Short Fiction
Issue #2
A Sidereal Morning
Sunlight had slid through the blinds as morning approached, and touched on the dark splashes of hair that spilt upwards from a gap in the duvet. The hair had spread like thick treacle across the pillowcase, probing and extending its tendrils in the morning light and forming random peaks and troughs where a night of restless sleep had agitated it. A pair of cracked lips parted gently in an unfelt breeze, their parched surface lacquered by a glaze of spittle and hardened by a sharp intake of breath. She had lain still, savouring the feeling of her pulse in them as they emulated the swell and crush of her heart. Fingers had rested like infant mice in the warmth of her palm, struggling blindly for the comfort of familiar flesh, and one well-oiled eyelid had flicked open like the shutter of a camera. Nostrils became distracted by the overpowering scent of linen, echoing the tang of the sweat of the previous night, which had slid down the arch of her spine and pooled in the small of the back before being transferred to the arid fibres.
She could feel the humidity of the figure beside her, the sickly odour of perspiration amplified by the invasive sun, yet she was trapped between it and the wall, with nothing but a damp mattress and a small patch of pillow to herself. The mattress was old and sagged towards the middle where the springs had been compressed by ten thousand nights’ sleep, so she was being held at an uncomfortable angle tilted towards him by his superior weight. The mattress, whose infusion of stains and fluids had lain dormant in the cool of the night, seemed to be expelling them like a wrung sponge now the morning had come, and the discomfort this produced forced her to alertness. She tensed her body, one foot shoved down the side of the bed to gain purchase on the wooden frame, and then elevated herself in a crabwise crawl across his stagnant figure until she fell in a tumbled heap on the floor. She held her breath for ten seconds to gauge whether her departure had caused any disturbance. Seeing that it had not she dressed quickly from her bundle of clothes, catching the aging scent of washing powder mixing uneasily with the aroma of cigarette smoke which clung to them. Her hair resisted as she pulled it into a tight arrangement over her head, fingers snatching loose strands back up as they fell in unruly waves before the snapping of a taught hair band could restore order. She quietly closed the bedroom door on her exit and began to take light steps down the stairs.
Outside there was activity. People swarmed blindly towards their destinations, clasping briefcases, school bags and reused shopping carriers with white-knuckled determination. Despite the sun there was clarity to the air which some people had interpreted as the coming of a new cold bout, and many were regretting the coat they had brought out. She had just shrugged off hers, and flicked it over her left shoulder with one finger still hooked in the lining, a pale anchor dropped in the dark folds of material. Heading into the park, she paused at a bench which faced the rising sun in the east and sunk quickly down onto it. The coat sprawled beside her, and after inhaling deeply she stuffed one hand into the right pocket and fumbled for her cigarettes and lighter. The coat yielded one bent cigarette and a book of matches from a pub called The Watchman.
‘Fuck’
She stuck the cigarette in her mouth and splintered two matches from the twenty or so in the book, striking them hard against the rough strip and cupping the fertile flame close to the tip of the crippled white stick. A rip in the side was haemorrhaging tobacco so she kept pressure on it and sucked greedily until the lit end was nearly burning her fingers. Exhaling fine smoke from both nostrils and mouth, she tilted her head upwards towards the sun and closed her eyes as if she could photosynthesise. The coat was still slumped. Suddenly standing, the cigarette returned to ashes under her heel and the coat was roughly dragged back to her shoulder. Walking with purpose and driven by the abdominal pangs for caffeine she joined the ranks of the commuters, dragged from the sun towards the buildings that clustered like the raised skin of a grazed knee. The city absorbed her.