Drabble – The Night Mail

A Wasp’s Kiss

On a beautiful summer afternoon, you sit talking with a friend. You’ve eaten a delicious lunch including a scrumptious lemon tart; your hands are slightly sticky and sweet. It doesn’t matter; you are relaxed and unconcerned about the attention you may be attracting. From the corner of your eye you observe your new puppy frolicking in the weeds. Happily, she is not nibbling at your hands as she frequently does. But then something tooth-like scrapes across one of your fingertips. Confused for a moment, you realize you have been tasted by a yellow jacket.

Fortunately, it dislikes lemon tart.

Wasp image by Steven Bailey via flickr.com

Robin Anderson

Week End

Free image from flikr.com/the commons

The city grew quiet. A Friday exhalation.

Humans expelled over the countryside in their cars in a single sigh.

Two days away from work and worry, a slim chance to breath.

So the city can rest.

Then. Again.

A gasping Monday inhalation as the metropolis sucks them all back. Into the dark lung of commerce.

Robin Anderson

Just Before Sunset

The waxing moon hung in a diaphanous cloud. He remembered to look down just before he flew over the river. There she was, looking up. He could count on her. Every evening, at sunset, looking up; looking for him. Once she waved and seemed to beckon him.

As a youngling, he’d considered trying to meet her, his faithful watcher. But one of the elders, his grandfather or a great uncle, had warned him off. “Not a good idea. Women like that are untrustworthy.”

As he grew older, he grew to understand why. She was a human. He was a crow.

Image by Robin Anderson

Tom

Once there was a man on a commune in the Canadian wilds. His name was Tom.

One misty moisty morning, we jumped in my Volkswagen bus and hightailed it for the California desert. He was running—I was in love.

A year we spent squatting on that mining claim in the Chocolate Mountains, living a whiskey fantasy, surviving on beans, rattlesnake, and the kindness of others. I sang for tips in the small-town bar. He got by on charm.

Finally Tom tired of me-it was inevitable. I returned to my Canadian island. He kept running.

Don’t tell my husband, but sometimes I think of him still.

By Mollie Hunt

photo by Ajay-Karpur on unsplash

Female Trouble

She was leaking. Again. It seemed only to happen in public. At home it was never a problem. She could sit for hours reading or working out mathematical equations. Even when staring at the clouds or stars and theorizing, there was no seepage.

But out shopping, at tea, in a ballroom and especially at the subscription library, she had only to open her mouth and the trickle, then torrent, of her words, opinions and knowledge flooded the air.

Her intelligence on hideous display and before she could ratchet her jaw shut, the whispers began all round.

“Bluestocking.”

Image: Portrait of MME De Graffigny by Pierre Mignard via flickr commons

1816

It would be the fight of his life. A duel but not over a woman or an accusation of cheating at cards or even because some Pink of the Ton had cast aspersions upon the arrangement of his cravat. No, it was far more serious. The control of his fortune, his title, his estate, his very future was at stake. And he had no choice of weapons, was unarmed, unmanned, with only his twelve year old brother as his second. But he must face the challenge.

Bile rose in his throat as he turned to confront his opponent.

“Hello, Mother.”

Image: Portrait of a Young Gentleman via flickr commons