Short stories

The Frankensteins

MattLeave a comment

Meredith sat in her rocking chair by the fire, without looking up from her knitting she said, ‘I wish you’d stop rolling your eyes at me!’

‘Well if you would talk sense I wouldn’t need to’ Alfie remarked.

Stopping her knitting for a second she reached under the chair and pulled out one of his eyes, ‘I’m tired of finding them all over our wonderful house!’

‘I’ve been looking for that eye!’ he replied.

‘Well if you’d mind them better you wouldn’t lose them would you?’ she lifted her head toward the direction Alfie’s voice was coming from, her eye sockets empty.

Patting her knitting on her knee she began, ‘now then, when are we going to the body shop, like we said we would?’

‘I’m waiting for you to go now! I’m all ready!’ Alfie said dripping with impatience.

‘I wish you’d calm yourself down!’

‘Wish you’d bloody hurry up! Now come on! Chop, chop!’ He clapped his hands together and turned to the mirror over the mantelpiece. Pulling some fluff from the eyeball Meredith had previously found under her chair he plopped it in his right socket.

‘You’re going with odd eyes in aren’t you?’

‘I might be!’ Alfie said.

‘It’s always odd eyes and odd socks with you!’

The body shop had a sale on everything, a sign in front of a shelf full of boots and shoes read, ‘buy a pair of boots and get one soul free.’

‘Look, Mer!’ Alfie lit up like a child in a sweet shop, ‘they have buy one get one free on all colours of eyes!’

‘You’ve enough eyes at home!’ Meredith scowled and plopped two golden eyes in her sockets from her handbag, then took out a pair of big jam jar like glasses. The glasses enlarged her golden eyes as she bent down and looked towards the shoes and boots.

‘I could do with some new boots!’ Meredith started, turning to a woman who worked in the shop, ‘do we know whose soul we’ll get?’

The woman shook her head, ‘No, you get whatever soul comes with the boots.’

‘That’s a shame’ Meredith tutted to herself, ‘What do you think, Alfred?’

‘I think you need to stop calling me Alfred in public! You know I don’t like it!’

‘No about the boots!’ Meredith said ignoring his plea.

‘You have a right boot at home, get a left one.’

‘But if I only buy one boot, I shall not get the soul!’

‘You’ve got your own!’ Alfie laughed.

‘I like to wear someone else’s essence every now and then!’

‘You know they’re not anyone else’s soul right, Mer? They’re manufactured!’

‘Well, anyway,’ Meredith bunched up her hair, ‘I like to wear the essence of another soul every now and then!’

‘Just get the right one. It’s not like you can choose what soul you get! What if you get a piss poor one, full of vulgar language?

‘I suppose you’re right, Alfred.’

‘Pardon me,’ Alfie started with a big grin, ‘I’m…I’m right for once? Well, that’s a bloody first!’

‘You won’t be right for long, carry on with that attitude!’ She said slapping with him her handbag.

Some teenagers were prowling outside the shop like a pride of young lions.

‘Hey,’ one of the lads hollered, ‘Look ‘ere we got some Frankies!’

The other kids laughed.

Alfie sighed and muttered under his breath, ‘like a pack of hyenas, they are!’

‘Come on Alfred, we’re going home!’ Meredith pulled at his arm, going pale all over, stumbling and mumbling as she put her glasses back in her bag, ‘I don’t want to see such folly!’ She proclaimed dramatically and took her eyeballs out.

‘Ignore them!’ Alfie told her, his eyes having caught a top-shelf he could just about reach, ‘They’ve got some top of the line penises on sale!’

‘Yes, well,’ Meredith said as she fiddled about blindly trying to fasten up her handbag, ‘I’ve got a bog-standard vagina so you don’t need one of them fancy things!’

Hurriedly she shrugged her way out of the shop

‘Fuckin’ Frankies! Rich cunts!’

‘If we were Frankies me nanna would be alive!’ one of the teens shouted.

‘yea! And me sister is on a waiting list for 100 years on the NHS,  She won’t even live that fucking long! meanwhile you Frankies just go to the fucking body shop! Fucking rich bastards!’

‘FRANNNKIIIIIEEES’ they all shouted.

Alfie followed swiftly behind Meredith, overtaking her, his face red with rage till Meredith suddenly stopped and cried, ‘They’ve taken my bag! And snatched off with my arm too!’

Alfie spun on his heels, ‘Come here you little thieving rats!’ his eyes bulged out of his head, ‘Get back here you little rats,’ he repeated.

But the kids were too fast as they emptied her handbag leaving a trail behind them.

Alfie took off his left arm and threw it at them.

‘That’s an assault that!’ one of the kids yelled.

‘I’ve got a right to bear arms when you’ve stolen our property!’

The kids laughed and dropped her handbag along with Meredith’s right arm.

‘Stolen property?’ one of the older kids couldn’t resist shouting back sarcastically before turning a corner, ‘You rich cunts own everything!’ he could be heard shouting as he was lost to their sights.

‘Quick, quick,’ Meredith uttered, ‘collect everything up,’ she blushed a bluey colour that only the living dead could, as people rushed and gave them a wide berth on their way to their many errands.

Venom

MattLeave a comment

For each smile I manage to build the structure of on my face, I feel the cracks. There are crevices in every smile. I know the bridge is going to break, one foot wrong and it’s all gone. My version of feeling ‘good’ is to walk on egg shells, I can hear the creak of the mechanisms that string my smile up and they’re breaking at the seams and soon they’ll loosen their grip till I’m lost screaming. I take the blade across my skin and it feels like I’ve popped a balloon, the pressure is released through the blood and for a moment I can breathe without sadness, without happiness, I can just breathe in and watch the blood. It’s not like meditation, it’s not peaceful, it’s not nice, and it’s nothing. She knocks on the bathroom door, I can hear the TV blaring in the living room and some people arguing on one of her soaps “What are you doing?” she asks in THAT tone. That tone means she’s pissed. Eager at the chance for her to beat me, I open the bathroom door, hiding the cut on my thigh “Yes?” I beam an unnatural smile her way “What are you taking so long in there for?”
I shrug my shoulders and just look at her blankly before lurching towards her with a kiss
“woah! What you doing! My tv shows are still on”
“I want to eat out” I wink
She smiles coyly at me “Oh yea?”
“Yea” I wink again
I wonder if she can see the desperation in my eyes. I want her to bruise my loneliness, I want her to beat it out of me like she likes to, I want her to love me the way a woman like her does, teach me the error of my ways for all my impossible dreams. I was always a fucking dreamer, such a fucking loser. Have her beat the loser out of me, I look better in cuts and bruises otherwise I’m just a blank a canvas. I am her canvas to paint her rage upon!

In-between all this I still search for escape on the internet, but at this point I don’t know why. In the glow of the screen my loneliness is reflected on my face as I sit a click away from all the resources for women suffering domestic violence. It makes me ponder the idea of hitting her myself, so that she’ll leave me go to a shelter and I’ll have escaped her and she’ll have escaped me. A good few punches for a good cause? Could I really do it? To a woman? Then again I feel worthy of the destruction that comes with it, the aftermath and all its guilt is such an alluring idea. The thought has occurred to me I could just leave, but she’d follow me, I know she would. She’s done it before.
“What are you thinking about?” she looks at me, head tilted
“Nothing”
She puts her feet on my lap “I’ve had a hard day” she says
I know that’s a way of asking for a foot massage. I hate feet.

The tv is still blaring in the living room, glowing up the room with its falsehoods and we’re in the bedroom, I’m unfastening her bra and her breasts fall out in front of me, nipples erect. I feel the venom rush to my groin in all its sexual glory and I taste the poison on her lips, she smiles at the kiss and it feels like it did at the beginning of the relationship, when the smiles were so enticing to me they made me just want to pounce on her, and here she is now smiling as my lips press against her lips, it’s familiar, it’s comforting but it’s cold. It’s like ice is pressed between my lips and the eyes I will look into when we open our eyes, they’re blue like frozen lakes, danger lurks beneath them. One wrong move and you crack those lakes, you fall in, surrender your soul and you drown in the ice cold pit beneath. ‘mmm’ she moans as she feels my breath on her neck, I think about her like she’s a stranger, my breath on her neck and the hairs standing to attention as adrenalin kicks in. I plant kisses down her body, little seeds that were always meant to sow my love for her body, her form in all its splendour, but now each kiss is laced in secrecy and lies from one beating to the next and one reason I couldn’t but wanted to cry to the next and it goes on. I kiss a map on her body, down her legs, even her feet. I hate feet. I kiss her just where she wants me to, where she’s been waiting for me to and I’ve been building it up to this moment. I look up to her face to see the frozen lakes in her eyes become liquid and ripples sending shockwaves through her body. Never have I been so turned on, never have I felt so lost and alone.