Death of a Plumber
Flash Fiction
by
Vincent was sitting in the middle of the
park bench, his arms outstretched along its back. He imagined he was flying.
From this vantage point at the top of the slope near the park exit, he noticed
an old lady struggling up the gradient towards him. Like so many homeless
people, she was pushing a shopping trolley piled high with an odd mixture of
junk she had probably picked up on her wanderings around town. Leaping to his
feet, he rushed down to lend her a hand.
“Need any help?”
“That’s very kind of you,” she replied, “I
would certainly be grateful for some assistance.”
Far from living on the streets, she was on
her way home. The trolley, which Vincent was now pushing, was crammed with a
motley collection of the strangest things, including a small collapsible table,
a rabbit, silk scarves, a top hat, and a host of other items he couldn’t easily
make out. Overcome by curiosity, he asked her what she did with it all.
“I’m a conjuror,” she replied. “You
probably find it hard to believe, but I’ve been practising magic for years.
Nowadays, it’s mostly kids’ birthday parties. I’m on my way back from one right
now. Years ago when I was much younger, I even had a stage show. How about you,
young man? What do you do for a living?”
“Oh, I’ve got a boring office job. I’m on
my lunch break at the moment and I’ve been trying to come up with a few ideas.”
“What sort of ideas? For a new job?”
“Sort of. I realize it sounds
ridiculous, but I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I’ve tried my hand at flash
fiction, yet everything I send to publishers is rejected for the same reason:
my ‘characters are wooden and don’t engage the reader’.” He imitated the
dismissive, lofty, tones of a busy editor.
“Oh, that’s a shame,” the old lady
replied. “So what the publishers mean is you don’t have the gift of bringing
your characters to life?”
“I suppose so,” he agreed.
By this time they had reached the old
lady’s home, at which point she turned to Vincent and said, quite out of the
blue, “Don’t worry, young man. In exchange for your kindness, I can bestow that
gift upon you.”
“Bestow that gift upon you,” he mused,
“Who the hell speaks like that?” Realizing now that she was one sandwich short
of a picnic, Vincent thought he had better humour her:
“You mean you can turn me into one
of those writers who make their characters come alive on the page?”
“Ye-es,” she replied as she closed the
door, “something like that.”
“This old bird is batshit crazy,” he
muttered under his breath as he walked away.
*****
That evening, back home in his study,
Vincent pondered what had happened. Perhaps he could turn the experience into a
short story or flash fiction. When he sat down at his desk to make a start on
it, he noticed a small pool of water next to his computer. He looked up to see
a wet patch on the ceiling where a pipe must have sprung a leak.
“Damn it! I’ll have to get hold of a
plumber.”
So, opening his laptop, Vincent typed
“plumber” into the search engine. No sooner had he written the word than a
plumber materialized next to him in his study and proceeded to fix the leak! So
that was the nature of the old lady’s “gift”. It dawned on him that she must
have heard what he said about her being crazy as he walked away from her door,
and this was her revenge. She had effectively scuppered his ambitions of being
a writer because it would now be impossible for him to write the name, trade,
or profession of anyone on his laptop or in a notebook without those people
springing up from nowhere in his tiny house or wherever he happened to be at
the time.
“Oh, come on, think!” he said to himself,
“there must be a way round this.”
Then he had a brainwave. He waited for the
plumber to finish mending the pipe and before he could ask for payment, Vincent
deleted the word “plumber” from the screen, causing the man to vanish into thin
air. Next, he typed “billionaire philanthropist” and sure enough one appeared
next to him.
“How much do you need?” the billionaire
asked.
“Oh, five million should be enough to be
going on with,” replied Vincent.
“No problem. Give me the number of your
bank account and I’ll make the transfer straightaway.”
Once the operation had been completed and
Vincent had checked his account, he deleted the billionaire just as he had done
with the plumber.
“And now for some real fun,” thought
Vincent and, grinning broadly, he typed:
“Beautiful young blonde nymphomaniac” ...
Tony Dawson, an Englishman, has lived in Seville
since 1989, having had careers in higher education in both England and Spain.
He’s published poems in print in Critical Survey, Shoestring Press, Pure Slush,
Otherwise Engaged Literary and Arts Journal Volume 10 Winter 2022 and 11 Summer
2023 /Part I), Our Changing Earth Vol. 1; online at London Grip, The Five-Two,
The Syndic Literary Journal, Beatnik Cowboy, Home Planet News, Cajun Mutt
Press, Poetry and Covid, and Loch Raven Review. He’s published flash fiction in
print in Chiron Review, Pure Slush and Otherwise Engaged Literary and Arts
Journal Volume 10 Winter 2022; online at Literally Stories, and Syndic Literary
Journal. Both genres have also been published in Home Planet News in Spanish.
He recently published Afterthoughts, a small collection of poems https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/06/london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson/
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