{"id":283,"date":"2011-06-10T10:59:43","date_gmt":"2011-06-10T10:59:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=283"},"modified":"2011-06-10T10:59:43","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T10:59:43","slug":"short-fiction-from-tim-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/short-fiction-from-tim-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Short fiction from Tim Love"},"content":{"rendered":"

Out<\/span>

Washing up, you might be reaching for the next plate when you hear a noise. <\/span>
You pause. You hear it again, a creaking. You dry your hands. On the porch <\/span>
under stars an empty chair rocks. Were this a movie you'd see the rockers <\/span>
in close-up. But you've watched this too many times before, heard the <\/span>
cicadas in the night, remembered your father who died only weeks before, <\/span>
who used to while away his evenings on that very chair, smoking his pipe. <\/span>
Can you smell the smoke? No, not this time. No prowlers tonight either, no <\/span>
stray dogs, just a breeze – you hadn't realised how much you'd been <\/span>
sweating.<\/span>

Then you see someone approach, slowly crossing the road, opening the gate – <\/span>
an old man in a suit, dark blue, maybe black. He hobbles to the foot of the <\/span>
porch steps, removes his hat. “Pardon Ma'm, is Jane in tonight at all?” <\/span>
“No, not tonight. Try next week” “Much obliged Ma'm” he says, and turns <\/span>
away back down the path you remember your father putting down one Sunday, <\/span>
breaking the slabs with a borrowed mallet until the pieces all fitted <\/span>
together. The man struggles with gate's awkward catch, rattles it until it <\/span>
loosens, makes his way in the darkness. Just you and the cicadas again. <\/span>
Then the breeze.<\/span>

You're here tidying up the mess your son leaves. He's crashing out here <\/span>
some nights until you manage to sell the place off when the market <\/span>
recovers. He told you about the old man – how he comes every night, about <\/span>
half an hour after nightfall. Seeing your lights on he probably starts <\/span>
shaving, gets out his suit, his talcum powder. You're not Jane. Your mother <\/span>
wasn't Jane. You don't recognise him though you were born in this house. <\/span>
You know the noise each floorboard makes, remember which you avoided when <\/span>
returning late at night. You've started taking things away – knick-knacks, <\/span>
pictures – the loft emptied a trunkload at a time – its half tins of paint, <\/span>
lampshades, a broken rowing machine that you'd known nothing about. Your <\/span>
own loft's filling up fast.<\/span>

Something, perhaps the light which makes everything monochrome, makes you <\/span>
think of films again, the camera panning to a town across the valley, <\/span>
panning up to the moon, then down into the town's main street where a <\/span>
cowboy's being thrown through bar-room doors that sway, become still. He <\/span>
raises himself, brushes himself off. Voices start up in the bar again, a <\/span>
plickyplunk piano. Your son should be back by now. You were going to give <\/span>
him a lift back home. It's a good neighborhood, always has been. You don't <\/span>
want trouble. You go back inside. There's the washing to finish and you're <\/span>
getting cold.<\/span>

Soon you won't come again. One day – it might happen suddenly – you'll go <\/span>
round the bare rooms checking that all the windows are closed, noticing for <\/span>
the first time the pale shadow of furniture on painted walls. You'll give <\/span>
each room a final sweep, brushing the dust into labeled jam-jars – <\/span>
“kitchen”, “my bedroom”. You put them in a cardboard box, carry it to the <\/span>
porch, dusting there too – another jam-jar. Then you'll lock the door, push <\/span>
to check that it's safe, push again.<\/span>



*Tim Love<\/span>'s prose has appeared in Panurge, Horizon Review, Short FICTION, <\/span>
etc. He blogs at <\/span>litrefs.blogspot.com<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OutWashing up, you might be reaching for the next plate when you hear a noise. You pause. You hear it again, a creaking. You dry your hands. On the porch under stars an empty chair rocks. Were this a movie you'd see the rockers in close-up. But you've watched this too many times before, heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}