Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose 2024 – Commended
“You must get bored, living here on your own.”
Josie is ready, answers lined up like the plates of famous castles on her living room wall. “Not me, I love my little flat.” Josie counts off on her knobbled fingers. “I’m my own boss,
I know exactly where everything is. And, ask me what’s in that fridge. Go on.”
Connie never asks. Her need to take charge has coursed through her veins for as long as Josie can remember. She plants her hands in her gilet pockets. “Must get lonely living all by yourself. Tiny place like this…drive you barmy.”
After sixty-seven years, Josie knows there’s no point arguing with her older sister. Connie married well and rattles around her rambling bungalow. Of course, the flat seems small, but it’s just right. She doesn’t feel lonely, and she doesn’t mind living alone.
Over the years, she’s come to prefer it.
Late one summer afternoon in Josie’s stuffy flat, they’re having that same old conversation. Josie fusses over her stained teapot. “It’s not like I don’t go anywhere, or see anyone. I’m not a bleedin’ hermit.” And, you’re here every damn Thursday, hanging around like an old wraith, she thinks.
“If you say so.” Connie opens a window.
Josie sniffs. “You’re just jealous of…my independence.”
Connie splutters. “Hardly. I’ve got Connor. I’d go mad living on my tod.”
Click–click–click.
Josie, running low on gratitude, hopes that Connie’s latest knitted creation is destined for the homeless – any worthy cause, other than her.
“Well, I like having my own place. I’m settled here now.”
Josie really does feel that way.
Until it starts.
*
One night, when Josie switches off her television, she hears it. Not loud, almost plaintive.
Beep!
It’s hard to locate, but then, her hearing isn’t what it used to be. It’s probably some low battery alert.
She goes to bed.
The next morning, Josie is leaning on the breakfast bar, reading the Echo.
Beep!
She moves through her flat, drawn by the siren call, pausing in the middle of each room, eyes closed, concentrating hard. “Where are you?” she calls.
She finally traces the sound to her cluttered lounge, but can’t work out which direction it’s coming from.
Beep!
Josie frowns. “Do you belong to me?”
Nothing.
“Been here long?”
Beep!
It’s not so bad; it’s a bit like company. Josie turns up the radio. It’s an adaptation of
The Daughters of the Late Colonel, but it irks her…the accents are all wrong.
*
After a couple of days, Josie experiments. Not taking the extra-terrestrial route, but the sound as been making the effort to communicate…very rude not to reciprocate. Josie bangs a wooden spoon on an old aluminium pan.
Bee-eep!
Next, she tries the timer on the microwave.
Ping!
Then, just as she believes that the sound is ignoring her…
Beep!
Calling it the sound seems rude. Perhaps it’s even…TLC, The Late Colonel, making himself heard again. Fine to be anonymous for a few days, but he really deserves better now they’re co-habiting, thinks Josie…LC.
Beep!
She smiles. LC agrees.
*
Josie tries to explain about the sound.
Connie peers at her. “I know you were getting stressed.”
Josie shakes her head. “No more than usual.”
“Sleeping?”
“On and off.” Only between beeps…none of Connie’s damn business.
“Have you considered…” Connie studies her boots. “That it…might be…
something serious?”
Josie crosses her arms.
When LC ups his rate of Beeps per Hour – domineering as ever – Josie hunts out a pair of foam bullets from her jumbled bathroom cabinet. She squishes them like pineapple-yellow putty, inserting one in each ear.
Beep!
“Ha! Take that,” she calls to the muffled sound.
The earplugs give her the illusion of control. She wears them in the daytime too. At night, she lies in her narrow bed, stewing. Connie means well. And, what if it is something serious…who would she call? Builders? A slew of noisy sawing, drilling invaders, leaving dust and muck everywhere. She shudders.
Beep!
Too bloody right, answers Josie.
*
Josie monitors LC from her recliner-rocker, dozing through a television documentary with the subtitles on.
“Persecution of witches.” She adjusts an ear-plug. “Hearing noises. They’d have had me on trial, you know.”
Beep!
Is it a camera tracking her? She’d marched in a few good protests in her day, much to Connie’s disdain. She grins at the idea that someone might still consider her worthy of surveillance. Then she growls. Is Connie…spying on her?
Beep!
She gives a two finger salute, and returns to her crossword. Five down, eight letters. Persistent ringing in the ears.
Beep!
Josie crouches on her haunches in her attic, surrounded by mountains of old clothes, books, photos and papers.
Was that sound LC? Or…something new, more frequent?
*
Grunting, she lifts the flooring panels, steadily working her way along, checking until only one little chipboard square remains. Perching beside her atoll of cast-off things, she listens.
The ancient Greeks would say that the appearance of this sound was a gift or a curse. Nothing.
She scuttles to the ladder, edges through the ceiling hatch and into her flat, feeling every muscle in her scrawny body.
She checks her lounge shelves and unzips the sofa cushions.
“Keeping me waiting on the doorstep like I’ve got nothing else to do,” grizzles Connie, when Josie finally answers the door. “You look rough.”
Connie has also increased her frequency. Now she drops in every day. “Haven’t
slept much,” says Josie. “I’ve been looking for it. The source.”
Eyebrows raised, Connie surveys the skewiff cushions, their amber foam-chip guts spilled
over the antique rug. Stacks of books and CDs lurk on the floor beside empty bookcases and the coffee table turned turtle, useless legs jutting in the air. “Any joy?”
“Zilch, zero and none.”
Connie clicks with concern. “What if it is something serious?”
Josie shrugs. “The sparkie’s doing some testing.” She grimaces, keen not to become Connie’s next project. Now she’ll have to find an electrician, or she’ll never hear the end
of it. “Haven’t you got samba class?”
“Zumba,” says Connie. “You want to get your hearing checked.”
“No, I don’t.” Josie steers Connie to the front door.
Not at the moment, not while she’s sharing a flat with TLC.
*
It catches Josie by surprise. Finally, she recognises the rapping and excavates her ear-plugs from her ears.
When she answers the front door, Connie is waiting, a little vein is throbbing on
her temple. “Where the hell have you been? Give me a hug.” Connie smothers Josie, drenching her in figgy body lotion.
Josie frees herself and ushers her sister inside.
“Looks like you’ve been burglarized.” Scanning the lounge, Connie sucks her teeth. “Time to get serious.”
“The electrician can’t find anything,” says Josie.
Connie rolls her eyes.
*
“Don’t worry, he’s changed the batteries on all my alarms.” Josie stares at Connie’s shiny black…bossy…boots. She chuckles. Some things never change.
Connie scowls. “And, you’re not answering your phone. Lost your mobile again?” Josie finds it hard to listen with Connie carrying on, but then…ah-haaaaa…
Beep!
“There! Listening?” says Connie.
“Course,” says Josie.
Beep!
LC – as she calls him now – is admirably unreserved with visitors. Then she notices that Connie is still talking.
“…knock off that strong coffee too. And, I’ve brought shortbread.”
Josie tries to mask the sound by raising her voice. “Thanks.”
Beep!
Connie tilts her head like a curious parrot.
“I— ”
“Shhhhhhh!” Connie’s eyes are narrow as a television presenter stalking a rare species.
Sorry, LC, thinks Josie. Lie low.
“…very tired,” she hears Connie say.
Connie gawps at the dishes stacked around the kitchen sink. “You eating properly?” Josie shrugs. “Not that hungry. And with my earplugs, I’m sleeping fine now. If…the noise…gets worse, I’ll ask the new neighbours. Just in case.”
“I’ll have a word with them now.”
“No thanks, I’m perfectly capable.” Josie remembers that old saying…family breeds contempt. Something like that.
Beep!
She’s living with an electronic pulse. Connie will reckon she’s brought it on herself,
by living alone for too long…Connie and her theories. But, thinks Josie, it’s not like she’s hearing voices.
“I’m here, and if you can hear me – we’re in this together, LC,” says Josie.
Tight-lipped Connie is struggling to zip up a sofa cushion. She glares.
“What?” Josie sighs. Connie doesn’t understand…she’d have her in the funny farm
in no time.
*
“Don’t stand there smirking.” Connie curses the innards, which stubbornly refuse to fit back in the cushions. “Living alone too long, if you ask me.”
Josie smiles to LC. She hasn’t lived alone for weeks now. And no, she didn’t ask.
Beep!
Connie is standing in the lounge, feet apart, brow furrowed deep, neck extended. Josie thinks of
an English Pointer, on the scent of the trail.
Two holes, about the size of hefty toddlers, gape from the plasterboard. The slashed base of the big old green sofa greets them with a mocking fabric smile, punctuated with vicious, spring fangs.
“Lights off!” commands Connie.
“Lights off,” says Josie, like they’re conducting a secret wartime mission.
“Ha!” Connie takes a step forward, then one to the right.
Beep!
Connie pivots on the balls of her feet, head crooked. “Ha-ha!” She burrows into the bottom drawer of the old yew dresser and rises, clutching her treasure like a triumphant deep-sea diver. “Looking for this, by any chance?”
Josie cradles the flat plastic saucer in her palms. The LC.
“Stuck under a pile of old Christmas cards.” Connie snatches the alarm from her, walks out on the balcony and hurls LC like a discus.
He orbits through the darkening autumn sky, hits the concrete with a solid bang,
then bounces a couple of times. With a final cry, he bursts, scattering creamy shards across the black asphalt car-park.
Fist clenched, Connie pumps the air. “All in the wrist. County First Eleven,” she says,
in case Josie has forgotten that she is The Sporty One.
*
A thundering, pelting shower drives them back inside. Fat tears drum the windows.
Ohhhh, good old LC. Would he ever forgive her? For the first time in weeks, Josie feels free. And strangely sad.
“What?” Connie massages her bowling arm. “Now Connor’s moved out, you don’t have to worry about being allergic.”
Josie vaguely remembers something about Connor, Connie’s reeking old rescue beagle, moving on to the Big Kennel in the Sky.
“A change is as good as a rest.” Connie slings her bag on her shoulder, and her
knitting needles jut, metal antennae. “Suppose you’ll miss the damn thing, after living with it so long.”
Josie closes her eyes for a moment of silent farewell to LC. Her smile is tight. No, she couldn’t be going to cry.
Connie sucks her teeth. “Listen to your big sister. Other things may change us over
the years, but we start and end with family. You’ll go mad on your tod, Josie. Good food, more sleep, decent company. We’ll soon have you right as rain.”
Somewhere nearby, a door slams.
Before Josie can take evasive action, Connie clasps her in a bear hug. Josie sees the antennae twitching and quivering.
“Sun’s coming out!” says Connie like it matters. She jangles her keys and laughs, revealing her perfect, pointed incisors.
“Right, settled! You can’t stay here all by yourself, Josie – you’re moving in with me.”
Alex Reece Abbott (www.alexreeceabbott.info) is New Zealand-Irish writer published in Best Small Fictions, Bonsai: Best Small Stories from Aotearoa New Zealand and numerous other anthologies. A Penguin Random House WriteNow finalist, and London Independent Prize Rising Star, she works across genres and forms. Often shortlisted, including in the Katherine Mansfield Sparkling Prose, Maria Edgeworth, Bridport, Mslexia, Tillie Olsen, Lorian Hemingway and Sunday Business Post/Penguin prizes, her work has won the Irish Novel Fair, Northern Crime, Pulp Literature, Arvon and HG Wells Grand prizes.