormat and, with trembling hands she ripped it open and removed
a sheet of paper.
Struggling back up onto her feet, Alice masked her smile that had
formed as she read the piece of paper and walked back into the living
room.
Tom looked up at her fondly. “You ought to be getting ready love.
Jenny and the grandchildren will be arriving soon.”
“Yes, you’re right. Isn’t it exciting Tom? I can’t believe that
they’re going to be here with us on our Ruby wedding anniversary, all the
way from America.”
“Well they are, now why don’t you take that corset off, Alice? It
looks as if it’s killing you and you can’t even bend down.”
“You know why Tom. I want to wear the going away dress that I
wore on our wedding day.”
“All right Alice, I’ve told you what I think.”
Alice looked at herself in the mirror and smiled, the dress
fitted perfectly even without the corset that she’d discarded.
She’d never have known that the dress had been secretly altered
if Millie Harris’s bill hadn’t come through the letter box.
Alice smiled she’d let Tom find it tomorrow. Let him think that
he’d got a secret from her. Tom deserved to have a little secret, after
forty years.
My arms
are aching, the buckets keep coming and the flames on the barn roof are getting bigger and bigger by the minute.
I can close my eyes, but I can’t keep the frightening, crackling sound of burning timber from my ears. Nor the whoosh of the wind as the draught
forces tongues of flames through the ruined roof. And the heat. That searing, blistering, hateful heat which scorches my hair and eyebrows and dries up my throat.
I fumble
for the next bucket and open my eyes as Old Charley nudges me with his
knee. “Take the bucket, lad,” he hisses.“We’ll never save your Dad’s
barn at this rate.” As I
make a grab for the pail, it spills and ice-cold water numbs my leg.
Dad and Uncle Harry are in the barn somewhere, saving what they can and suddenly I am afraid for them. I jump as a shower of sparks light up the night sky and a roof timber falls with a sickening crash. Dad!
Then I see Uncle Harry with his smoke blackened face shrug his shoulders.
“It’s a gonner, lads,” he’s saying. Dad follows behind with a limp
that he never had before. And Mum cries on his shoulder.
They found a bottle in the ashes next day.& A tramp sleeping rough left it
behind and the sun through the glass set the straw alight, they said.
I listened, fondling the magnifying glass in my pocket - and daren’t say a
word.
