COMPILATION OF SHORT STORIES AND FLASH FICTIONS

A Lonely Girl

THIS girl carefully packed her handbag: bottle of water, lipstick, mirror, notebook and pen, and three months’ worth of anti-depressants; everything she would need. She didn’t take her phone, she didn’t want to be interrupted, she needed silence to help her keep resolve.

She headed out to the park where she could find a few moments of peace to soothe the cacophony in her head. She edged her way around the grass, ducking her eyes from joggers as she walked to her favourite bench, the one dedicated to ‘Roel, who liked to sit here and dream’.

When she’d had another long, depressing day at work, she’d come to sit here, and imagine this stranger called Roel. She tried to guess what dreams he’d had, were they hopes for the future that never came true? Or did he let his imagination drift from one world to another while the leaves rustled above him?

This girl desperately needed a vacation of the mind, she wished she could spend a long weekend in the meandering thoughts of this stranger 'Roel'.

The bench creaked when she sat down. Fat old cow, she muttered to herself, disgusted with how her body had sagged and bloated away from who she wanted to be. She opened her bag and rested her hand inside, she would do this in stages, each stage slow, so she didn’t have to think. It wouldn’t be a dramatic death, just as it hadn’t been a dramatic life. Just as I deserve, she thought, I’ll slump over into sleep, lazy cow. She took out the bottle of water and put it on her lap, then pulled out the first blister pack of pills.

She didn’t notice the old man walking up, but she heard the creak as he sat next to her. His bony hands resting on his corduroy coated knees.

“Nice day for it,” he said, looking up at her shyly with red-rimmed eyes. “I like it when there’s a bit of a breeze.”

Not now, she thought; wishing the man away and then hating herself for it. She gave him a polite, empty smile, hoping this would put him off. It didn’t.

“A bit of rain can be nice too, but I don’t like it when you’ve got grey skies all the time, a good thunderstorm to clear the air, that’s the way it should be.”

As he carried on working through his opinions on each type of weather, the girl didn’t understand how someone could have so much to say about something so trivial. But as his fingers plucked at imaginary lint on his trousers, she thought she understood: he didn’t care about the weather, he just needed to talk to someone, to connect for a while. Slipping the blister pack back into her bag, she tried to force out some chatter.

“There’s supposed to be a good thunderstorm at the weekend, there’s a yellow warning of wind.” Her voice sounded hollow and strained to her own ears, but the old man clapped his hands with delight, his face rumpled up with joy,

“Yellow warning eh? We’d all better get our mountaineering gear out. I’ve got to go out on Saturday, and I’m not a big fella, I’d better get some heavy shoes!” He laughed uproariously, and The girl didn’t see why this was funny, but his delight was infectious and she found herself smiling. The man patted her knee, but she could barely feel it, as if his hand was no more than the wind.

“Now you, you’re a good one,” he said. “Sitting here patiently while some old boy rattles his chops about nothing. You need to take care of yourself, girl. There aren’t so many good-hearted people in the world.”

She looked away, suddenly wanting to cry.

“Thank you,” she whispered. They didn’t speak again, the girl didn’t feel the need to speak.

She finally walked away, wishing him a lovely evening.

And when she's gone, Roel smiled to himself, “You’ll get through, you just need to give the blues time to pass, I’ll be keeping an eye out,” he whispered, then leaned back on his bench to sit and dream.
                                *****