You Can’t Take it Back

Unpublished flash fiction

This train is moving too slow. Sounds like a clock. The seats grey, the floor grey. Walls and ceiling beige. Neon jerks past, then nothing. A supermarket, then nothing. A station. The doors hiss open close. No one passes through. The drab inside reflected back by the night.

Another day at work on too little sleep.

I cannot run but I can walk much faster than this.

Sore throat. Churning stomach. Blocked nose.

Drink. Smoke. Fast food.

I can’t run but.

Cellphone internet. Terror on Reuters. All the usual, names and dates. You can run but.

Three guys and a girl on a beach holiday in Eastern Europe take the car and go to buy grass. They meet the guy in an outdoor café on a beautiful day, share a drink and some chat. No problem. A done deal. They get back in the car to drive home. One guy holds the grass, no pockets. Check point, flagged down. Stopped at gunpoint, searched at gunpoint. The soldiers smoke York Filters. They are called Zenge. Camouflage and Kalashnikovs. Standing at the roadside. The Zenge find the drugs. All four think they’re going to die. K tells N he loves her, always has. The soldiers laugh, let them go.

Once you’ve said it, it’s out there.

Standing shivering, bollock-naked beneath a pathetic dribble of water trying desperately to scrub the smell of travelling and drinking from a body shattered by too much alcohol, not enough sleep, the caress of a concrete floor and the nylon stubble of the carpet on my skin. Shampoo in my hair I give up grab my towel/duvet regretting my earlier labour-saving ingenuity in leaving my sleeping bag and camping mat at home. Standing, still shivering in front of the bathroom mirror desperately trying to get dry, to get dressed in the cramped confines of someone else’s bathroom.

You have lost ownership.

Standing on the castle wall, having climbed the steps with aching legs and seeing the fjord before me, the pearl string of islands to the lefts, the black and white ferry chugging out of the harbour, the marina of posh yachts moored at the shore-front bars. The feeling of womb-like peace that always comes over me when faced with water, be it river, loch or ocean. My limbs were soothed. I wasn’t grinding my teeth. I felt an almost uncontrollable urge to leap.

The wild beauty, the spring joy.

An island in the fjord.

Woodsmoke and rabbits.

           Words are dynamic and fluid, impossible to control.

Everyday becomes something clearer, the unfamiliar ebbs and settles into vague normality. I fear that knowledge will usher the inevitable boredom. The heat subsides slow. The final cicadas chirp their electric hum. Virus soars through like gulls on a trade wind, white against the black blood red. Flags flutter in the neon breeze, sleepily waving at break-dancers outside the station and a woman slowstepping, feet clacking into the night.

Think, think before speaking.

David loosened his tie, slipped his shoes off and settled into the train seat. Cracking a can, he mussed up his hair and stared down the track.