AUTHOR'S OTHER TITLES (2) Dinner Without Glances (Short Stories) Five friends sit down to eat together with a cloud hanging over them. [320 words] [Drama] Mascara (Short Stories) Boys will be girls. [1,350 words]
Saturday Tweez
It doesnt feel like a Saturday, it feels more like a Thursday. I always thought of Saturdays as a yellowy orange and today feels more bluish grey, much more like a Thursday.
I'm ready, I dont know if she is but I dont care, I already ditched my sense of responsibility.
"I'm getting in the car" I shout and head for the door, leaving my self image on the mat. She calls out that she'll be down soon and I take the keys and wander outside.
Once inside the car I throw my bags in a heap on the backseat and stare back at the house. Three years I've lived there and I've never sat and looked at it before. The bricks are perfectly mismatched, ugly up close but a pleasant little indecipherable pattern from afar. The paint around the windows is peeling and the frames are metal, not wooden like old or modern houses. Just your typical middle of anywhere house, I guess it feels like home but I never felt truly comfortable. I shed my attachment to material possessions and let the breeze carry it off to wherever.
Hanging my head I stare at my lap waiting for her. Dust trembles before me in the morning light that pushes its way in through the passenger window, I catch a few specks and let them go again creating a disjointed Mexican wave of particles about my head.
Ten minutes later and here she comes, bouncing out the front door with that way of hers, giddy with excitement just to be doing anything. I always envied that about her. That and her hair.
"You took your fucking time" I say with a smile.
"Didn't wanna forget anything" she says, pulling my cap out of her pocket, "like you did."
Placing the cap on my head I watch quietly while she blows dust particles away from her and they return as her breath rebounds off the window. She notices me staring and enquires if somethings wrong, I tell her nothing and start the car.
I back off the driveway and after lining the car up in the road and changing gear I glance over and she's off on one, staring at nothing in the distance with her brow furrowed in concerntration. I pause to reach out with my left hand and press the backs of my fingers against her cheek. She smiles without breaking her gaze and I run my fingers along the line of her jaw and up past her ear then opening my palm to shove her head so it nearly hits the window.
"Cock" she shouts, reaching for a cd in the glove box.
I release the clutch and we're away, to the top of our road, round past the industial estate where a dozen factorys launch thick white smoke at the sky, and onto the motorway with the stereo on and the sun drifting slowly through the sky as it tends to do in its own way. My irritability hangs in the air behind the car for a few hundred yards then releases itself into a vast, grey sky.
Landscape tumbles past us as we hurl ourselves toward the future at about 75 miles per hour. It still doesn't feel like a Saturday. Tired of wincing at the sun I ask her to pass me my sunglasses.
"Hold on" she says, winding the window down and back up again.
"What was that?" I ask.
"I was letting my childhood traumas out" she answers, handing me the glasses.
I put them on and turn the radio up. We both start singing as our mutual resentments uncoil and escape through the air vents.
She's my beautious Katarina
She's my joy and sorrow too
Though I know she's not true
Oh but I cannot live without her
She lights two cigarettes, placing one between my lips and I rest my hand on her knee by way of a thank you. I breathe out my sexual inhibitions in a smoke ring.
But my heart is full of woe
For last night she made me go
And the tears begin to flow
As I sing the whole day through
A wave of relief flushes through me and I no longer hate my parents.
Hours later we turn off the motorway and join a queue of cars at a junction. She rolls the leg of her jeans up and picks at a scab on her knee until blood begins to wind its way down her leg.
Dabbing it with a tissue she holds it up for me to see and says "There's my inferiority complex" and throws it out of the window. I kiss my fingers and place them against her cheek for a second, then push her head til it hits the window.
"Twat" she shouts and rolls her jeans back down.
The traffic clears and we set off again. Somewhere in the distance our prejudices hang in the wind and evaporate into the atmosphere.
As we approach the beach she leans over and runs her fingers through my hair, shaking out any leftover regrets. A slight nausea comes over me as I search for somewhere to park, it passes when she tells me she's nervous. As long as we both are then everything's fine.
Locking the car I ask her if it feels like a Saturday to her.
"No," she says. "Why would it? It's Thursday."
For a moment we pause and each sniff at the sea air, accustoming ourselves to it.
We cross the car park and start down the sandy steps to the beach. She walks behind me with her hand on my shoulder, the beach is deserted and the ocean seems deafening at first.
Placing myself down on the soft sand I watch as she walks over to greet the sea. She stands and looks into it as I watch her from behind, casting the last of her demons into its soulless abyss. A shadow of grace surrounds her. As she turns and floats along the sand to me I realise I love her again and thats all I need to shed my final fears and worrys. A calm hope overcomes me and I smile at her.
"That's it," she says with a grin. "The last of me is gone, I'm brand new again."
We lean in to kiss each other and as we do she runs her hand along the side of my head, flattens her palm against my temple and shoves me. Everything's how it should be.
"Chess?" she asks.
I nod and she pulls the board out of her bag and places it in the warm sand, the sea breeze throwing her hair in her face and me smiling all the while. Every few moments I get a rush of excitement; now we've shed our cares we can do anything.
She goes to take her first move and I say "Wait!"
"What?"
"Did you leave the oven on?"
"Yes."
"Oh, good" I smile, and take my turn.
I take my sunglasses off and let the light sting my eyes, everything feels delicate and new. Our new lives begin the moment we let go and allow the old ones to cease.
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