Quirky Humans And Others

Quirky

Humans

&

Others

Sheppey Writers Group

Copyright © 2014 Sheppey Writers Group

ISBN: 9781310337574

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, situations and incidents are the product of the authors' imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Published for TAUP UK by Smashwords

TAUP UK

Sheerness

Kent

enquiries@taup.uk

Contents

My Sister's Shoes

A Green Thing Under My…

Nine point Eight metres per second squared

Girls' Night Out

Always Late With Jokes

One Armed Bandits

Hamburgers and Lichen

Assumptions

The Sad Tale of James Andrew O'Rouke

The Road

Silent Night

Dilemma

The Scent of the Flowers

Der See Adler

The Dawn Parade

Gods And Demons

A Bad Day at the Zoo

Women

A Round of Drinks.

Maybe A Christmas Tale

The Last Knock

The Killing Of A Nobody

Lugs Plays his hand.

And Finally…

Sheppey Writers Group

My Sister's Shoes

Ruth Partis

I sometimes wonder if all sisters hate each other. I expect my sister hated me at some times in her life. That would be normal. The thing is, I always hated my sister, all the time, for as long as I can remember.

My parents' photograph albums give a graphic impression of how my sister's arrival was greeted. We have three older brothers and a few photos of them staring wide eyed into the school photographer's camera fill the early pages.

Then suddenly all the pictures show the boys grouped around a tiny baby hidden in lace ruffles. The boys look tall and uncomfortable in these studio pictures. My mother is there too, her smile so broad that all her gums show and she looked almost grotesque in her obvious delight.

There were quite large gaps between the ages of my brothers and seven years between the youngest one and the birth of my sister. The joy of her arrival, when hope must surely have been fading, was understandable. My own arrival just thirteen months later, was perhaps just too much of a good thing.

There are no photos of me as a baby in the album. I expect there still is a framed picture of my sister's Christening on the wall of my parents lounge. My own Christening does not seem to have been important enough to get the camera out of its case.

Later on in the albums there are school photos. Sisters were always photographed together at our two schools. I wonder if my mother planned it that I was wearing the dress that my sister had been wearing the year before.

When she wore them they were brand new, one year later they showed signs of wear, the colours faded and odd buttons replacing lost or broken ones.

My sister is smiling in these pictures, her long, thick chestnut curls catching the camera well. I well remember some of these pictures being taken and I can see the disgust in my eyes at having to sit so close to her. Sometimes they would try to get her to put her arm round me, and I can be seen pulling away, as I found her very touch repellent.

In those early days I followed in her shoes. In her plimsolls, her Wellington boots and even, revoltingly, her bedroom slippers.

My passage through school was to follow her into every class, sometimes I was even at the same desk that she had sat at the year before and more often than not, to the same teacher too. I cannot begin to tell you the things that I could not do as well as my sister.

I did not read, write, count, draw, skip or run as well as her at junior school. At our secondary school I never achieved any of her highs. She starred in three drama productions and her St Joan even impressed me.

She had a host of school prizes, both academic and sporting, and became Head Girl. Her working life was successful and very short. By the time she was twenty she had married the boss and was living in a huge detached house on the edge of our town. I did OK at school in the end and got the job I wanted. I still enjoy it.

I work in a florist preparing bouquets and wreaths and selling flowers and plants. I tend to meet people at the best or the worst times of their lives and put as much care as I can into each assignment.

Once my sister was married I didn't really see much of her. I still lived at home and was given a daily up-date by my mother on my sister's latest gadget, dinner party, outfit, hair colour and garden ornament.

The jubilation at her early pregnancy was so great I'm surprised that it wasn't in the local paper. She carried the baby well, of course, looking blooming and somehow remaining stylish, however huge she grew.

In due time she produced a daughter, Heather, who was, according to my mother, the most adorable baby born in the world, since my sister. Now when I went home from work I had to hear about Heather's first smile, tastes in solid food, first tooth and sleeping patterns. How we fretted over the nappy rash and the cutting of her finger nails.

My sister really had it all, a doting husband, the world's most perfect baby, a designer home and mother to babysit or do the house work. What she didn't have, was the sense to learn from family history.

One evening I returned home looking for my tea, expecting to find my mother, ironing a basket full of Heather's dainty dresses. What l found was my sister and my mother, and the baby for that matter, all in floods of tears. My perfect sister who had her whole future planned out was pregnant again. I congratulated her, but she could not be calmed. She didn't want another baby yet.

She had planned a holiday with her husband, leaving my mother to care for the baby. It was all booked and now she couldn't go. Even before Heather's first birthday, another event already planned, she would have another child. I really didn't see how one baby was a blessing, but two was a catastrophe.

My mother was no help and said a few remarks that let me know that this scene had been played out before. When she found out about me. The next few months were painful for us all. My sister did not bloom, she wallowed in self pity.

She grew enormous and stopped caring for the house, her appearance, her husband and Heather. My mother took over everything. My father and I had to run our own house, which eventually we enjoyed.

He had recently retired and for the first time we actually spoke to each other. He took to gardening and became interested in flowers. He started to call into the shop and we started going out to lunch together.

We were walking along the High Street one afternoon when the traffic started to build up. A distant siren sounded and a taxi driver said there was an accident outside the post office. Dad and I weren't very interested, we walked back to the florists talking about the blackfly he had on his broad beans.

It was hours before the police found him with the news. My mother, sister and baby Heather had been shopping. My sister had been across the road from mother and Heather, but the baby had seen her and called out. Heather had leaned out of her pushchair and fallen forwards. My mother had not strapped her in and she fell screaming onto the pavement.

My sister had waddled across the road to her without looking and had been struck by a delivery van. My sister was dead. The tiny scrap inside her had been delivered, but was only just alive. She was too premature, her tiny body wired up in an incubator, kept alive but with no future.

When we arrived at the hospital my mother was sedated in casualty, she had slapped Heather across the face when the casualty doctor told her about my sister's death.

My father had to stay with her. My sister's husband arrived and so together we went to see the baby. We could see that this tiny creature was not going to live. Her skin was so thin we could see her veins through it. Her breathing, even when controlled by machine, was too faint. A nurse was changing a wire and the baby was smaller than the nurse's hand.

We stood for some time just looking at this tiny person, but eventually the doctor took us into his office. He told us what we already knew and we stayed very calm. He said that we might like to have the baby christened as this could be done in the hospital. He didn't say, but we knew it had to be done quickly and I got to choose the name.

We called her Rose, for that is what she looked like. Just a tiny pink rosebud that would never open up as a flower. The hospital chaplain performed a simple ceremony and afterwards we watched as Rose's tiny life faded away.

They were buried together, my sister and her baby. The child she hadn't wanted would be with her for ever. My mother didn't go. She refused to speak to Heather, blaming her for her mother's death. It is so like mother to put blame on a toddler, rather than accept the truth. It was either a total accident or her own fault for not strapping Heather in.

My sister's husband, Steve, was in a terrible state. He had his grief, his job and a toddler to look after. I offered to move in and help and I'm still there. We had shared the life and death of his Rose and this gave us a bond. It took time of course, but gradually we became a couple.

I got rid of all my sister's things and Steve agreed to move house and make a fresh start. Heather calls me Mummy and we have another little girl, Sarah, born just after our wedding.

I do see my father, he loves his granddaughters and looks after them so that I can still work part time at the florists, but I have not seen my mother since my sister died.

Our photo album is full of the four of us. We're all smiling. We all know that we are loved. I sent all the pictures of Heather and my sister to my mother, but she never thanked me for them. But it doesn't bother me.

Now I am the one who has it all.

A Green Thing Under My…

Karm Arger

Funny how these things happen! You go for years being absolutely normal, then – bang – it's got you; you have become a victim. Your world has turned upside down. Don't know what I am talking about? Well, I'll tell you; listen and, maybe, I'll explain.

For forty seven years I lived a humdrum life; getting up at seven in the morning, having breakfast at eight, catching the eight thirty train to the city and coming back home by five o'clock; so the cycle went on, and on, until this happened. It was a Saturday. The wife announced that among the mushrooms in her cultivated patch there appeared to be an odd one. Would I come and take a look?

I went, of course. There, on a mound by itself, was a green-domed mushroom about a foot high. Since this was something unique, we called upon Mr. Baumgarten, our local gardening expert and old German friend for his opinion.

"Kein angst – is schoner pils – kann essen. (Have no fear; it's a good mushroom which you can eat.)"

And so we did. That evening the foot high green mushroom came served on a dinner plate.

Some three months afterwards, much to my surprise, my wife complained that her skin appeared to be changing colour; it was turning from its Caucasian white to a translucent green. Funnily enough, she said the same thing about me too, although I had not noticed it. Know what? It was absolutely true. Though I was much darker, I too was becoming green. Now this was a new phenomenon in, and for, our family. We quickly sought the advice of our own doctor. The elderly man was utterly baffled. He conveniently passed us on to the Dermatologist.

Turn around, he said. We obeyed.

Mmm. Does it hurt, are you in pain?

No, doctor.

Even when I press here?

No.

Or here?

No.

Or here?

No.

Or do this?

No.

Mmm. Feel hot?

No.

Feel cold?

No.

Mmm. The brilliant man held his chin in his right hand and pondered, I think we will have to take samples for testing before we decide.

On what doctor?

On what we do next. Follow?

No doctor.

We both shook our heads. That was it. The Dermatologist was none the wiser.

So?

Well, all this was at the time of détente between East and West which was now in full swing; frequent visits by the Russians to our