Super-short fiction #4

Okay, since I've been busy seeing shows, writing reviews for shows (which often takes longer than the bloody show ran for) and generally bumbling about the busy streets of Adelaide, I've not had much time free for writing. So here's some more super-short fiction.

He was very disparaging in his descriptions of people. They were always ‘funny-looking’ or ‘strange’ or ‘awkward’. He saved long strings of invectives, delivered in his booming voice, for those whose appearance sparked the caustic and demented poet who dwelled within. He once described the postman as ‘a rumbling bull-elephant with all the redeeming features of a dose of the clap.’ The neighbour, an elderly widow complete with ancient ear-trumpet, was ‘the unfortunate marriage of the Bride of Frankenstein and the detritus of an unlucky Victrola.’ In a fit of inspiration his grandson Tom, a university student, became ‘a scrofulous-looking dimwit in bad pants who wouldn’t know one end of the cat from the other.’

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They found them in the attic, boxes of them, dusty and smelling of mothballs.
‘Do moths eat vinyl?’ asked Craig, wrinkling his nose.
‘I don’t think so,’ replied Shelley as she tore the masking tape from another box and peered inside. ‘But it really stinks!’

There were hundreds of old records, safe in their cardboard sleeves and plastic liners. They’d been sitting up there for years, gathering dust. Their parents didn’t even own a working turntable; in fact, they didn’t even use the cd player Uncle Jeff had bought them two Christmases ago after he got promoted. What had once been their prized possession were now nothing more than relics of a bygone age.

It wasn’t until the school set up the after school classes on dj-ing with a local club identity (rumoured by some to be part of a drug-related community service sentence) that the twins discovered a fascination for records. It was one of the few things they enjoyed doing together, and, according to the enthusiastic teacher who’d set it all up, they were very good at it. When their mother had mentioned the boxes of records in the attic, they’d bolted up there, faster than she’d ever seen them move before, almost falling over each to get up the stairs.

They descended, dusty, coughing and spluttering and sneezing, covered in cobwebs, each carrying a box. They pulled the records out and puzzled over the artists, the names unfamiliar to their ears.

‘Who were the Velvet...Underground, Mum?' asked Shelley
'Cool banana sticker,' added Craig.

Jamie's reviews from the 2009 Adelaide Fringe

Just a quick mention that I'm reviewing shows for the 2009 Adelaide Fringe festival. You can find my reviews at the Adelaide Theatre Guide website here. Just go to the Reviews section and check them out - and the others, too, of course!

Ignore the 'read more' link - there isn't any more.