Young Writers Society

My entry for Elinor's Beatles contest, hence the title. This is only flash fiction, but please let me know whether the subject matter is too obvious or too vague, and if there are any bits of expression I need to iron out. 

When Luke woke, he was drowning.

His eyes opened. A whirl of light, a gasp, then water – pushing into his nose and throat like blunt fingers. He rolled left. The floor slammed into his back, the pain bumping up his spine.

Everything was still. Shapes separated in his vision.

“Awake now, moron?”

Luke blinked. Chelsea loomed over him, a fist propped against her hip, a glass in hand. The clock blinked at him from the bedside table.

“Did you just pour a whole glass of water on my face?” Luke said.

“Go now and they might not sack you,” she said. “I’m not forking out your half of the rent again.”

“A whole glass of water?” Luke repeated.

She turned out of the room, slamming the door. Luke clawed himself upright, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. Darkness span around him. God almighty.

He pulled himself up, scraping a hand through his curls. Work. Work clothes. Yes. Tube. Office. Money. Important serious things. He scrabbled around, grabbing a shirt, trousers, jacket – was that a sick stain? – and tumbling into them. His head pounded.

Up and away. No time for food, not that he could stomach it. He swiped his coat off the hanger. Front door, handle, shoulder, and Christ that’s cold. The air bit like teeth, the sun snapping at his eyes.

He shielded his face and pulled his phone out of his pocket, flipping to Alan’s number. His thumb flashed over the keypad.

How’s ur head lol?

*

The office was a paint splatter of noise and movement. Luke slumped down at his computer just as his watch inched towards quarter past. He glanced at his phone again. Nothing from Alan. Probably wasn’t even awake yet, lucky sod.

A thump. Anita leaned over his monitor, her eyebrows raised.

“Tsk tsk,” she said, grinning. “You damn lucky Loraine en’t caught you.”

“I’m barely late.”

“Yeah, but it’s all guns blazing this morning. She’s going nuts. Wants you on…” She frowned. “Is that sick stain?”

“Porridge,” Luke said, crossing his arms over the blotch.

“Yeah, right. She wants you down at the crash site looking for witnesses – coffee bars, corner shops, those kinda places – so you-”

“Crash? What crash?”

Anita’s eyebrows crept even higher. “You en’t even turned the telly on this morning?”

“What do you think?”

“It’s that Tory Lord, Alan Wicken. He’s crashed into a corner shop. Completed sozzled, people’re saying. Didn’t notice the lights had changed.”

Luke stared. His thoughts jarred like stuck cogs.

Anita leaned back. “You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m…” Luke gripped his knees. Think. Say something. “How bad was it?”

Anita hesitated. She didn’t have to do anything else.

*

The street stank of smoke and fumes, and everywhere were the roiling flashes of blue police lights. They hadn’t cleared the wreckage yet – one black, twisted Toyota carcass, slammed halfway into the front of a corner shop. Luke stared at it, pressing his thumb to the point of his pencil.

He wondered if the air freshener was still in there. If you could still smell the pine on it.

He pressed too hard and swore. Blood beaded over his thumb, then dripped and burst on the notepad. He tore the sheet away and screwed it into a hard little bullet between his fingers.

“Saw it all, you know,” a voice said.

Luke turned. A tubby man, hands tucked in his jacket, chin drawn up high.

“The crash?” Luke heard himself say.

“The very one,” he said. “I work at the garage, just there.” He pointed a little further down the street, to a dingy little petrol station with graffitied shutters. “Open all night. Saw it all.”

Luke shook the dust from his thoughts. “Do you mind if I ask a few things? I work for the Weekly – just trying to get a sense of what happened.”

The man shrugged, all casual, like that wasn’t the whole reason he’d been loitering, like he hadn’t been bug-eyed and waiting for the first crackle of notepaper. Ants. People were ants when these things happened, crawling over ice lollies while they melted into the concrete.

“What did you see?” Luke asked. “What time was it, actually, when it happened?”

“About three-ish,” the man said. “Early morning, anyway. We’d had a bit of trouble with a pump, so I was out here seeing to it.”

Going to get my name in the Weekly, he’d be saying, the moment this was over. He’d be telling his mates.

“And did you actually see the car crash?” Luke asked.

“Heard something first. Car horn, bleating like nobody’s business. Turned round and saw that Toyota swerving off out another car’s way. Crashed straight into the shop. Just as bloody well, really.”

Luke’s hand tightened on the pencil. “How d’you mean?”

“Well, the shop were empty.” The man shrugged again. “Least harm done, innit?”

“I’d say there was considerable harm,” Luke said.

“Well, yeah,” the man said. “It’s a shame and all that. It is a shame, don’t get me wrong, but he’d been drinking, hadn’t he?”

Luke swallowed. His thumb was bleeding again.

“Don’t mean it’s not a shame, don’t get me wrong,” the man repeated. He tucked his thumbs into his belt loops. “It’s his missus I feel for.”

Luke closed his eyes. Memories flurried through the blackness – drifting laughter, the smell of pine, the warm weight of a mouth on his.

He opened them.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, me too.”

*

Warmth tongued his face as he opened the door to the flat. Cigarette smoke lay in low haze, laced together with the smell of cheap pasta sauce, and nausea clinched his stomach. He dropped onto the sofa.

The floorboards creaked. Chelsea’s shadow cut across the floor from the kitchen doorway.

“You make it in time today?”

Luke nodded. “Just.”

“Hallelujah,” she said. “Alright day?”

Luke fiddled with his hands, smoothing his finger over the tender skin of his thumb.

“Fine,” he said.