ellenm1, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
David Wellbrook curated this edition of ThreadZoomMash. The brief was to write a piece of fiction, 800-1,000 words, entitled "The Unexpected Visitor". I submitted and performed the following piece.
“What the blithering fuck are you doing here?” said Martin, in a daze-like state, having been disturbed from his intense concentration, staring at nothing much, on his remarkably cluttered coffee table.
“I thought I’d surprise you”, said Mary. “You knew I’d be back”.
“Did I fuck”, exclaimed Martin. “This is totally unexpected. The last thing you said to me, as you left, was that you were never, ever, ever, ever…EVER going to come back.”
“But that was months ago”, Mary whispered, coquettishly, “and it was hardly the first time I walked out on you swearing that I was walking out for the last time.”
“Months! At least 18 months. I thought I was shot of you. I thought I was over you. I mean, I am over you. It’s too late. I’ve moved on. I’ve got a new life. I’ve got a new relationship….”
Mary smiled and chided Martin gently. “No you haven’t Martin. I know you haven’t. You’ve been waiting for my return. And now I am back.”
Mary surveyed all around her in the living room of the pokey Deptford flat that had, for several years, been her home. Martin had lived there for many more years than Mary. Before Mary came on the scene, Martin had been with a woman named Peggy for years. Peggy had broken his heart. That’s all Martin would say about Peggy.
It was impossible to believe that Martin had, in any way, moved on. Apart from an increased amount of dust and general untidiness, the place looked entirely unchanged.
Mary smiled. “Let me tidy up and clean up a bit…”
“…oh no you don’t”, yelled Martin, “you can’t just stroll in as if you’d never been away and take over my life again. Leave me alone!”
Tenderly, Mary coaxed him, as she started to tidy up, “you can’t carry on living like this Martin. Look at the place.”
Mary tidied for a while, then took out a dress from the chest of drawers, admiring and imagining herself wearing it. “It’s that second hand Versace dress you bought me. I’d forgotten…it’s so beautiful.”
“Cost me a bloody fortune, that did”, grumbled Martin, “hundreds…”
“…but they cost thousands new, Martin. You were so thrilled when you found it and ordered it on-line. And I was so excited when it arrived. Do you remember?”
“Of course. You looked lovely in it.” Martin’s anger was subsiding.
“Shall I try it on?” asked Mary.
“I suppose so. If you like”, said Martin, quelled. Once Mary had put on the dress, Martin added, “give us a twirl”,
“Let me see if I can find some suitable shoes,” said Mary, rummaging at the bottom of the wardrobe, turning out pairs of shoes, “I don’t think I ever had a pair that quite went with this dress…I don’t suppose you could find a pair of second hand Jimmy Choos on-line to go with my second hand Versace, Martin?”
“Fucking hell, don’t start all that again”, said Martin, the anger welling up inside him once again, “that’s what we rowed over the last time. I was always shelling out money I don’t have, on clothes that you don’t need. I can’t afford you, Mary. I can’t fucking afford you”.
“Oh don’t be like that, Martin”, said Mary in her girlie voice, likely to make Martin even more angry. “I’ll pay towards them if you like”.
“Stop talking rot, Mary. You’ve got no fucking money. We’ve neither of us got any money. You’ve got all these clothes and now you’re talking about buying a pair of Jimmy Frigging Choos. You make me so angry. You always do this. I want to fucking murder you and then kill myself.”
Martin was really wild with anger now. He started hurling clothes around, stomping around the flat and continuously threatening and hurling abuse at Mary. Mary, for her part, was soon reduced merely to sobbing and pleading with Martin to calm down.
Many minutes into the row, came a knock at the door. “Open up! It’s the police! What’s going on in there? Open up!”
“Now look what you’ve done”, said Martin, “the neighbours have set the police on me. This is all I bloody need.”
Martin opened the door. “Good evening officer…officers”.
Two policemen. One looked about fifteen. The other a bit older.
“May we come in please? The neighbours have reported a domestic incident in this flat and we’d like your co-operation.”
“Yeh, whatever”, said Martin.
“Shall I search for the victim, Boss?”, said the younger cop.
“No, wait a bit, Dan…now, what’s been going on, Mr…”
“Martin…”, blurted Martin, before he started weeping uncontrollably.
The flat was strewn with women’s clothes. Martin was on his hands and knees, wearing a Versace dress, leaving blue mascara tear pools on the formerly oatmeal-coloured carpet.
“You’d better sort yourself out, Martin”, said the older policeman, “because if we get called out here again, we’ll have to charge you and you’ll likely end up with a CBO. This is an informal warning, not a formal caution, but you take it seriously, mate”.
“What about the victim, Boss, the woman?” persevered the inexperienced young copper.
“Martin’s on his own here, Dan. Look at him. What a state. Let’s go.”
“I need help”, said Martin.
Review Of the Evening
There were eleven of us reading on the night. David Wellbrook, ever the soccer football fan, liked the idea of associating us all with members of the recently successful England World Cup winning side (1966). This triggered a memory wave from me earlier in the day, as I know what I was up to on that auspicious day:
My memory piece also elicited a memory from Kay, which I felt upstaged my story in drama and brevity:
Your delicious Ogblog has reminded me that Uncle Bob came to watch the match at our house. Drink was taken. Bob was holding my baby brother on his lap for that last 30 minutes. The goal was scored. Bob leapt to his feet and threw baby brother in the air.
Luckily, dad caught him.
For his part, David allocated roles to each of us, in diagram form, which indicated the running order.
I was delighted to be cast as the controversial, hat-trick scoring No 10. Wikipedia introduced me to the juicier elements of that goal-scoring, but it wasn’t my new-found knowledge that amazed most of the group but fact that I didn’t know every detail of those controversial goals in the first place.
Jill, who might be forgiven for not knowing anything about the topic at all given her relative youth and the fact that she was raised in China, turns out to be one of the world’s leading experts on Bobby Moore. OK, I exaggerate for effect, but she had learnt about him as part of her UK citizenship programme, which is clearly oriented towards the really important stuff. Rohan should really write a book about that sort of thing.
Anyway.
The stories were diverse as always, despite the seemingly straightforward title. Several of the pieces had animals as the unexpected visitor; we had a spider, birds and a mouse, in Ian Theodoreson’s story, guest published separately on Ogblog here:
Jill’s story appeared also to have a mouse, but it turned out to be a visitor from four-dimensional space who figured that a small talking mouse-like manifestation might be less scary to humans than the alternatives.
There were several stories that revolved around death, including a murder and one story which included a birth. Covid was only mentioned a couple of times in the evening.
We went into extra time to arrange the next event, which includes a slightly convoluted “shuffling of the pack” which seemed to be confounding everyone until Jill turned out to be an expert on Google Docs as well a leading authority on Bobby Moore and four-dimensional space.
