Have you been busy? My month has whizzed past in an increasingly chilly blur, but before it skitters off entirely I thought I’d post a 500 word story I wrote at the start of the month, for the AWC’s Furious Fiction.
I’ve missed the last six of the monthly writing challenges so I was determined to do this one. The requirements were that the story had to begin in a queue, include the words cross, drop and lucky, and include a map. Err…. my mind was a perfect blank and then the only thing that entered it was…
The 17th Letter
“Don’t you think it’s ironic?”
“No,” Queenie said, “it’s really not.”
She hunched her shoulders against the wind and sighed. Two metres away, Qiana rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, but no,” Quentin insisted. He shuffled closer, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets, size 14 running shoes taking up more than a fair share of the lane’s narrow footpath. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, I do,” Queenie said. “And no, it’s not.”
She took an ostentatious step back and wished the lane had those little green crosses on the ground to mark a safe space. It was too cold to be doing the social distance dance, too cold to be waiting in this wind tunnel for one of the twins to unlock the door and start the meeting.
“But you can’t know,” he protested.
“It’s my mutant superpower,” Queenie said. “It’s what a lucky thirteen years of teaching has made me.”
“Psychic?” Doctor Quimby looked up from his book, although Queenie would have sworn he was paying no more attention to them than to the weather.
“Psychotic, maybe.” Qiana grinned.
“Three hundred and sixty-five ten-year-olds have drawn me a comprehensive road map to juvenile humour and I can predict a bad pun at –” Queenie said, but Quentin ignored her.
“Isn’t it ironic,” he said, “that we have to queue to get into the Q Support Group?”
“No,” Queenie said, “It’s typical. Qasim and Qamar are always late.”
“But –”
“And it’s only irony where the expectation is deliberately opposite to the actuality.”
“And we’re not really queued,” Qiana said. “More… clustered.”
She edged away from Quentin with a smile that wouldn’t have embarrassed a shark.
“It is, technically, a queue of Qs,” the doctor conceded.
“A tautology then.” Queenie shrugged. “But a tautology with an irony deficiency.”
She straightened as someone stopped at the end of the lane. Bundled and bulky in a heavy coat and scarf, she couldn’t make out any of their features. Their glasses reflected the streetlights as they scanned the lane and then started forward.
“Newbie,” she murmured.
“Conspiracy theorist?” Qiana suggested. “Like the last four?”
“Or a James Bond fan,” Doctor Quimby said, “looking for Q Division.”
Both were more likely than a genuine member. Few peoples’ names started with Q and even fewer wanted to socialise with others who shared that burden. Qasim was probably right: ‘support group’ sounded too needy, but they’d voted down Quentin’s suggestion to rename the group ‘Q Tips’.
“Are you the Q people?” The figure stopped a considerate distance away and took off the glasses, revealing an elderly Chinese face. “I am Qiang.”
“Hi.” Queenie smiled. “We’re just waiting for the key.”
“Ah, unfortunate. It’s this wind.” He shuddered. “I really need to…”
He stopped, blushing.
Queenie raised her hand.
“Don’t say it,” she warned, but Quentin ignored her.
“You know what the alphabet says: you’ve got to P before you Q.”
And there you have it – flash fiction, or really just a smidgen of juvenile humour, to close out the month.
Sorry.
My nice banner image of a queue is a free to use StockSnap from Pixabay.