Competition Thirty Winning Flash Fiction: After Dinner by Caroline Mckenzie
My mother-in-law clears the empty plates. I offer to help, but she doesn’t look up. Her words flutter like napkins; no, thank you, she can manage. I wonder if she would have spoken at all if manners hadn’t insisted.
My father-in-law proposes a digestif. Unveils the amber bottles, lined up like polished trophies. He holds court with his knowledge, each bottle a story to tell. We sip and nod and ooh and aah. I taste the anaesthetic. I haven’t learned to like it. My inferior palette tastes smoke and iodine. The ladder draws ever nearer.
Coats are fetched. The hallway smells of polish and roast. Hugs all round. I can feel his hovering hand, then private fingers climb the rungs of my back, urgent in the tangle of my hair.
He releases me into the taxi. My skin crawls.
I watch my reflection between headlight flares. With each beam, my thoughts reset and start from the beginning, unable to process further. My husband’s head drops to my shoulder.
Something still stirs along the length of my spine.
Caroline’s work has been published in Irish Country Magazine, People’s Friend Magazine, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal and on the Free Flash Fiction website. She lives in North East England with two greyhounds.
Photo by Townsend Walton on Unsplash
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