Do you want two?

Mark Carkeet Flash fiction 0 minutes read

‘Do you want two?’

After Max pays at the Mexican, and they step outside, Helen turns left and says, ‘I feel like some Gelati’.

Max is a tiny bit relieved because he’s had a second Margarita and a glass of sangria, and wants to walk it off before he drives, just in case.

So they walk down the street to the Gelati shop. ‘Do you want two?’ asks Max.

‘I’ll have two scoops.’

One flavour or two?’

‘What’s it matter? One probably.’

‘Then it’s “gelato”.’

 ‘What?’

‘“Gelato” is singular. “Gelati” is plural.’

‘Well, whoopti-do, Mr Wiki-bloody-pedia. I want two scoops so that’s plural.’

They join the queue, Helen in front. Two cops in uniform peel off from the front of the line, cups of peppermint choc-chip in hand. Max continues, bravely, ‘If it was one scoop of vanilla and one of chocolate, that would be “gelati”. But for two scoops of the same you say “gelato” because that’s just singular.’

‘I wasn’t asking for an English lesson. All I wanted was something to soothe my palate after the hot salsa picante,’ Helen says from over her shoulder. Italian lesson, thinks Max.

The couple in front of them have three small children, each insisting on tasting multiple flavours. They speak quietly. ‘Now, if you do that, there will be consequences.’

Max drops his voice slightly too. ‘That’s actually a tautology. You see, “picante” means “spicy” Here, see.’ He moves his phone past Helen’s elbow to show her. But she’s looking at her phone too now, saying something he can’t hear. 

One of the kids tries to push in between them and spills his ice-cream from the cone onto the footpath. ‘Now, you see, you rushed, and the lady will have to mop that up,’ says the mother. A ginger cavoodle appears from nowhere and is licking it up. Max looks around for its owner, because he’s read that dogs can’t digest lactose. He can’t see anyone, so he grabs the dog by the collar. It snaps at hi ‘What are you doing?’ asks Helen, turning.

‘Well this dog really should be on a leash, and…’.

But the girl at the counter is asking Helen for her order. ‘Two scoops of lemon sorbet, please.’

Now that, isn’t a gelati at all. thinks Max. It’s water based. The dog could have had that no problem. 

'Sorry guys'

Michelle Dowse Flash fiction 0 minutes read

As usual, Michael Leavis was the first to arrive, smack on time at 1pm. He didn’t believe that anyone had the right to keep anyone waiting, ever. So he pulled the gladwrap off the sandwiches, grabbed a paper plate, loaded two egg and lettuce sandwiches onto it, and began to wait.

At 5 past, Clark Greatneck walked in, nodding at Michael and talking on his phone. Cradling the mobile in his neck, he put four chicken and mayo on to his plate, then took it and the phone outside the room to continue the conversation.

A minute or two later Adrian Goodenough opened the door tentatively. He wasn’t even in their workgroup. ‘I’ve got a client in next door, can I borrow some sandwiches from you?’

‘Sure,’ sighed Michael, ‘they shouldn’t go to waste’.

The clock on Michael’s phone showed 1:12 when Sean Washburn walked in, with a draft report in his hand. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said, grabbing a plate, ‘I’ve got a fair bit on at the moment’.

‘And I haven’t,' thought Michael, as he waited for the cricket scores to come up on his phone.

Sean said, ‘I hope you don’t mind if I check this report while we wait for the others’, as he rounded up a salad sandwich on multigrain.

‘How could I object to that?’ said Michael. He opened his Instagram feed and scrolled down.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ said Sean.

‘I’m listening,’ said Michael, who kept scrolling.

But just then Clark came back in, saying, ‘Sorry, I hope you guys weren’t waiting for me?’

‘No,’ said Sean, ‘we still haven’t heard from Scott’. Michael picked at some breadcrumbs on his plate, and, leaning back, tried to make out the signature on the Whitely on the wall behind him.

At 20 past Scott Saunders, the group leader, came in. ‘Sorry about that guys…’

‘But you’ve probably got a fair bit on at the moment,’ Michael rejoined, looking out the window at a young boy flying a kite on the far bank of the river.

Scott pulled the glad wrap off the focaccia. ’These are cold,’ he said. ‘I suppose it serves me right’.

No-one said anything. Clark’s phone rang. Again. ‘Sorry guys, I have to take this’, he said stepping out of the room.

Scott handed out a paper and said, ‘We might as well start with the productivity data’.

Under the table, Michael opened up a game of ‘Tetris’ on his phone.

Clark stepped back in, saying that he hoped he hadn’t missed anything.

‘No we were just getting started’, said Michael.

There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in’ said Scott.

It was Sean Goodenough. ‘Sorry to interrupt guys, but those sandwiches really hit the spot. Any left?’

'Why not take them all?’ said Michael as his phone pinged, and his Tetris stack crashed.

‘Sorry guys,’ he said, not sorry.

Withdrawn from Circulation

Michelle Dowse Flash fiction 0 minutes read

As she does at 4:45pm every workday, Hortense Roberts parks her Hyundai I30, closes the front gate, and balances a bag in her left arm while jiggling the keys in her right. She lifts open the door and her 8 year-old Staffy, Little Dorritt, rushes past her down the three steps of her post-war fibro home (as he does at 4:45pm every workday) to do a proper wee in her front yard.

Hortense is named, perversely, after the jealous maid in Bleak House. Her parents, D’arcy and Bronte, had seen it on TV, and just liked the sound of it, oblivious to the problems both syllables would cause her as an acne-scarred teenager.

She sits at her Laminex table, opens her bag and takes out four more discarded school library books.

Her boss, the school librarian, Sharon Knowles, has led the library’s rebranding into a Knowledge Management Centre (after all it’s 2010) and runs seminars on using Google Scholar and the many excellent non-google search engines.

Hortense (who worries over Dewey decimal classifications) was crestfallen when barcodes replaced cards with the names of students written in them, then when computer-generated emails replaced the manual reminder system for overdues. Next it will be book stacking.

One by one, books are being taken from the shelves and being replaced by e-resources, DVDs and USBs. But books are as alive to Hortense as Dorritt: her companions, her friends, her family, her familiars. She can’t bear that they should go off to Lifeline, where they will be shredded if they aren’t sold. So, for 10 years she has been taking them home from work when they are discarded - Roberts the robber.

Today, it’s The Day of the Triffids, The Shipping News, Snow Falling on Cedars, the Reader (the spine of which opens naturally at the scene that all the boys read).

Now, her house is full of library discards: stacked two abreast in and on top of her shelves, in piles on the floor behind the couch, in front of the TV, in her kitchen on the table, beside the microwave and on the bench, unsorted on the single bed in the spare room, in great stacks along the walls in her bedroom, in the corners of her hallway, in the garage, and even in the laundry, on shelves beside the Vanish and the Sard and the Preen, and in great piles on the laundry floor, next to the dog poo mat, under the gaze of the closed circuit camera, through which, via the magic of the internet, she watches from her desk at the library, coffee cup in hand, as Dorritt drops his load, without fail, every workday at 9:45.

The books watch on too, spines broken, the pages loose from years of adolescent reading, the polypropylene or mylar wrappers cracked and peeling, the catalogue ID fading in the sunlight, on the flyleaf of every book, three words, in a purple ink stamp: ‘Withdrawn from Circulation’.