Short stories – And another thing

August 2, 2020August 3, 2020

Living in a post card

The air in the lounge had been borderline suffocating. My glass had almost slipped from my hand as I brought it to my lips due to the perspiration on my fingers. It was not so much the sweltering heat of the evening, but rather my nervousness that had gotten the better of me. If I did not calm down I would turn into a puddle soon. Not to mention the effort I had put in to doing my makeup just right and applying the exact amount of perfume to the soft skin of my neck and wrists, and of course, the red dress would all be for nothing if I continued to perspire.

It was all a bunch of sillyness really. And the biggest silly of it all was the dress. I knew it. I had asked myself what I was thinking when I had bought it. Even if I had just bought it I would be able to forgive myself, but I specifically went looking for it, knowing full well that this grand sherade I had meticulously thought out would amount to absolutely nothing but tears. Yet still, I could not restrain my feet from carrying me through the roads in town, strolling past all the store windows. I could not stop my eyes from wandering over the displays and the mannequins. I could not even stop myself from trying the blasted dress on when I finally found it, and I could not stop myself from buying it either. Rediculous, truly rediculous.

I sit there, on the emerald sofa, glass in had, wondering just how much of a fool I am about to make of myself. The sigh I release as I place the glass back on the coffee table is dismal and as much as I want to collapse back on to the sofa I decide it is probably best if I move to the belcony. I would go and change out of the dress and into something less desparate but my guest is set to arrive any minute now, so the only resort I have left is to move to the balcony in order to save what is left of my frayed nerves.
The instant rejuvenation the evening air offers is a brief reprieve from my overbearing sense of disappointment in my complete lack of self preservation. All because of a red dress. In fact, the red dress was not the primary source of the issue, the source was in fact, a great deal smaller.
I had been sitting at a corner Cafe nursing a cup of coffee some years ago. The table I sat at had been right next to the entrance, and was the one I reserved every morning at eight for half an hour. I had already read my paper when a man I was not familiar with had slumped himself into a seat at the table on the opposite side of the door. He carried a satchel with a great number of sheets of paper sticking put here and there, a pen stain on the bottom left side of the bag, a pair of gloves clipped to one of the rings on the strap and a pair of spectacles peaking out the front pocket.

When the waitress came over to take his order he replied with “I’ll have whatever she is having, to go, please” while gesturing towards me with a shrug of his shoulders and a slight nod of his head. When the waitress left he carried on by saying “I’m too tired to care very much about what coffee I have.”
“Hangovers will do that to you.” I replied. To which he laughed briefly.
“I’m not hungover,” he said simply “I was interviewing a rockstar that lives around here last night.” at that I almost spat out my coffee.
“You don’t mean…” I said sceptically.
“Precisely,” he smiled. “So I think it’s rather self explanatory how it is the evening ended up going, but I was working so I wasn’t drinking,” he explained, “I was, however, rather close to a couple of men with a funky smelling cigarette and so I think that is the cause of my blinding headache.” I tried to control myself, but burst into a fit of giggles.
“I’m so glad my pain amuses you” he says in the midst of my laughter.
“I’m sorry” I said, placing my hand on my chest to calm myself “it’s not so much the fact that you’ve gotten yourself a migraine off of second hand smoke, it’s just-“
“Yes?” he interjected curiously with a slight upturn of his lips
“You seem so ordinary.”
“Ordinary?”
“Yes,” I giggle “orginary.”
“Well,” he says, pulling a pen from his bag and bringing out a postcard from the front pocket, “I’ll have to immediately write to my sister telling her about a mad-woman I met at the coffee house who had the audacity to call me ordinary.”
“You can’t exactly do that without your glasses can you?” I ask pointedly while referring to his spectacles still peeking out the front pocket of the untidy bag.

He looked to the bag, the spectacles, did an almost unnoticeable head shake, and lifted his gaze to meet mine. He had a look of amused bewilderment, the look you get when you just witnessed a magic trick happen before your eyes; you didn’t know exactly what had just transpired, yet you found that somehow you find the one side of your mouth turned upwards in a smirk at the very nature of simple astonishment. And so our eyes stayed on eachother, as I found my own expression mirroring his; equally astonished.

It was not until the waitress had repeated “Sir, your coffee” for the forth time that we broke eye contact rather sheepishly. Embarrassed at the whole situation, I turned my attention back to my now cold coffee. Out of the corner of my eye I was mildly aware of him paying the waitress, her going back into the Cafe and him emptying about five sugar sachets into his to go cup. Then I heard the scraping of his chair as he got up and dared myself to raise my gaze as he was slinging his satchel over his arm.
Once he did, he looked at me, smiled again, then looked gown at his bag, and rifled around in it for a few moments, then felt the pockets of his trousers, growing a bit antsy, and finally feeling the pocket of his large tan coat. From there, he pulled out a pen, retrieved the post card he had discarded on the table earlier and began to scribble a note on the back.

“Look, I’m going out of town this evening,” he said as he turned to me, “but I’ll be back next week. If you like, give me a ring and maybe I can introduce you to that Rockstar fellow.” He placed the postcard on my table, and looked at me once again.
“It was lovely to meet you…” he said, waiting for me to give him my name. Looking up at him, I found myself on the verge of blushing.
“I’ll give you my name after I meet the Rockstar,” I said, with a laugh playing on my lips.
At that he nodded and let out a low chuckle.
“I can live with that.”

I did meet the musician, though he failed to live up to my expectations. And so it was at that Cafe, all those years ago, that we became friends and I let that damned girl in the red dress on the postcard work it’s way into my mind. And here I am nursing a cocktail instead of a coffee, and hoping, beyond hope, really, that there is something more to the years of wishing that I lived in that postcard.

At the very least, the breeze had calmed my nerves, and I’m sure the alcohol had contributed to that. Nevertheless, I felt more comfortable in my dress, less nervous. Then, finally, the doorbell rang, and I knew I had to step out of the postcard.

By: Leilah Bhyat

May 31, 2020August 3, 2020

The secret Strawberry field

Ilian loved being outside. He knew the exact amount of steps from the back door of the house he would sneak out of, to the orchard. And then the amount of steps from the orchard to the stream hidden behind the apple trees. Then, past the stream, were the strawberry fields. That was his place.

He had come across the strawberry fields when he was fifteen years old. He had been playing with one of the dogs that had long since passed away. He would throw sticks he found along the path for the dog to fetch. He had taken the path many times almost every day. The afternoons were always the best time to go and the shade that the trees in the orchard offered shielded him from the sun. On that day, even the trees couldn’t keep the heat at bay, even though it was only spring.

Ilian had gotten to the stream that day and knelt down to splash water on his face. He let the dog drink from the stream and sat nearby admiring the way the sunlight shone through the trees and cast shadows onto the ground below them. He thought the leaves shifting in the breeze made it look as though the sunlight was dancing with the leaves. He stayed there for quite some time, then, when the dog had started leaping into the air to catch dragonflies, Ilian decided it was time to move on.

He called the dog, but it was distracted by the dragonflies and started to chase one. It ran across the width of the stream and into the trees on the other side. After calling a few more times Ilian decided to go after the dog. Usually he would let it find its own way home but he had finished his chores for the day and was in no rush to get back to the house.

He stepped into the stream and the cool water soothed his skin through his shoes. It soaked his socks but he didn’t mind. At the deepest point, the stream only came up to Ilian’s calves.

He quickly crossed the stream and was disappointed when he was once again met with overwhelming heat. The stream had offered a brief reprieve from the sweltering sun.

He carried on into the trees. Occasionally he would call out the dog; other then that he was silent. His only company was the sound of his feet meeting the ground as he walked. He saw more dragonflies along the way and heard the birds singing and cooing to each other. Gradually he became accustomed to the feel of the trees on this side of the stream. They were somewhat larger and thicker around their trunks which he knew indicated that they were older than the trees in his orchard. There were also a great deal more.

After some time his feet began to hurt, he had not expected to be walking for so long and so did not change into more comfortable shoes. He was contemplating turning around and letting the blasted dog find its own way back, it was beginning to get late and he would not be able to get back to the house before dark if he did not leave soon.

Just as he was about to leave he saw a clearing to the left, an end to the endless sea of trees. Curious, he started towards the clearing. When he got to the edge of the trees he was astonished, it was a field of strawberries. They were not planted in rows for farming, so Ilian deduced that they were wild. And judging by the lack of wear to the paths, no one had been here in a long time.

He walked in further, now catching the scent that the fruit gave off and inhaling deeper. It made his mouth water. He stopped walking and looked around at the fruit surrounding him. He eyed a large red strawberry hungrily. When he moved to pick it, the berry did not separate from the bush as easily as he had thought and he had to put more pressure.

He bit into it and was immediately met with an onslaught of flavour. The juices ran down his fingers and as he chewed the seeds got stuck in between his teeth. He quickly proceeded to pick several more and sat down as he greedily ate them.

He had given up the hope of getting back to the house before dark so he sat and enjoyed the strawberries. After a while, when he had his fill, he lay down almost covered by strawberry bushes. The sun had just set and the sky was beginning to get darker. The moon was even visible off to the right.

The heat had made him tired and all the walking he had done had taken a toll on his muscles. His eyes started to close and within a few minutes he gave into sleep, kept warm by the heat the sand still gave off.

When he woke the next morning, he felt something heavy on his chest and when he looked down he saw the dog sleeping soundly. He had strawberries for breakfast and put as many as he could in his pockets before he left. And as he turned to go home he felt a melancholy as he looked out onto his strawberry field. He did not want to leave. The walk home was a quiet one.

Since then, he would make the trip weekly, though he wished he could have gone every day. It was no surprise that sixty years later, when his son had worried when he didn’t come home after a long walk, that they found Ilian in his strawberry field, peacefully asleep. And the scent of strawberries never left that secret field.

By: Leilah Bhyat

May 17, 2020June 25, 2020

When the cold visited

It was not just cold. The gale made sure of that. Simon had brought his children over the night before last. Their house was near the edge, where the wind hit hardest. I could not very well allow them to stay there during a storm like this.

The builders had not done a sterling job of fixing the sealing on the window frames so that the cold did not seep into my house. But Simon had less money and had used the same builders I had; I can only imagine the damp that managed to creep in on that side of town. So I rang him around noon on Tuesday to invite him and the children to stay. They arrived that evening, the children drowning in their raincoats and wellingtons with two packed bags between the three of them.

Simon had done a good job of raising his children, I knew this by the way they shimmied out of their boots and left them to dry at the door, after all, if they had not, Gertrude would have the lovely job of scrubbing the mud off tomorrow. Mud in this town had a nasty habit of sticking between the wooden floorboards, and in the grout between the tiles in the kitchen. In hindsight, the builders had done an awful job of just about everything.

The younger of Simon’s children, Beatrice, was a petite girl, even for her age. My youngest, Mary, was in the same class as Beatrice at school. They were even born less than a month apart, but still, Beatrice was shorter by a head. That is how we came to know Simon, Mary and Beatrice were best friends since their first year at school. It has been seven years since then.

Simon’s other child, Nathan, was a quiet boy with a good temperament, just two years older than Mary and Beatrice. He mostly read books and kept to himself. When he did speak he was polite and always smiled. Overall he just seemed good natured. I was however surprised some three weeks ago when I heard the news that he had gotten into a fight at school. Beatrice had been over to play that same day, so when Nathan came to pick her up I asked him what happened. He was a mess that day, eye half shut and purple, lip cut and swollen, his left arm in a sling and his trousers muddy and torn. He looked down and simply said “The boy was speaking about my mother.” I did not ask anything more, her sickness was not a topic any of us liked to be reminded of.

All these children in the house made me miss my Charlotte terribly. She had left to attend culinary school four months ago. The house has not been the same without her. My husband, Edmund, was stationed overseas; he would be back in the spring; just a few more months. Mary and Charlotte never went without a male in the house though. My own father still lived with us. Charlotte and him would spend endless hours in the study together. And he would find recipes in the newspaper that he asked her to make him, and she did so with a great, broad smile. Sometimes I would even hear them in the kitchen late at night laughing over cups of tea and slices of sweet bread.

Perhaps it was not so much that I was concerned about Simon and his children that I invited them to stay, but also that I longed for the feeling of a full house. That night, after dinner, I could almost hear the house sigh as every room was filled. It was still cold, the cold never left and the light rain never stopped. But I could not hear the howling of the wind over the sound of Mary and Beatrice giggling down the hall. So I slept comfortably in the cold.

By: Leilah Bhyat

May 3, 2020June 25, 2020

Alone on the farm

It had been a long, hard day. The sun had beat down on her back as she had tried to fix the roof of the shed. Her face was shielded by a large hat, but by the time she had drawn a bath that night, it stung when she touched her neck.

In an attempt to sooth the stinging, she went outside to collect some aloe. She broke off a few pieces and made her way back inside. The kitchen was large. They used to have two cooks, but now there was only her. She broke the aloe and did her best with her splinter ridden hands to empty its thick juice into a shallow bowl. She added a little warm water to make it easier to apply and went to the bathroom where one of only two mirrors in the house was kept.

Carefully she dabbed a cloth into the mixture and started to apply it to the back of her neck. Once that was done she applied some to the back of their hands. They were not stinging yet, but had started to become darker and darker of late from her long hours spent working in the sun. She feared the tanning would be worse for her then the sunburn was.

Next, she went back to the kitchen and placed the bowl in the old sink. It was rusting on the edges, but was still good. She took out another bowl and squeezed some lemon juice into it, then proceeded to attempt to remove some of the splinters in her hands. It was a long ordeal, after half an hour she had only managed to remove three. Hoping the lemon would clean her hands, she gently placed them in the bowl. They started to sting where the little wooden shards had penetrated her skin, but she endured. Lately it seemed that most things stung in some way or another.

She placed the second bowl in the sink and took a mug to the table. She filled the kettle and placed it on the stove. Collecting her nearly discarded lemon, she squeezed a little juice into the mug and then threw the lemon out the window. She had picked some tea leaves from the garden the day before. So she broke a few pieces of the long green leaf and placed it in the cup. Sugar was expensive, but the bees on the farm produced honey and she knew how to collect it, so she kept a jar on the counter. She took a spoon of honey and placed it in the cup. By then the kettle had started to whistle, and she poured the hot water into the cup. She stirred it with the spoon she had used for the honey.

She went to the living room down the hallway which she now slept in, placed her mug on the side table and made herself ready for bed. Then she took out her clothes and placed them on the chair in the corner and made a quick job of dusting off her work shoes and placing them under the chair.

Finally she got into bed and sat with her back leaning on the wall. She retrieved her tea from the side table and took a deep breath; inhaling the scent of the tea. For a moment, nothing stung. Until she took the first sip of her tea, then she could taste the sting.

And the next day she repeated everything all over again.

By: Leilah Bhyat