Granddad always boasted how he had a plate in his head; when we opened him up it dropped out in one piece. This prompted more probing when Gran recalled all the wedding gifts that had disappeared throughout their marriage, one by one, along with their dreams.
A fluted crystal glass was stashed in his liver. Gran wept angry tears as an engraved cake slice fell out of his bottom, clanging like a bell as it bounced on the terracotta tiles. He hid everything from me, she wailed. His hopes and fears. Faith and doubt. Devoured my devotion without a pinch of regret. Swallowed his feelings with a side order of cutlery. Two love spoons, knotted and gnarled, carved from a long dead Welsh oak, slipped from his oesophagus like fish slit from a shark’s belly. Only the silver sugar tongs, like his heart, were missing.
Gran gathered up her long-lost booty, skidding on the entrails twisted with ivory silk that spilled from his gut. We slunk away, repulsed by this outpouring. Leaving the new widow alone with her grief, to resolve and unravel what remained of her memories.
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First published in With One Eye on the Cows: Bath Flash Fiction Volume Four, 2019.
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