Claire couldn’t move. Not a blink, twitch or tic.
Sam shifted into wakefulness, rolling over in bed. ‘What are you staring at? Claire, honey?’ He pushed her shoulder. Frozen solid.
At the hospital, the doctor set up heat lamps. ‘She’ll defrost. Nothing to worry about.’
Sam whispered in Claire’s rimy ear that he loved her. ‘The affair with Suzie meant nothing.’
Claire was a confessional post, a gelid priest who couldn’t dole out Frozen Hail Marys. Suzie was only the iceberg tip. Sam fessed up three others before giving Claire a polar bear hug and promising the two of them would be sunshiny fine.
Mother visited, called her a snowflake, and insisted she should snowman up. Later, sister Louise muttered that she and Mother had fallen out again and Claire was lucky to be numbed, but enough about that, guess what happened to me, me, me…
Through the ebb and flow of consciousness, Claire caught talk of her bulk – the nurses claiming she was packing on ice, despite the lamps.
Visiting hours: Mother hissed at Sam about treachery. Louise tsked Claire might never melt. Sam murmured they’d have to pull the heat-lamp plugs.
Claire opened her mouth and howled out a hurricane of ice-biting words, the icicle click of her tongue frosting Mother’s glasses. She sheered away from the bed and glided in titanic proportions through the ward, ramming the nurses’ station, crashing through walls, cracking up the concrete of the high street, to finally launch herself into the ocean with a huge champagne spray.
Only a tiny part of her was visible once she settled on the water, but the rest – jagged, glinting, colossal – skulked below, ready to pulverise.
Some of Sharon’s shorties and flash have been published on-line and in magazines, including Retreat West, Phare, Bath Flash Anthology and Brighton Prize anthology. As a tuneless wonder, she once sobered up in under five seconds when forced on stage for a karaoke session. She tweets as @SharonBoyle50 – @sharon54.bsky.social
Photo – AWeith, CC BY-SA 4.0
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