Passing Traffic | Short Story

Fiction 2 Minutes

The lay-by is one of many on the A82, hidden from the trunk road by a line of winsome, non-native pines and looking out on the sometimes grey, sometimes Mediterranean Loch Lomond.

It is not a place in its own right, not really. No-one says to their spouse, I’m away for an afternoon at that lay-by north of Luss. You remember, the one with the overflowing dogshite bin and the vicious, hypodermic stinging nettles. Still, it is a waypoint for lives, a parallax for the moments of peoples’ existences.

In the spring there are the young lovers, cloistered by the everyone-knows-everyone villages and emancipated by those pines. Steam rises up windows and tinny, unsatisfying bass sounds from within the Vauxhall Corsas and the Seat Ibizas. Young love is born in the lay-by, only to be set aside days or weeks later.

The pale, hazed mornings of summer bring the dog walkers, the bottoms of their trousers sucking up the loch water, their eyes pinched from sleep and their hair tousled. Bags of dogshite hang on the tree branches, left with the best of intentions but left nonetheless. There is the smell of the north reaching down from Etive Mor, from Ben Nevis.

As the pines endure and the shore trees wither and curl, the families come for the blackberrying. The repurposed soup tubs are filled; lips and fingers are stained ruby. Every foraging trip is paid for in flesh, as the lumps from the nettles rise white and livid on hands and shins. More than once, a jumble of disintegrated kitchen cabinets or a life-stained carpet is fly tipped. No-one saw anything. No-one ever does.

In the long draw of the winter, the shadows of the west and of Ben Lomond stretch long. Wood smoke hangs thin in the air and the surface of the loch is whipped and steely. Hidden behind the line of trees, a man sits behind the steering wheel with his engine idling. He stares across at Rowardennan, at nothing, and thinks of the paths not taken. The lay-by is cold and hidden, lit only by the flickering lights from the far shore.

It is a place for the transitory, somewhere unremarkable and unremarked-upon. It is a place of passing traffic, where people tread softly and drag their dreams and regrets behind them.

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘The Silver-Lined Ridge‘ and ‘A Shadow World‘.

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, Down in the Dirt, and Shooter magazine. He has a Professional Doctorate in Education. Matthew blogs at www.matthewjrichardson.com.

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Published by Matthew J. Richardson

Stories in Golddust Magazine, Literally Stories, Idle Ink, Writer's Egg, CafeLit, McStorytellers, Whatever Keeps the Lights On, Flashback Fiction, Down in the Dirt, Close to the Bone, Shooter, Soft Cartel, Fiction Junkies, and Heavenly Flower Publishing

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15 thoughts on “Passing Traffic | Short Story”

  2. As I read, I heard the drone of big trucks and cars on the nearby motorway—passing me and the man in the other car by.
    Your stories always leave room for the reader to add their own narrative, Matthew. It’s one of your writing strengths. A good story is somehow always about the reader. There’s also no extra verbiage. I never feel like your stories over stay the reader’s welcome. You leave us wanting more, Matthew. You make me want to be a better writer, to sit down and craft a well made story of my own. Well done!

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    1. Thanks David. Very kind and generous of you. I liked writing this one. There’s something about the transitory nature of these places that begs a story. They are never the main character, but have their own stories to tell.

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      1. After reading this one, I went straight to work and wrote my own short story and posted it on my site. It’s written in a style reminiscent of yours, with the hint of a happy ending.

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  3. Such a good story, explaining so many things, and quickly too. I particularly liked the part about the blackberry season… about now, I seem to remember. But I have to say that I remember that long, long stretch of the A82 – I have been there many, many times. Good one, Matthew!

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  4. “…somewhere unremarkable and unremarked-upon.” So many places like that, and you conjure up so well the people passing through by meshing the softness of their tread with the “drag” of their dreams and regrets. Very poignant, Mattthew.

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