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Shorts
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| Are You Happy? | |
| By Snodlander | ||||||||||||||||||
| 23 September 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||
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Flash fiction, entered for a competition entitled 'The Conversation' "Are you happy?" asked Tracey. "I'm fine, thanks," said Barry, stretching behind his newspaper. Tracey looked around the living room. It was the same as yesterday, the same as a thousand yesterdays. "No, but are you?" she said. "Hmm? Am I what?" Barry turned the page. "Are you happy?" "I said, I'm fine. Why?" "I just wondered." She waited, but he had made it to the sports section. She waited some more. Surely he would ask her. Wouldn't any human being? It was instinctive, a reflex action born of a million social interactions. If a total stranger, or even your worst enemy, came up to you and said, "How are you?" you'd ask him the same without even realising it. How could he just bury his head in a paper, when she had asked him, not once, but twice, if he was happy? How could he be blind to the real meaning she was screaming at him? She waited for him to ask her if she was happy, fall to his knees in shocked realisation of her misery, and promise in earnest tones that he'd make her life a fairy tale again. And waited. "June and Charlie are splitting up," she said. "Mm," said Barry, running his eyes over the premier league table. "Could have seen that coming. He's as dull as dishwater, and she's never been the shy retiring type. I'm surprised it's lasted this long." "We're not dull, are we?" "No, we're just fine," he said, but only with his mouth. They were the sort of sounds you make when you're on the phone to someone. "Hm, yes, really, ok, uh-huh." Words that your mouth makes to tell the other person you hadn't died, noises you could make on the phone while watching your favourite soap, or reading the paper, or having sex with the milkman. Not that she had. Not that she dared, outside her own head. "Is there anything on the telly tonight?" she asked. "Not that I'm particularly bothered about," he said, in his distracted, I'm-trying-to-read-the-paper voice. "Do you want to go to bed?" If there's nothing on telly, and when you've finished reading the paper, and there's not anything in the world you would rather do instead. "Don't be silly, love. It's only half past eight." How ridiculous of her. Fancy suggesting they go to bed in the middle of the evening. How could they possibly get to sleep this early? Because, why on Earth would they go to bed for any reason other than to sleep? Her face burned. She wasn't going to beg. She had practically begged him already. Some men couldn't get enough. Some men wanted it every night, sometimes twice. She had married such a man, a million lifetimes ago. Where was he now? How she longed to be one of those women that wrote letters to magazines, complaining their husbands were only interested in one thing. Being interested in one thing would at least be a step in the right direction. She rose with a sigh. "Well, I'm off to bed anyway." Barry put down his newspaper and looked quizzically at his wife. "That was a big sigh. Are you okay?" She looked at the innocent, enquiring face in front of her. "I'm fine," she said, before going upstairs and screaming quietly into her pillow.
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