Fiction: One day
Dear friends, it has been a long time since I tried my hand at fiction. It is a genre I would one day like to get better at. I wrote this short story a few months ago when I was applying to some writing programmes. Any thoughts, good, bad and ugly, much appreciated. Thank you!
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Ravi’s mum woke Connie every morning. 7:01, glowed the blurry red numbers in the corner. Just like yesterday. And the day before.
Soon the sound of distant water would stop, and Ravi would come scampering out, his black curls doused, his cheeks polished, his tummy’s folds flapping as droplets bounce off it, wearing only a tiny towel pinched by his fingers at his left hip bone.
As he rushed for his singing phone, right arm outstretched, Connie would stare at his toned thigh through the towel’s slit, and marvel at the anatomic anomaly in front of her: chicken legs propping up an oblong body. As if Ravi’s legs got sent down the wrong torso line at the Human Factory.
“GBC, babes, GBC,” was his blithe explanation. “Genes, beer, cycling. In that order.” Every aesthetic inquisition ended with that joke, as stale as his Saturday morning breath, yet Connie found herself repeatedly coaxing it out by indulging peoples’ interest in that oddity named Ravi. Her Ravi.
“Hi mum,” Ravi would say, raising his eyebrows while squeezing out a smile for Connie. “Ya, ya, good. Why do you need to call this early?”
Still talking, Ravi would then walk into the kitchen and turn on his new Italian coffee machine, leaving behind a musky cloud of whatever his mum last bought him. For the next few minutes all Connie would hear is grinding, frothing, steaming.
And then all would go silent and maybe, just maybe, the mattress will relent and that warm, soft hand will reach over and grab her bum while a cavalcade of wiry hairs tickles her whole body.
Connie closed her eyes and smiled, aware that the scene she had just played out in her mind was now unfolding. This morning cocktail of schedule and surprise was intoxicating.
When Connie opened her eyes again, Ravi’s handsome face was above hers.
