The 2045 Overture by Jenny Woodhouse
The Bristol Beacon, dark and silent, loomed out of the murk. A chorus of expectation swelled from the crowd as a truck pulled up on Broad Quay. They surged forward, hungry and expectant. But the police cordon, scruffy and unshaven, some in helmets, some in flat caps, one even in a tattered stab vest, held.
James stood apart from the crowd. Rain pelted on his balding head. He shivered in his worn coat, an unremarkable elderly man. He saw the shape of the Beacon, grey and vague in the mist, and remembered how it used to glow copper in the sunshine. A time before the world turned. A time before hunger.
Words sighed and rippled in counterpoint through the crowd. Bread from the woodwinds, Spuds from the brass, and a hopeful cadenza of Sausages from the first violins. The woodwinds entered with Cheese. His right arm pulsed with energy as if it still held his baton. The youngest conductor ever.
Then, this space had been packed with food stalls, right down to the Floating Harbour. He tried to recall the scents of curries and paellas, burgers and chips, but couldn’t. In these times, you were lucky if your food didn’t smell off, or worse.
And there was nowhere now where food stalls could stand. Water bubbled and surged, reaching the pavements, pushing through the doors of the disused cafes and bars on the harbourside. Warm, sticky air brought sweat to his forehead. His belly grumbled.
A pack of feral dogs and a dozen skinny cats besieged the truck as the driver and his mate jumped down from the cab. They opened the back doors. Was the food coming? Staccato yapping and vibrato mewing almost drowned the muted a cappella of the human chorus.
The men began to unload. Clinks and clangs, cymbals and kettledrums. Perhaps they were planning to establish a soup kitchen. But no, they began to unload crowd barriers in a metallic crescendo. Roars and moans from the crowd, swelling with fury, pushing forward. The police drew their asps. Tasers were fired.
James neither saw nor heard. He was back in the Bristol Beacon, his baton summoning the cannons of the 1812 Overture. Drums beat in his head as he staggered and fell. Nobody noticed.
After she retired Jenny Woodhouse studied creative writing with the Open University. Since then her output has shrunk from novel to short stories to flash. A new addiction to microfiction threatened her total disappearance until she discovered the novella in flash.
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