The End of the Day | Short Story

Becca is lonely. They say it like it is a bad thing, those teachers, that guidance counsellor, the parents whispering behind their hands at birthday parties. They said it as though the condition has a horrifying miasma surrounding it, some sort of accompanying social smell. Rancid, like milk gone bad.

There are worse things to be than lonely, though.

These people though, they don’t take into account the worlds that are visible only to Becca. Universes that only she can see. Walking along a school corridor, she can be anywhere inside her head. The tinny slamming of the lockers is muted, the boyish jostling becomes immaterial, the spitballs seem to arc around her, pulled out of her gravity by the mass of her imagination.

Instead of the faded, curled linoleum of the corridor, Becca feels sand pushing up between her toes, one step at a time. Instead of the pencil sharpenings and crisp packets on the floor, she sees long, glistening lines of sea-slick oarweed on the beach, their shore-bound ambition laid long by high tide.

Becca walks to her own beat; it is safer that way.

These corridors, clogged with little knots of smirking students, mark her path. It is a path which must be travelled every day. French to Physics. Physics to Maths. Maths to the barely-tameable hubbub of the lunch hall. It’s fine. It’s all fine. At least until the bell for fifth period sounds.

The afternoon is tinged by unease. The visions are still there – the earthy forests, the chalets in the thin mountain air – but the edges are ragged, frayed. Becca has the sense of the fag-end of the day drawing in, of the tide clawing its way back up the beach.

Becca is slow packing her things away when the bell signals the end of the school day. She makes stilted conversation with the teacher, him looking at his watch as he taps his marking together, but there are only so many ways a pencil case can go into a rucksack.

The walk home is long, but not long enough. There are worse things than being lonely.

Thanks for reading folks. Recent short stories include ‘Shift‘ and ‘Picking your Mark‘.

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.