Ho!
Ho! Ho!
Flash Fiction Story
by Tony Dawson
Jack and Jill were taking their evening stroll around the Alameda. It was always awkward because Jack’s wife was never very communicative. Whenever he tried to start a conversation, he was met by her stolid silence. Jill’s default position was being fed up.
In contrast, the Alameda was thronged with people sitting in groups at tables, drinking, conversing, and laughing. Yes, laughing, something that Jill seemed incapable of doing.
Why is my wife such a killjoy, Jack wondered, so he turned to her and asked her, “Why don’t you ever laugh?” As he did so, he caught his foot on the splayed leg of a table and was sent sprawling. The last thing Jack heard before he lost consciousness was his wife’s laughter.
Hospital
Jack was lying in a hospital bed, his head bandaged, his arm plugged into the drip-feed. Jill, sparkling in a way that she had never been before, was leaning over him when he opened his eyes. She immediately started speaking volubly, asking between titters how he was.
“Sorry, dear, but it was funny the way you ended up face down on the Alameda. I couldn’t help laughing.”
He gazed mistily at her, unable to recognize this cheerful woman as the same one that he had been living with for 10 years.
A nurse came into the room. “How is he? Will he be OK? He hasn’t said a word to me.”
“That’s because he suffered brain damage when he fell and has lost the power of speech.”
Home
“Would you like to go for a walk, dear?” smiled Jill. Her husband had been discharged a week before and she was still getting used to his muteness. Now she understood the saying: “speech is silver, but silence is golden.” She loved it.
It was dark when they set off for the Alameda. Jack looked worried after the accident that had left him speechless. That evening, the Alameda was less crowded than usual. However, a new menace now threatened the unwary: yobs on electric scooters who delighted in threading their way at top speed between people out having a stroll, whizzing silently by as close as possible without warning.
Jill, a new person since hubby’s accident, was prancing about like a two-year-old when she suddenly moved to her right into the path of an oncoming scooter. Jack opened his mouth as a reflex to shout a warning, but no sound came out. Jill was thrown high into the air and broke her neck on landing.
Tony Dawson, an Englishman, has lived in Seville since 1989. He took up creative writing during the pandemic to maintain his sanity and has since published over 100 poems and 15 pieces of flash fiction both in print and online in the USA, UK, and Australia.
He has two poetry collections, Afterthoughts, https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/06/london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson/
and
Musings, https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/12/london-grip-poetry-review-tony-dawson-2/
He also has one collection of flash fiction, Curiouser and Curiouser. All three books are available on Amazon
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