Fiction: Love

Hello there. A person I know is running a writing competition at the moment. You can find details of it here: @DustandLove's Competition. Should you wish to enter, I'm sure that would make him very happy indeed.

Here is my entry to the competition. It weighs in at 300 words exactly, although it was originally quite a bit more. Apologies if there are now bits which don't make sense, though I think I've made it so there are not.

Love

Brian, across the road, lives alone. His wife’s dead, and his son moved out long before we moved here. He doesn’t see him, or even speak to him. Hasn’t for years, apparently.

Like most lonely old people, Brian loves a chat. He doesn’t need much of an opening to tell you about his army days, or the many years he spent with his wife. The one thing he doesn’t often talk about is his son. The one time he did, he described him as “a little shit”, but didn’t say why.

There’s a sadness in Brian’s face, a permanent feature, sitting beneath the white beard and deep within the wrinkles. I wonder whether it was one specific thing which put the sadness there, or many. I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out.

Most evenings I watch the news. Tonight, the headline story is a violent armed robbery in the city, the CCTV footage grainy but dramatic; the perpetrator remains armed, unidentified and uncaught. Police advise nearby residents to keep their homes secure. Don’t allow entry to anyone you don’t know. I’m not worried, but I check the house just in case, it’s only sensible.

Later, as I’m going to bed, a car comes into the road at speed, its tyres barely maintaining traction as the driver hits the brakes. Peering out of my window I see a man emerge. He doesn’t look grainy now, even in the poor light. It’s the fugitive, and he’s approaching Brian’s house.

The old man comes to the door, and I’m terrified for him. Why open it? But the two men embrace, before Brian furtively ushers the man inside. He looks up, sees me. I drop the curtain quickly, but not before I’ve seen that the sadness is gone from his face. Brian is smiling.

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I would love to receive feedback, good or bad, on the story in the comments area below. Go on.

Love

Funny old thing, innit, love?

Makes you feel all gooey inside. You ARE all gooey inside, whether you’re in love or not. Don’t think about it too much though. Urgh, nasty gooey people innards. Erm, anyway, when you’re all loved up and wotnot, the ever present gooiness is foremost in your consciousness, replacing whatever mundane crap it was you were thinking about beforehand. The latest episode of Hollyoaks. What you’re having for dinner. How awesome it would be if you could fly. All these things pale into insignificance when love is in the air.

It’s one of those things which, no matter how old and wise we may get, it can still creep up and confuse us, like a ninja with a book full of brain teasers. And if adults can find love a confusing thing, what chance to babies have? No chance, that’s what.

Now, you all know I’m a confirmed liberal, so I’m all for a bit of tolerance and acceptance when it comes to love. But there are certain things which are plainly still off limits. The loves which dare not speak their name. Forbidden loves.

I always knew that being a dad would bring with it new challenges, but I didn’t expect that barely a year into my parenting career I’d be having to think of a way to tell my son I didn’t approve of the object of his romantic feelings.

You see, Cam is smitten. Utterly smitten. She’s small, perfectly formed and wears a permanent smile. A little noisy at times, but utterly reliable and well known to the family.

She is also a vacuum cleaner.

They (who?) say you can’t help who you fall in love with, and Cam is living proof of that.

Love is... a household appliance?

Whenever Hetty (feminine sibling of Henry) comes out from her home under the stairs, my son is transfixed. He maintains a distance at first, having clearly inherited his father’s shyness. He looks on, rendered motionless by the intensity of his interest in the bright pink vision as she whisks about the living room carpet, feasting on the assorted detritus of our lives.

Eventually, he plucks up the courage to make contact, approaching her carefully and placing his hands on her. Sure, it would probably be more polite to start up a conversation, but when your vocabulary is limited to three words it can be a little difficult, especially if your conversational partner can only make a loud whooshing noise.

When the time comes for Hetty to return to the cupboard, he waves a sad goodbye and looks doleful for a few moments. Lucky for him, his attraction to inanimate objects doesn’t end at pink vacuum cleaners, he quickly moves on to something else: Mrs L’s hairdryer, a bedside lamp, the Xbox controller.

Woe

It’s all training for the eventual, inevitable, real deal sometime in the future. A time when I will lie awake at night worrying about him, worrying about what mistakes he may be making, thinking back to the (many) that I made.

I’m glad I don’t have to think about that for a while. I think it might make my brain melt.

Kiss

Babies are always changing, developing, growing. Much like a Terminator, they are a learning computer, taking their experience of the world and using it to become a more efficient killer.

Wait, that doesn’t sound quite right. Killer? Sorry, wrong consonant in the middle there.

Kisser. That’s what I meant.

Cam’s been learning to express his affection, via the medium of kissing. Aww.

He may be a bit behind the curve on this one, I’m not sure. Certainly his younger cousin has been dishing out the sloppy lip smacks for a while already. Cam’s been holding back though, waiting for right moment.

Actually, that’s only half true. For a while now he’s been more than happy to engage in a bit of one way snogging action with various inanimate objects.

The squidgy bellied pig in his farmyard book? Irresistible. Naturally I assumed he had simply realised the appeal of bacon.

Big Ted, his aptly monikered soft toy? Enticing. Several times a day the fur around his mouth is left glistening with saliva.

But, until very recently, kisses for people were definitely not on the menu. Putting on a brave face, my wife and I made do with his (excellent) hugs. But our lips and hearts yearned for more, and now we get it. Satisfied that his technique has been honed, our beautiful boy has been bestowing upon us some high quality affection.

He’s not one for subtlety; once he’s decided someone is getting a kiss he accelerates toward the recipient at a full speed, thundering crawl. Upon arrival, the kissee is held tightly in a two handed grip, and treated to a full, open mouthed contact.  It’s a good idea to have a tissue handy, Cam has saliva in abundance, and is keen to share it.

Which, obviously, is lovely. Really, really lovely. Cam’s becoming a really affectionate little boy, and I love that. Hugs are common these days, waving is near constant, a beaming smile  whenever me or Mrs L enter a room is almost mandatory. He’s telling us he likes us, even though he can’t yet tell us in words, and that means the world to me.

It is a little disconcerting when he tries to stick his tongue in your mouth though.

Forest

We are all sharing a bed while we’re in the forest, because one of us is not well. His body is stripped of all but a nappy, his fever is furious and hard to keep on top of. The drugs aren’t working like they usually do. He looks so much smaller, as if the illness has diminished his physical presence. In a foetal ball, perched atop a pillow, he occasionally jerks and shudders before resettling.

I wonder what goes through his head to make his body do that. Fearful, feverish dreams? He seems scared, and it hurts me to know that I can do nothing about it.

His sleep is snatched, sporadic, restless, and so is ours. It’s quiet here, the birds and animals are asleep, there are no roads nearby. A baby’s cry is far more piercing when it’s the only sound.

A poorly boy taking a nap. Aww.

We get up early and look outside at the trees, the water, the rocks and the morning light. I wonder aloud why people have chosen to live anywhere but here. I feel more at ease and at home here than I ever do in the tarmac coated sprawl of a city or town. I suppose there just aren’t many jobs in the forest.

I'm not feeling well, can you tell?

The arrival of morning signals the departure of the fever. The rash remains, to remind us we’re not done with the whining just yet, and woe betide should you run out of Calpol. Suitably dosed, we head out on the bikes, weaving between the other assorte

d short term forest dwellers, most of whom look like they haven’t seen a bike before, let alone ridden one. Crashes are narrowly avoided and the swimming pool is reached.

Cool water laps at our skin and rinses away memories of the unpleasant night time, replaced by chlorine’s gift: desiccated skin. But he loves it. He thinks he can swim, we do not. He wants no aid to buoyancy apart from one of us, so we scoot around the pool, pushing him ahead of us. He remains utterly calm while we change him back into dry land clothing and, though a part of me feels foolish, we believe that the worst of the illness, a reaction to the MMR vaccination, is over.

Bedtime proves my foolish part correct. The fever is back. At 3:30am I meander through the haze of sleep to give him Calpol. He sleeps next to us again.

In the morning I discover I’ve left the lid off the Calpol. An ant crawls near to the bottle. An urgent trip to the shop to buy more occurs. We swim again. He loves it again. I continue to love the forest, continue to love the time I am having with my family, continue to hope it will somehow not come to an end on Friday, when they let the cars back in and we have to leave.

Forest at dusk. Pretty.

Our first holiday as three hasn’t been the easiest four days, but I will always remember it and cherish it.