Amy totters down the airplane steps like a newborn foal unfolding too-long limbs after a cramped gestation. Jim is still jittery with virgin flyer’s nerves and post—wedding euphoria when they check into the hotel, wafting at the cluster of insects buzzing around the desk. Not quite the salubrious joint he expected. Formalities over, they traipse along a corridor, green fluorescence flickering to a twitchy rhythm. Amy fumbles with the lock. He picks her up and staggers into the bridal suite.
‘Ah,’ she says, ‘undress me.’ He unzips the dress her mother gift wrapped her in twelve hours earlier.
Amy sits on the toilet, watching a fly zigzag across the mirror, listening to her husband’s gentle postcoital snoring. Rolls the word husband around in her head, thinks she prefers boyfriend.
She surveys the airconditioned bathroom. A pair of lizards, so still she thinks they are plastic, sits on a pipe. She gazes at their miniscule perfection, sees the hint of movement, peers at flickering tongues tasting the air.
‘What are you doing?’ his voice, already worn down with the weight of marriage, bounces off tiled walls, ‘Come back to bed.’
Jim’s hand is a hot knife on her ice cream cool skin. She edges away, grateful for the vast queen size bed, murmurs, ‘Sleep’.
Amy lies still as his breathing softens, letting her bones set in some new married pattern. Her eyes practise swivelling in the gloom, learn to process kaleidoscope images. Her tongue flickers, tasting the air, waiting for that fly.
Anne mainly writes flash. Recent stories have appeared at WestWord, Flash 500, Free Flash Fiction, NFFD, Cranked Anvil, The Hoolets Nook and TrashCatLit. When not writing, Anne looks after the finances of a charity, walks, sings and dances, and spends as much time as possible with her adored grandson.
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