Doug Morton
Jul 21, 2017 · 6 min read

What a brilliant idea. Flash fiction. I have to date stayed away from fiction since I just don’t seem to have the stamina. This may be a way of easing me in. It reminded me of one such story I did write ( and ran out of steam ) and stored away as something which I might return to. We had just bought our villa in Spain and inherited a large rock in the middle of the pool. Lying by it one day, a thought popped into my head. How did it get there? And so, with loads of time on my hands I decided I would channel Tom Sharpe and answer my own question. Here is what I wrote.

The Rock

It wasn’t dark though it was past midnight as she lay there floating on the pool. All the stars in the galaxy had turned out for her and the Moon was full. She probably didn’t hear the faint, distant cackle like high voltage lines after the rain but others did.

Dauphine Perforce lay marooned in the large purple ring she had poured herself into hours ago while the Sun was still high. Looking up, since that was the only practical option, the stars in all their beauty served only to deepen her melancholy. If she ever possessed beauty, it had long since departed shooed away by the ravages of alcohol and too much Sun. All the other excesses, since she didn’t discriminate, resulted in a kind of half inflated body full of creases and rolls, all with a general downward trajectory. If she was a super hero, she’d be sumo woman; at the same time crushing and imprisoning her adversaries by sitting on them heavily. Her feet, head and hands, though too small in proportion to the rest of her body, were still pudgy. Her chosen style credo was art deco slash garish. Stripped for the pool she had rejected the simplicity of a one piece in favour of a bikini most of which was lost amongst the hills and valleys of her flesh. That which could be seen comprised a white background with gold and sky blue detailing. There was a diamante chain somewhere and large, coloured gem stones tumbled along the line of her breasts. The horror of her thong hid under her. She was the only human object clearly visible from outer space.

Her husband had long since retired to bed. But before doing so he had frequently restored Dauphine’s pina colada so that now the cold pool water lapping around her tube encircled bare buttocks was the only reminder that she was still alive. Perforce probably did have a christian name but if he did even he had forgotten it because no one called him anything other than Perforce. Even his children. Tall and thin but no longer straight he walked like a puppet though he had no strings except the ones Dauphine pulled 24/7; an advantage she gained having discovered his secret when they were much younger. He too enjoyed a drink a little too much which combined with exposure to the Sun had rendered his skin tree like. Though he wasn’t classically handsome, he had an important air as trees sometimes have. A keen golfer, he preferred sleeveless sweaters and everything check. But as he lay asleep something was nibbling at his soul.

He was standing on a rock overlooking a large lake at night when all of a sudden the water drained and what remained was a beautiful city. Street lights twinkled and he could clearly see the headlights of cars moving along but they had no drivers. In fact there was no sign of life at all. Dogs were barking but out of sight. Nothing living could be seen. As he approached the outskirts, the city’s lights dimmed and he felt resistance around his shoes. When he looked down, he was up to his ankles in mud so that eventually he was held firm and could no longer move. Then a noise like thunder and the lake began to refill as if a dam had broken upstream. At the moment of his drowning death he woke up breathing heavily. No one knows if he noticed he was alone in bed but in any event, he turned and went back to sleep without a thought for Dauphine such was his apathy towards her.

How different it had all been twenty years ago when they volunteered to leave the land of their birth. They weren’t in love then but they were good for each other. The children were grown up and had left so there seemed no good reason not to take on the adventure of building a golf resort amongst the coastal hills of Southern Spain. But that was long ago and now this was to be their last day. For Perforce it was just another day full of the same routine but Dauphine had set out to make the most of it. She wouldn’t see the Sun again and it just didn’t seem right to drink pinas, as she called them, in grey old Blighty. By now Perforce was deeply asleep while Dauphine sank further into her melancholy and into the purple tube so that her legs were high above her head pointing to the stars; a position she hadn’t adopted in thirty years. Young people were spilling out of late night bars excited by a noise like a jet fighter ripping the sky.

The flaming ball was now fully developed having crashed through the atmosphere with a force literally like nothing on Earth. It’s tail sparkled with a million diamonds as if the God’s were sharpening their swords. The intense heat had forged the rock to a blunted point, now ready to give itself up to it’s destiny. It could have missed the little blue planet and sailed on into the void of Space. It could have hit the Moon plunging our dear little home into a new ice age. It could have centred on New York or London serving up a glorious death to thousands and rending acres of headlined newsprint. But not this meteor. This meteor was fated to a less celebrated ending, a private affair.

This meteor now at the height of it’s beauty, glowing red yellow and brimming with energy had only one place to fall. Searing through the night sky, now very close, it could be seen reflected in the horn rimmed, white and gold framed sunglasses perched on Dauphine’s nose. Viewed from outside her body, as was her perspective at that very moment, the broken star expanded it’s size like an object viewed through a zoom lens suddenly twisted. She didn’t resist. Instead she breathed in deeply and gave herself up to it’s full impact. As it hit square in the middle of the purple tube it plunged Dauphine through the deep pool and beyond to it’s underbelly. The sound was like a steam train jumping it’s tracks and plunging full heat into a river. The purple ring exploded into a gazzillion shards which vaporised and drifted up lazily passed the Moon. Steam mist settled over the pool gradually becoming absorbed by the colder water, and the rock emerged standing above the surface like a relic shark fin. It would never move again.

The young people over in the town gaped arm in arm and somehow felt more alive than was normal. Many of them fell in love for the first time that night but by the morning some other fascination captured them. Perforce awoke before dawn as he always did. His stroll by the pool recorded nothing new. He wasn’t sure if the strange rock in the middle of the pool had always been there but he didn’t really care. Nor did he mourn the absence of Dauphine. He assumed she had left him for the tennis coach she had spent most of her recent afternoons courting. So when his taxi arrived he loaded both their suitcases and headed for home.

The rock still stands in the middle of the pool to this day. Neighbours say it is possessed and, if you listen carefully during stormy nights, you can hear a woman’s voice shrieking amidst the thunder and lightning. It screams, “ Perforce! get me out from under this fucking rock”. Yet, strangely, nobody guessed it must be Dauphine. Perhaps some things are best left just as they are.

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    Doug Morton

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    Practicing writing because I love words.....

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