Short short story II/39

Long Roads (by Matt Crowder)

You push open your front door and breathe in the smell of home, humming a few bars from 'The March of the Toreadors'. There's a young man behind you. He's probably your grandson.

A cobweb gently strokes your face. You flick a switch but the light stays off.

'You were going to show me some slides,' says the young man who might be your grandson.

You pause. The slides are upstairs.
'Upstairs?'
You nod. 'Upstairs.'

Your old bed is just as you left it. On your desk four paintbrushes sit in a pot of water. The wooden handles have begun to slime.

A loud whirring breaks the silence. Your grandson has turned on the slide projector and a cold bright square of light appears on the wall. He picks up a slide. 'Journey to India... Nineteen sixty-five,' he reads, as the projector jolts into action, click-clacking through the transparencies.

You see a middle-aged man sat on a battered blue scooter. The same man stood on a dusty road, mountains towering above him; and then hunkering down by a campfire, wrapped in a tartan blanket; and then gazing up at the Taj Mahal; and then on the dockside with the battered scooter again.

You know you know that man.

'How old were you then, Eddie?' asks your grandson-who's-not-your-grandson.

But all the words have gone and instead come thoughts of a tarmac road and those terrible endless skies.

And you smile, hugely.

[The second short short story series is announced and explained here.]