It was almost noon on a Wednesday morning in July, and the year’s final weekly meeting of the village toddler group had just taken place in the Parish Hall. John Litttlechild, and a handful of other parents from the group’s organising committee, had just finished packing away and tidying up. The toys and climbing frames had been stacked neatly in the shed, the plastic plates and cups washed up and stored. John had swept and wiped clean the floor and now, since the others had said their goodbyes and left, it was his job to lock up the doors.

With his youngest son Blake trailing along at his side, John double-checked the fire-escape, and unhooked the main swing doors, but as he stopped at the doorway and put his hand in his pocket for the key, he turned around and looked back into the hall.

During the summertime, in the morning, when the weather is good, the sun streams down on the Parish Hall’s east-facing wall, and through each of that wall’s three sash windows it throws a sloping column of light. On the dark wooden floorboards, it casts three slanting yellow rectangles. At first, they are long and reach out almost to the stage at the front of the hall, but as the sun rises and moves west, these bright squares of sunlight shorten and change direction, until they strain towards the swing doors at the back.

John stood still in the doorway. His eyes settled on the sun squares, and for a moment he considered their change of direction and shape. “How strange,” he thought. “For four years I’ve been coming here, and never before have I noticed them change.” Then he looked up at the windows, and remembered something he’d forgotten to do. “I must just close the curtains,” he said to Blake. “I’ll do this, then we’ll both go outside.”

He walked over to the east-facing wall, and pulled two sets of curtains shut. Two of the sun squares vanished, but, at the third window, John looked up and stopped. Through the glass, he saw the small grassed garden, into which the children often went to play. It was there that they splashed in paddling pools, or hurtled on ride-ons down the sloping concrete path. There that they chased and tumbled, or looked at insects that lived in the ivy on the fence.

As John looked through the window, a look of sadness came slowly to his face. Blake was four. He’d go to the primary school in September. Their time at the toddler group had come to an end.

For a moment, John’s eyes closed, and he remembered all the things that had happened in the hall. He saw his children crawling in baby-grows, standing and staggering, then sitting upright on chairs. He remembered them climbing in his hands up ladders. He heard them giggling as they slipped down slides. He saw them baking things, and making things, and singing and laughing with their peers. He saw them changing their shape and direction. More clearly than ever, he saw his children growing up.

“Growing up?” John wondered incredulously. He went cold with a feeling of loss. “My children have ceased to be toddlers,” he thought. “The time of their infancy has come and gone.” He looked again through the glass at the garden. His throat tightened and his eyes cooled and blurred. And he hesitated, soft with nostalgia, wishing he could live through that special time again.

Then a voice groaned wearily from the doorway. “Come on, Dad! It’s time for us to go!”

John blinked and swallowed deeply. He took a breath and forced his feelings back down. “You’re right,” he said, and he drew the final set of curtains, and the last golden sun square disappeared from the floor. He turned around and went quickly through the darkness. And he said, “It’s about time we locked up the door.”

Dave Alcock lives in Devon, England, and writes about the ordinary people and places of the British provinces. His stories focus on psychological change and the seeing and acceptance of new things. His flashes have been published in print by Ad Hoc Fiction and can be found online at Every Day Fiction and STORGY Magazine.

Image by Danielle Teychenne from Pixabay 

Maxwell’s punctuality at mealtimes led Ann to suspect that his stomach was built in Switzerland, even if the rest of him was of pure Scottish stock. Therefore, his absence from the dining table one mild autumn evening came as something of a surprise. Not wishing to appear overly concerned, Ann took a walk into the farmyard, still wearing her carpet slippers, in search of her wayward husband. She started in the feed room but finding it deserted continued to the chicken shed, which was quite the opposite, though only occupied by avian residents. Finally, she headed for the milking parlour, but on entering, all she could see through the gloom was a large Friesian cow apparently in a state of levitation. The harmless beast looked at her solemnly, its big doleful eyes expressing no alarm. With a feeling of gentle resignation, Ann concluded that her husband must be up to his tricks again.

‘Maxwell?’ she called out in expectation.

‘My name’s Dolly,’ came the deadpan reply, in a gravelly Scottish accent.

It was the kind of humour Ann had suffered for the best part of 20 years. At least her suspicions had been confirmed. And when she finally remembered her husband’s latest harebrained idea, everything fell into place.

It had all started months before on the day of Dolly’s birth. She had been carried from the fields, Maxwell cradling her in a delicate grip that would impress the most learned of midwives. It was an action he had performed many times before but only with Dolly had he considered the long-term possibilities of such behaviour. It struck him that if he were to lift these same ungulate bones on a daily basis, then the incremental increase in weight would prove negligible meaning that one day, he would be able to lift a fully grown cow. Ann had received full briefing of the idea and had suggested that he trial it with a creature of more manageable size, such as a sheep or a pig at the very most. Not one to entertain half measures, Maxwell resolved to stick with the original plan and so Dolly became his subject for investigation.

As Ann stood looking on, it became apparent that Maxwell had no intention of returning the poor beast to the ground. Evidently, he had finished the milking for that evening, so Ann grabbed a couple of bottles and returned to the farmhouse, safe in the knowledge that her husband hadn’t suffered an inglorious farming accident. No, he just happened to be holding a cow aloft. Shortly afterwards, she was relieved to hear the sound of the front door, the power of his appetite having not been totally usurped by other activities. Her husband sat down and she bounced a large bowl of beef stew to him across the kitchen table. They were not the most talkative of couples at the best of times, often surviving on a series of grunts and purrs, but this evening Maxwell seemed unusually quiet and contemplative. Maybe he was reflecting on the irony of his unbelievable cow lifting strength being based upon a hearty consumption of beef. Or maybe there was something else on his mind now that his latest physical challenge had been successfully completed, as witnessed through the impartial eyes of his wife.

Maxwell got up from the table, his body uncurling like a party blower as he stretched to his impressive full height. Taking a bottle of milk from the fridge, he poured himself a full pint, the glass fitting his hand like a half pint would for any person of average build. He opened his gullet and took a long steady swig, his contemplative gaze slowly subsiding to be replaced by an expression of mischief and mirth.

‘Ann,’ he said inquiringly, ‘do you think there’s a market for elephant milk?’

Duncan Hedges lives and works in Leeds, West Yorkshire. He writes short stories in his spare time. He has previously been published online at Ellipsis Zine, Spelk and Bending Genres. https://twitter.com/duncan_hedges

Image by Robin Greenwood from Pixabay 

Simon Markham had been heating water in a saucepan, but now his kettle had arrived. His new neighbour Mrs Stephens had taken in his Amazon parcel, and when he called upstairs to collect it after work she moved past their nodding acquaintance and ushered him in for tea for the first time.

He waited in an armchair in her neat living room, watching her son, or more likely grandson, Nathan (Mrs Stephens was well into her fifties, the boy about ten), bash two toy cars together in one head-on collision after another. The boy was still dressed in his school uniform, and he sat on the rug in front of the electric fire, on despite the warmth of the spring day. He ignored Simon, and the only sound he made was the explosion that accompanied each car crash.

Mrs Stephens came in carrying a tea-set on a tray. She set it down on the coffee table beside Simon’s parcel, and sat on the sofa opposite him.

‘So, did you know the area before you moved in?’ she said.

Simon nodded. ‘I used to live in a house just the other side of town.’

She glanced at the wedding band on his finger as she poured the tea. ‘And will Mrs Markham be joining you?’

Simon thumbed the ring and thought of Ellie. He guessed that Mrs Stephens knew the answer to this question— there were few reasons you moved from a house to a basement flat in the same town, and she’d seen him coming and going on his own for the past fortnight.

‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re separated. That’s why I’ve moved.’

‘I see,’ Mrs Stephens said. She handed him a cup and saucer. ‘You’ll be looking for a new wife then?’

Simon let out a hoot of laughter, more in shock than amusement, but Mrs Stephens didn’t seem to realise that she’d said anything untoward. She stared at him over the rim of her cup as she sipped her tea, and he realised that she was waiting for an answer.

‘I might let the dust settle on this one first,’ he said.

‘Do you still love her?’ Mrs Stephens said.

He paused, assuming he’d misheard her, but then realised that she’d really been so direct. He felt a flash of anger, and then confusion as to how to react. A weak ‘It’s complicated,’ was all he managed. He gulped at his tea, although it was still too hot and the room too warm.

She gestured at his cup hand with hers. ‘It’s just the ring,’ she said. ‘You’re still wearing it.’

‘Oh, that,’ he said. He meant to add something bland and innocuous, perhaps that it was just force of habit to keep it on, but he found himself telling the truth: ‘I’m just not ready to take it off.’

‘Hers was off right away though, I imagine,’ she said.

He thought back to the day he’d moved out, to sofa-surf with friends until he found the flat downstairs. That was two months ago. Ellie’s wedding ring was off her finger by that point, yes, but it had been absent for months already.

Simon offered Mrs Stephens a thin smile. He didn’t even know her first name; he wasn’t about to discuss his marriage with her.

Mrs Stephens set her cup on its saucer. He braced for another invasive question, but she turned her attention to the boy.

‘Did you meet Nathan?’ she said.

‘I did,’ Simon said, but the boy hadn’t even looked up from his cars.

She beckoned the child to them.

Nathan put his cars down and wandered over, staring at Simon. He stood beside Mr Stephens, leaning on the arm of the sofa and twisting in place on one foot.

Simon leaned forward to put his cup on the table, and a thought popped into his mind – fully formed and with an urge to be acted upon – that he has been an awful husband, that he had made a terrible mistake, and that life without Ellie wasn’t worth living.

The boy was still staring, but now he was smiling. The thought grew stronger, setting down roots, not just intrusive but compulsive, and as bleak and hopeless as depression. There was a hot water pipe running across the top of the bathroom wall in the flat downstairs, and he wondered if it might hold his weight.

Simon could feel a ring of sweat forming around his collar. He leaned back in the armchair, and the idea evaporated at once, a dark cloud that had blotted out the sun, but which had now passed by.

‘You’re doing it the wrong way,’ Mrs Stephens said.

Simon shook his head, not understanding, but she was talking to the boy. Nathan stepped forward, lingering between sofa and armchair.

Simon thought of Ellie, and how quickly their marriage had come tumbling down. They’d planted green beans together in the spring, but she would be harvesting them alone. Maybe he could call and offer to help? Maybe she would say yes. He jumped from one scenario to another, and in all of them he saw a way back to happily married life. And why not? He hadn’t been an awful husband and they hadn’t had a terrible marriage. They’d drifted apart – that was all – and that was a situation that offered hope.

‘I should get going,’ Simon said. He stood up. He would call Ellie as soon as he got back downstairs. Or maybe he would just turn up at his old house, and surprise her.

‘You’ve gone too far the other way,’ Mrs Stephens said to the boy. ‘Softly softly Nathan—she’s supposed to come here, not him go there.’

Simon had made it to the living room door. He realised that the idea of turning up at his old house – Ellie’s house now – was ridiculous. They hadn’t ‘drifted apart’ – they’d grown bored of each other – and that had festered into resentment. But earlier in the year he’d tried and failed to have an affair. Ellie had found out. That’s when she pulled the plug, before the resentment could boil over into hate. It was a wonder that she was still speaking to him.

He turned back to Mrs Stephens. ‘What did you say?’ he said.

‘Oh, it’s just a game we play.’

‘Is it?’ he said. He stepped towards her and Nathan, and felt a rush of excitement at the thought of Ellie, and an urge to run to her, to go now and never come back here. He stepped back, sensing that he was somehow stepping out of range of the boy and whatever it was that he was able to do, and back to his real feeling about his wife and their marriage: disappointment.

Mrs Stephens frowned. ‘I told you not to be a kid—I told you you’d forget how to do this properly,’ but Nathan wasn’t listening. He wandered back to the rug and picked up his toy cars.

Mrs Stephens pushed herself up and off of the sofa. ‘I’ll do it myself,’ she said.

‘What’s going on?’ Simon said. ‘You’ll do what yourself?’

‘We’d like to meet your ex-wife,’ she said. ‘It would be helpful if she could visit you. Then you could introduce us.’

This wasn’t funny, and Simon didn’t laugh this time. ‘We’re still married,’ he said, but he wished he’d told Mrs Stephens to shut up. He turned on his heels and left the flat.

He walked down the steps to the basement flat, cool air drying the sweat patches on his cheeks. Wait until Ellie heard about these weirdos, he thought, but she wouldn’t hear about this at all. Their split had been amicable enough, but they weren’t at the point where he’d be telling her anecdotes about moving out. And these two weren’t weird; they were just different. Mrs Stephens clearly lacked social skills, but she had invited him in for tea, and it didn’t feel fair to mock them, even to himself. A guilty gloom descended, and with it the vague feeling that this wasn’t the first time he’d felt down recently.

He got as far as the door to his flat before he remembered the kettle. He paused, keys in hand. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said aloud. ‘I’ll call in tomorrow after work.’

*      *      *

‘It didn’t work, did it?’ Nathan said. ‘Is the man coming back?’

‘No, it didn’t, and yes he is,’ Mrs Stephens said. She patted the parcel on the table. ‘He’ll be back again tomorrow to try to collect this.’

‘And will we try again too?’ Nathan said. He was still holding one of his toy cars, although there was no longer any need to pretend to be a little boy.

She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow I’ll try on my own.’

‘And will we be together then, like him and his wife?’

Mrs Stephens nodded. ‘Yes, just like them, Nathan. Just the very same.’

Paul Nevin is a London-born and based author of short dark fiction. His work has appeared in Fictive Dream, Idle Ink, Vamp Cat Magazine and XRAY literary magazine. You can follow Paul on Twitter at @paulnevin.

Image by josemiguels from Pixabay 

The workmen arrived at the site where they’d been building a roadside sign between a field of tall weeds on one side and a highway on the other.

Okay, said the first workman. Today we got to frame the thing out. Simple, except for what I said yesterday. The boss says we got to do the corners with fancy dovetail joints. I swear, but it’s a total waste to use dovetail joint to frame a simple outdoor sign. Oh well. It’s a job.

Yah. That’s true, said the other, just as they were both distracted by the sight of a dog walker coming their way in the distance. He stood paused momentarily, letting his dog intently browse through a large clump of weeds to the side.

Look at that, said the first workman. That dog is lucky. That is the kind of owner a dog needs. He’s not rushing the dog. He’s not impatient. He knows that the dog relies on him to have a full life—he knows the dog needs very little to be completely happy. Something as simple as when walking the dog letting the dog take the lead like he is. He stops and lets the dog nose into the weeds. He’s got no clue what’s in the dog’s mind. Most people pull the dog away. That is cruel. What if every time you or I paused to enjoy something some strange giant we’re attached to pulled us away? Very cruel are most dog walkers. But not that one. Well, here—what’s on the agenda for today? Ah, yes—time to make the frame. And, the problem today is, dovetails. The boss wants the corner joints to be dovetailed. Ain’t that the shit? You know, when I was scanning down the plans when I went up to get them from him, I stopped there. I mean, the gold and the lead and the huge posts and the deep holes were bad enough, but—dovetailed joints? On a signframe in the outdoors built out with common two by fours?

Pushing out my chest, I said, hey, boss, I can live with the solid gold and the lead and the posts and everything, but—this is not a woodworking cabinetry style pretty-boy project. There is absolutely no need to do things as difficult as dovetails—

But his hand went up, chopping off my words—and the worst was, his hand turned palm out! Do you know what it means when that particular boss puts up his hand in that particularly abrupt way, and, to boot, hey hey, palm out?

No, said the watcher—the dog had accomplished whatever it needed to hidden nose-deep in the weeds, and turned began pulling the walker toward them.

It means don’t go too far with the questions—after a while, my man, I have learned that there is a point when questioning authority of any kind where the questions though if the words are analyzed are still questions but the questioner whose aura attitude tone and all says this is a statement—and this statement is that—you are a shithead you know that boss? You are stupid—I needed to know what that smell was in the weeds—I really really needed to know I did I did I did I did—but you pulled me away—I—I have forgot the question I was trying to say but you have yanked my leash have said come boy, come now—and yanked me down, to only being capable to say two words nearly the tiniest sentence you ever said which is, Yes, boss—followed by a rain of kisses all over the sweet bosses butt saying great job, what an idea, Lord I would never have thought to do it this way, a great boss is only a great boss when the reason they’re a great boss is absolutely apparent it’s not only that they are wearing a medal saying the greatest but that behind that medal is a worthy over worthy chest deserving of it being pinned on—yes, boss. Great, boss. Of course, we’ll do dovetails. Even though it is stupid. Even though, when I go to Merchy-Mark’s Discount Framing Lumber Warehouse, there will be laughter enough when I say what is the project that if a giggle were a candleflame and a laugh were a matchlight and that were multiplied by the number of people in the economy working lumber discount warehouse jobs for minimum wage or even and more likely completely off the books paid only in cash to get by who would laugh at the notion of cornering a rough outdoor signframe with cabinetry-grade dovetail joinery, the magnitude of the communal laugh, if converted into actual firs, would dwarf the now-legendary Chicago version, of which remnants of the destruction are still apparent in that fair city today—uh. Oh. Ah.

Image by MICHOFF from Pixabay