[Fiction] Friday #163

I had very little idea where I was going with this week’s prompt, it just kinda materialised as I was writing. I want to rework it but I’m not quite sure if the narrative perspective and the urban legend theme work for it. Thoughts? Anyway, hope you enjoy it! The prompt for this week was: “In her right hand a woman holds a loaded gun, in her left, a coin that just came up ‘tails’ …NOW WRITE…”

Lady Luck

In the retellings of this story, the horror that befell a small, all-night cafe is exaggerated more and more. The murder of five people becomes the slaughter of ten becomes the massacre of twenty. But the truth is there were not even twenty people there, nor ten, nor five. A young woman walked into the cafe at one in the morning. The only other people there were the manager’s wife and their son.

Despite the early hour, the night is hot and thick. It is late August, the twilight of what has been an unrelentingly warm summer. Flowers and grass wilt in sandy soil along this stretch of road leading from the A5 towards the bright, artificial light of the cafe. Two lorries are parked in darkness, giant sleeping beasts with lifeless, staring eyes whilst two cars share the space in front of the cafe: one belonging to the owner and one belonging to their only customer at this lonely hour.

We approach noiselessly on the gravel, not walking but floating and watch the young woman through the large screens of glass. She sits at a table near the window, an empty cup of coffee in front of her. The owner’s son, a teenager with braces and a mess of blonde hair stands in front of her holding a small notepad. She says something, her words swallowed by the glass and he smiles at her, his cheeks slightly effused with red, and looks shyly away. He says something back but he is even more softly spoken than the woman and we can only hear the silence of night. The young woman takes a lollipop from her mouth and puts it down on the saucer by the empty cup and empty plastic wrapper. She pulls a gun from her purse, a heavy, silver revolver and places it on the table. Even through the window, we can hear that dull, echoing clunk. The teenage boy stops smiling. His eyes are fixed on the gun. In the background, his mum, a middle-aged woman with the same sandy-blonde hair, has stopped cleaning the coffee machine and looks up at the back of her son. She shakes her head with a smile and turns back to her work, the boy blocking her sight of the instrument on the table. The young woman reaches towards a pile of change on the table and picks out a two pence piece and flicks it up in the air.

As it spins, as the coin somersaults in the air, we move through the window. There is no noise and we go unnoticed by the three people in the cafe. We cannot be noticed, we do not have form, and instead we are just a viewpoint to this story.  Now that we are inside, we can hear a song playing quietly from behind the counter and a tap running somewhere.  The coin spins back down towards the woman’s outstretched hand, turning end over end. We watch her catch it, cover it; “Call it.”

The boy shakes his head at the young woman’s words.  His eyes are red and creased with tears that slide down the curve of his cheeks. “W-w-what der-der-did you shay?” His words are slurred by the bulky braces.

“Oh now, now. You heard what I said, er, I’m sorry what’s your name sweetie?”  She has a slight Slavic inflection, out of place in North Wales. She puts the lollipop back in her mouth, her tongue already red from its flavour.

“Happy.”

The young woman laughs. “Really? Happy? Is that even a real name? Sweetie, why did you call your son Happy?” The woman behind the counter looks up and smiles.

“When I look at him he makes me happy. Can you think of a better name?”

“Guess not.” The young woman circles her tongue around the lollipop. Her perfume dances in the air around us: grapefruit and lavender and vanilla and vetiver. “So Happy, why aren’t you staring at my legs anymore? I saw you before, y’know.”

“Pleej lady. Pleej don’t do thish.”

“Do you like my legs Happy?” She flexes them teasingly, her short, black skirt riding further up her thighs. She watches him nod despite his tears and smiles back at him pleased. “Tell me Happy, how old are you?”

“Fer-fer-fifteen.” He sobs loudly and his mother looks up again and frowns. She drops a cloth and, wiping her hands on her apron, she walks around the counter towards her son, the young woman and us. She stops suddenly about three feet from her son, her eyes fixed on the gun.

The young woman gives the mother a hard look before turning her attentions back on the son. “Fifteen, eh? You’re quite cute for fifteen, Happy. Do you like your braces?” Happy ignores her question, crying with his eyes closed and still holding his notepad and pen by his sides. The young woman exhales loudly. “You see, I had braces when I was your age. Hated ‘em. But they kinda suit you Happy. So does your name. Except for right now, of course.” She motions towards his tear-streaked face and picks up the gun. The mother stretches her arms out and pulls her son close. They both let out loud, involuntary sobs.

“Please, please, take whatever you want, anything. But leave my son alone.” The older woman’s eyes are wide, her voice surprisingly calm and steady. Her shaking hands however, belie her naked fear.

The young woman takes out her lollipop and throws it lightly at the mother. The older woman’s wild, panicked swipe makes the younger woman smile. “Tut tut. I don’t want anything sweetie. I just, I dunno, I just wanna raise a little hell, y’know?” She glances dreamily out of the window momentarily before returning her enchanting gaze on Happy.

“So like I said, Happy. Call it.”

The boy’s sobs grow louder and he starts shaking his head again from beneath his mother’s protective embrace.

“Call it Happy or I swear to God I’ll put a bullet in you, your Mum, your Dad and anyone else in your stupid inbred family I can track down.” Once more she exhales deeply, allowing the sudden frustration to ebb away. When she looks back at the pair, the slight amusement has crept back into her eyes and smile. “Call it.”

The boy breaks away from his mother’s clasp, pushing her arms down to her sides and ignoring her confused pleas. He wipes his tears from his cheeks and squares his shoulders towards the young woman. “W-w-w-what’sch your ner-name?”

She smiles widely at him. “Lady Luck. Call it.”

He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He pushes his mother away and closes his eyes.

“Tailsch”

Lady Luck opens her palm: the coin shows ostrich feathers – tails; she aims the gun at Happy and fires. The air explodes around us. His head explodes backwards. Blood and brain and skull; red and pink and white. His body collapses as though he were a marionette whose strings have been cut. His mother screams; leaps forward and catches her son, collapsing with him in her arms. His braces glisten through the blood. Lady Luck stands up, her chair falls behind her and we see it hit the floor but all we can hear is high-pitch whistling.

“Happy just saved your life, Sweetie.”

If the mother hears her she doesn’t show it. Instead she kneels, cradling him in her lap by his shoulders; his head almost entirely gone. The young woman walks calmly past them both, picks up her lollipop and simply leaves the cafe. She doesn’t walk towards her car but instead walks into the dark trees.

Eventually the whistling sound stops. The mother continues screaming; blood no longer spurting but steadily pooling on the floor around them. The music still plays quietly from behind the counter. The lorry drivers run into the cafe and stop, horrified. They call for the police and the ambulance and try to soothe the woman. Failing that, they try to ask her what happened. Failing that, they  stand quietly and nervously by the door until the police arrive.

The boy and the mother are taken away eventually in a muted disco of stroboscopic red and blue sirens. The sun breaks through the night and the Scene Of Crime Officers move through the cafe like cheaply-outfitted ghosts.

Perhaps what has brought this crime so quickly into the annals of urban legend is that no evidence of this young woman ever being there was discovered. That cup of coffee had no trace of lip-prints or lipstick or fingerprints or saliva. Her car had no hairs or fibres and had supposedly been scrapped three years earlier. Lady Luck was never caught and just vanished into the night with her gun and two-pence piece. Stories abound of her surfacing in other places, making two people place their fate on opposite sides of a flipped coin. But already we are being pulled back, away from our viewpoint and window to that night. We shall perhaps find her some other time.