Here’s another flash fiction piece from me. This one comes from my second collection of short stories, called A Sense of the Sea and other stories

Hope you’re enjoying the flash fiction today. Please let me know what you’re reading and writing today that’s flash-y 🙂

 

Finished
by Annmarie Miles

“Why don’t you drink the last mouthful of your tea?”

“Huh?” Her husband didn’t look up.

“The last mouthful, why do you always leave it?” She swilled the cup out in the sink.

“Dunno,” he said, chewing his pen.

“You never finish anything,” she said, rattling the cups in the sudsy water.

“What?” He put the crossword down.

“Well you don’t.” She kept her back to him. “The garden project, sorting out the spare room …” She slammed cutlery on the draining board. “You put that awful monstrosity in the hall. It’s been there two years, half of it sanded and the other half as mucky as ever.”

“That monstrosity was my father’s bureau.”

“And even the tea I make you – you never finish it.”

After a minute of silence, except for the dishes going back in the cupboard, he spoke.

“Leaves.”

“What?”

“Leaves,” he said. “Tea leaves. I don’t want to swallow them, so I leave them in the cup.” He would have smiled at his fabulous joke had he not still been smarting over the bureau comment.

“I don’t use tea leaves.

“I know that,” he said, with a sigh of regret. “It’s just a habit. I never ever used to drink the last mouthful at home. My mother always used real tea leaves. She taught me not to empty the cup, so I wouldn’t end up with a mouthful. It’s just an old childhood tradition.”

The mention of his mother made bile rise in her throat. She closed the cupboard and opened the fridge. “Pork chops do you for dinner?”

“I suppose they’ll have to,” he said from behind his paper.

She began peeling potatoes.

“I’m going to have a go at that bureau, since you’re getting so worried about it. I’m giving up on this,” he said, waving the paper at her.

After he left the room, she walked over to the table. She picked up the paper and read the one clue left unsolved.

12 down. The longest sentence, just for two. (1, 2)

She picked up the pen and wrote “I DO”, before going back to peeling the potatoes.

If you’d like to read some more from ‘A Sense of the Sea and other stories’, you can get it for Kindle and in paperback from Amazon.
Just click here… x