Hello everybody and welcome to another friday over here at invertedhourglass, hope you are all well. i have noted that I tend to bable on at the start of these posts rsther than just write what the post is actually about, so lets dive straight into it today! A new short story! Remember you can hear the audio version of this on the audio page or you can subscribe to the series for free in iTunes!

A Funny Story

By Daniel .M. Brown

Who could it possibly be calling at this hour? Mary stumbled around in the dark as her hands felt the walls for a light switch. The first night of their holiday was not going smoothly, first the oven had stopped working, leaving them to eat as many kettle boiled items as they had packed, in other words, leaving them to have two cup-a-soups for tea! A light bulb had later gone in the bathroom and now somebody was knocking on the door of their holiday cottage at who knows what time of night.

“Click” the room filled with light and as her eyes adjusted to the light Mary threw on some more flattering clothes than the dreadful tatty pajamas she was wearing, or at least she thought she had. On her way down the stairs however she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass of a portrait. It was one of Marks t-shirts she had grabbed by mistake; she looked past her reflection and at the painting itself for a split second as she descended. A young girl looked back at her, caught in the silence of the artists brush for all eternity. “Now that is peace” she thought.

So it was that she got to the door in a swift time, not swift enough it seemed, the doorway was deserted and just as she was about to close the door and head back to sleep she heard a voice call out.

“Hello, hello?”

It was coming from behind the hedge. She couldn’t quite tell how old the owner of the voice might be, the only certain thing was that it was a man. She was a little scared now though, should she go down and meet the voice, what time was it? She could barely make out the path to the gate yet alone anything past it. Were it not for the light inside the house shining through the open doorway she doubted that she would be able to see anything at all.

She took a deep breath and out she went. Her slippers immediately started to feel the strain of the gravel path, the open toes did not help matters as within a few steps one of her toenails was split. Curling her toes as much as a human possibly could she traveled the rest of the short way to hedge.

She peeked round into the dark, only to find a man, probably in his thirties crouching down comforting a younger woman, probably in her early twenties. They were both illuminated with the light from the mans mobile phone. In this light it could be seen what the problem was, the woman’s right arm, or wrist to be precise was swollen to a very unsightly size, Mary felt a little bit queasy as she looked on.

The young woman’s gaze fell upon her and she realized it was time to introduce her presence on the scene. “Are you ok here?” She inquired.

“No” was the girls quick yet sorrowful and moaning response. The man interrupted telling the girl to stay still and quiet while he explained to Mary what was going on. They had been out walking during the day and in the excitement of the great outdoors had lost their way while they were descending one of the larger mountains in the area. Now finally when they were almost home the girl had slipped and done this dreadful injury to her wrist.

After hearing this tale of unfortunate events Mary invited them into the house and offered to call for an ambulance. The man declined and said that the car was not to far away so he would pop out and collect it then drive to the nearest A&E. He seemed in a rush, but Mary thought it was only natural seeing what he had to deal with. As he went to leave he bent down to put his shoes back on and as he stood up his long shorts rose just above his knee’s for a split second.

That split second was enough though for Mary to catch a quick glimpse of his grass stained knee’s Mary smiled for just a moment, as she thought “No prizes for guessing what they have been up to”.

With one last look to the girl the man, who still had not told Mary either of their names left for his car. Mary told the girl she would be back in a second as she went upstairs to tell Mark what was going on. Waking him up in a daze she started to explain, but before she had even had the chance to say the girl was injured she found herself rudely interrupted by the sound of Marks snoring. “Oh well” she thought and back down stairs she trotted.

Sitting with the girl for a few minutes she inquired about where they had been walking only to find that the girl was very drowsy and wasn’t really giving any coherent responses and didn’t seem to recall any mountains during the day. The girl soon became upset insisting that she hug Mary for comfort. As she did so Mary noticed that the girls breath did not smell of alcohol, which ruled out her first assumption that she was drunk. Then when she told the girl not to worry and that her boyfriend would be back soon the girl became frantic and panic stricken claiming she did not know who he was and that he had only met her in the village an hour ago.

The terrifying revelations of the girl were interrupted by the doorbell. He was back to get her. What was Mary to do?

The End.

Thanks for reading / listening,

As always,

Look after yourself,

and have fun,

dan