Stories

About the author:

Alyson Faye

Alyson lives in West Yorkshire, UK with her husband, teen son and rescue animals. Her fiction and poetry has been published in a range of anthologies, (Diabolica Britannica/Daughters of Darkness) on the Horror Tree, several Siren’s Call editions, in Page and Spine, by Demain Press (The Lost Girl/Night of the Rider), in Trickster’s Treats 4, on Sylvia e zine and The World of Myth.

Last year she had stories out with Kandisha Press, Space and Time’s July magazine and Brigid’s Gate Press’, Were-Tales anthology.

Her work has been read on BBC Radio, local radio, on several podcasts (Ladies of Horror and The Night’s End) and placed in several competitions.

She works as an editor for a UK indie press and tutors.

She swims, sings and is often to be found roaming the moor with her Lab cross, Roxy.

Alyson Tweets @AlysonFaye2

She co-runs the indie horror press, Black Angel, with Stephanie Ellis Black Angel Press

Alyson has an Amazon Page

Relative Connections

Story type:

Flash Fiction

Story mood:

Nostalgic
Sad

“Ready for inspection?”
I’d salute and stand to attention in my camouflage Tee and black trackies. It was just you and me, no Ma to fuss and dress me like a lady. My pyjamas always spread out in dead man’s pose; empty arms crossed at the chest.
Breakfast was always 7:30a.m.
“Routine. That’s what will keep us going, Leigh.”
Six years old. Ma just buried. I didn’t know the meaning of ‘rue -teen,’ but I’d watch your hand shaking when you poured the milk.
In my adult home the yoghurt pots line up – a dairy army policing the fridge. Battalions of books, author alphabetised, sit shoulder to shoulder with my CD collection. I wonder how your orderly mind would cope with streaming? Nothing tangible to box and label.
I stand before the locked window, fifteen floors above Manchester’s grey urban sprawl, awash with both adrenalin and alcohol. I had rushed from a works do, celebrating profits and margins, called away by a phone call. The phone call.
Your sheets are pulled up so you’re cocooned like an elderly larvae. I am fluttering around you, tidying up your sparse belongings; on a loop fuelled by anxiety.
The tea trolley arrives “I’ll be mother,” I mutter.
The automatic familial phrase of ours. I hold the white cup to your lips, careful not to spill one brown drop on NHS bedding. Conversation stutters as your eyelids close.
A nurse comes in. “Lovely man, your Dad. So polite. A real gentleman.”
She knows, but she means well. Words to bandage the gaping wound. I stare out of the window, at the toy town cars and Lowry people. You were once my world Dad and I your future. I take your hand, to keep hold of my past.

THE END

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