Fast Fiction: None Of My Business
I heard their voices downstairs and then the sound of the gunshot. I went out to the pub...'' The characters in Richard Mallinson's short story are the sort you never want to meet on a dark night.
I heard their voices downstairs and then the sound of a gunshot. I went out to the pub. It was none of my business.
I played two games of darts with Ed and lost them both, the second by a bigger margin than the first.
Then I stumbled over Ed’s feet (I think they were Ed’s) and fell awkwardly on my knees.
‘Fat sod,’ somebody said, and kicked me in the ribs.
‘He’s like a bloody great whale,’ a drunken voice said as I flopped right down.
Somebody stood on my back and there was much jeering and chanting.
I wondered why Ed didn’t intervene. He was supposed to be my pal, wasn’t he? But of course these were his own people.
After a few minutes I was hauled up and propped against the bar. The dark-haired barmaid leaned towards me showing her cleavage.
‘It’s not your night tonight, is it Bill?’ Her perfume went straight to my head and elsewhere.
I tried to grin and said, ‘Would you care to have a drink on me, Ingrid?’ and she said, ‘No thanks, I’d rather have it in a glass.’
Her blue eyes glittered and she said, ‘Here’s to you, Bill.’
I told her that these days my sex motto was, ‘I see, I conquer, I come.’
She shrieked and heads turned. A bit of envy there, I thought, and felt capable of taking them all on if it came to a fight.
No, perhaps not all of them.
‘By the way,’ she said as I was leaving, ‘my name isn’t Ingrid.’
‘And mine isn’t Bill,’ I lied.
Back at the house I paused in the hallway and then pushed the door open and looked in on them. He was cradling her in his fat hairy arms as he gazed at the blank television screen.
‘This is almost good for a laugh,’ he said.
