Monday, January 25, 2010

Three Course Disaster


The cream was meant to go with the apple pie for pudding but an ill-judged, violent dash onto the train just before the doors closed had disastrous consequences. She watched in dismay as the white stain spread across the carriage floor and thought desperately of what to serve instead - custard? Creme fraiche? Ice cream? Or... perhaps the pie didn't need any sort of sauce and she could dish up each slice with a small napkin printed neatly with "Go fucking fuck yourselves!" on it. The dinner party was not her idea, the guests were not her choice, the menu was dish after dish of food she hated and the spilled cream seeping into her shoes was the last straw.

She carefully plucked out the upended pot of cream from the dripping bag of shopping and placed it in the middle of the white pool. Then, side-stepping the widening, glistening cream slick, she stood by the doors, waiting for the next station with a completely blank expression.

As she disembarked from the train, she reached into her shopping bag and pulled out a package of chicken thighs which she flung over her shoulder on to the platform without a backward glance. She continued towards the stairs and the ticket hall, tossing fresh figs and shallots and unwaxed lemons and harissa paste and parma ham and garlic stuffed olives in fierce overarm arcs all around her.

By the time she got through the ticket barrier and onto the street, there were trampled, discarded dinner party items all over the station and a trail of footsteps marking a furious, milky, stamping track up and down the stairs. These ended abruptly in a big splash of thick, sticky red wine and shattered glass, from which a new trail of footsteps led away, red and ominous and unswerving like the fleeing of a killer from the scene of crime, onto the next in a hideous, unhinged spree.

No comments:

Videos