Fresh Ink: 2019 Short Story Collection

A Ghost of a Chance

Lights up, lights down. The atmosphere was fiddled with constantly, nervous fingers trying to find the right hue for the evening. Eventually, the room settled into a warm sort of sepia, not so dark as to leave the diners squinting at each other to pick out things to complement, but not so bright as to expose the flaws of the flesh and send her running home before desert could be served. That was the dream, at least. Good food, pleasant atmosphere, polite company. The ingredients for a perfect home dinner date, with the promise of more to come.

The apartment bubbled with the scent of fresh risotto, pervading through to the bedroom as he examined, discarded and retrieved various ties, ever-changing his mind as to which one would best go with his suit. Red was striking, but maybe too aggressive? Blue went well with the suit, but was it to the point of blending in completely? This wouldn't have been such a problem if he just wore the damn thing more often. Of course, that would require for him to be invited out to events were a fancy suit was demanded, and that was only once in a blue moon. Most of the time it just sat in the closet gathering dust. The fact that he'd had it dry cleaned for the occasion showed how badly he needed tonight to go right.

He'd been dropping none-to-subtle hints to Cassandra from accounting for months now, and she'd finally thrown him a bone and agreed to dinner. And as a classy lady, she needed a classy evening. Soft music flowing through the apartment, the dim sepia brightened by two candles flickering gently on the table. A home-cooked, gourmet meal prepared by a man with nothing to lose and everything to gain. In short, every romantic cliché in the book stuffed into one apartment. As sappy as you could get, but everyone could appreciate it in some form, either properly or at least ironically. Like a puppy so ugly it wrapped all the way back around to being cute again.

7PM. She should be knocking on the door any moment now. The garlic bread and salad were set out, the risotto was off the stove, the wine and cheese were laid out on the side counter. Hair: combed and gelled. Teeth: shining. Suit: immaculate. He was never going to look better than this, or so he hoped, anyway. He hadn't spent all evening fixing himself up just to polish a turd.

7:15PM. Running slightly late. Well, that was to be expected. Traffic had been rough tonight, some sort of accident on a major intersection. He shot her a text, and placed the risotto into the oven to tide it over until she arrived.

7:30PM. No reply just yet. She was probably just taking her time getting ready. He'd spent ages making himself presentable, and women had twice as many things to adjust, paint over and clean.

7:45PM. Nothing on the grapevine. Still, that gave him time to adjust the apartment, make sure that it was spotless. Extinguish the candles so they didn't burn all the way down before she arrived. Open up the wine and let it breathe.

7:50PM. Still no reply. His leg wouldn't stop twitching. Perhaps she was simply being fashionably late? A text was typed out, then deleted. He'd only look desperate.

8:12PM. Finally, a reply. Or rather, a cancellation. Apparently, something had come up, so vague and unimportant that it couldn't possibly be explained or even apologised for. The risotto had long since cooled, prawns settled to the bottom of the ooze. He sent back a polite reply and threw his jacket on the sofa. Damn thing was just boiling him alive anyway.

Well, he'd already gone to the trouble of setting up a nice dinner, might as well enjoy it by himself. He abandoned the made-up table for a fold-out throwaway and switched the television on. A stack of blank DVDs sat nearby, collected from the back of a car boot sale. Probably all movies recorded on a smartphone and burned via the Pakistani kid's computer the day he'd sold them, but even at dreadful quality, fifty films for a tenner was a pretty good deal. He grabbed the first one and slammed it into the player, poured out a generous glass of wine and hit play. Wandering off to grab cutlery and his plate, he never saw the way the screen flexed and warbled, the glass stretched out from within by a clawed appendage.