Bellahouston | Short Story

Brace

Ice-stiffened grass and dogs wearing hi-vis in the gloom. Here roam the early risers, the antisocial, the lost-in-thought, the lost. There are few words, fewer greetings. Instead, breath plumes over shoulders, shoulders hunched up around ears, eyes fixed to the paths. People pretend not to see dogshit, each other.

Birth

Once the twilight wanderers have disappeared – work, breakfast, despair – come the first real actors, for whom the park provides the clumsily-painted scenery for their fantasies, their crumbling dreams. The wind-chapped cheeks of parents and toddlers bob by, trudging from park entrance to jungle gym, joined by the cold and the conviction that this is what they should be doing. Professional dog walkers, encumbered by tangled leads and tangled dog-eared business plans, wonder how short a distance qualifies as a ‘good walk’. Quasi-gurus set up for fitness classes, their open minds trammelled by quasi-ideas – wellness, holistic, wholeness.

Repose

Football with some stinking, half-rotten ball and coats for goalposts. Shortcuts home from school across the paths and through the exhaust fume-laden trees and stops by the ice cream van parked at Mosspark Boulevard. People meet underneath the high flats; items are shuffled between pockets.

Watch

Winking combustion of cigarettes flaring and fading – sprites of warmth in the cold, grey-black darkling almost-night. Curtain-sheathed warmth surrounds the park on all sides, but within the park, shuttling between the peeling memorial benches, are the latest cold-immune occupants. Raucous laughter and the thudding smash of a bus stop getting kicked in, the shattered tinkle of a bottle smashing on a walkway. Quieter now as even the most resolute return home, quieter as the dark space between the streetlights grows.

Thanks for reading, folks. Image courtesy of Colin Macdonald. My recent short stories include ‘The Right Kind of Haunting‘ and ‘Echoes‘.

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Matthew Richardson is a writer of short stories. His work has featured in Gold Dust magazine, Literally Stories, Close to the Bone, McStorytellers, Penny Shorts, Soft Cartel, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Cafelit, Best MicroFiction 2021, Writer’s Egg, Idle Ink, The Wild Word, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.