This Week's Write On Edge prompt called for 'A stand-alone scene, fiction or memoir, in 500 words or less, involving a hand-written letter'. I sifted memories for a while and eventually came up with some fiction, based on a contemporary means that some people use to terminate relationships. Please follow the link and see how others handled the prompt.
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“See this,” my
twelve-year-old grand-daughter came into the spare room as I put the
finishing touches on making the bed and flicked a duster for the last
time over the already shining mahogany bookcase. She held out her
mobile telephone, pushing one of the buttons so that the screen
glowed. “Luv u always,” I read. “But better we b just
frends. Sry. 2 much in my life rite now xx”.
“I don't know whether
to laugh or cry,” she said, slumping onto the bed and sending
ripples of wrinkles radiating over the counterpane's once-taut
surface. “To think that I spent two weeks building a relationship
with a guy who's so lame he breaks up with me by text! 'Too much in
his life': he means World of Warcraft and his skateboard, of course.”
She looked down at the counterpane. “Oh... Sorry.”
I made some sympathetic
noises and surreptitiously patted at the chintz. I could believe the
text break-up. Dwayne had, the few times I'd spotted him with the
waistband of his trousers well below his the elastic of his boxer
shorts, his cap on sideways, and his gaze sliding from mine whenever
I offered an affable “Good afternoon, young man”, seemed posessed
of a singular lack of courage.
I thought back sixty
years to the time when my decision to ditch Jim in favour of pony
club had resulted in my penning, in the immaculate copperplate that
we were learning at grammar school: “Dearest, please come to tea
on Saturday afternoon at four o'clock. Mummy has promised a
chocolate cake as well as jelly after crumpets, so that should make
you feel a little better after the really dreadful news that I plan
to give you.” I had placed it in a lavender coloured envelope,
added a spritz of scent, and posted it from the pillar box on the
corner.
Jim had dutifully
turned up and taken my termination of our shared break-time
sandwiches and Saturday walks in the park without a wobble in his
upper lip. He had scoffed his crumpets, cake, and jelly, and said
manfully “Well, I'll have more time for cricket practice and my
model sailboat now.” Then smiling at my mother, he had said
“Brilliant cake, Mrs Evans! Good-bye!”
“To think,” I had
turned to my mother indignantly. “That I spent six weeks building a
relationship with someone more concerned with models and cricket! I
don't know whether to laugh or cry...” She had patted my shoulder
gently and made sympathetic noises. “But thank-you for the cake,”
I said. “The rat had something right: it was delicious.”
“I have an idea,” I
said to Sarah as she stood up and tried to smooth the wrinkled
chintz. “Would you like us to make a chocolate cake?”
“Oh, Gran!” she
said. “That would be just the thing!”
