I’d like to thank Y.Y. Browne for her flash fiction story submission ‘Hello Unavailable’, a quirky and clever tale about life and the memories left behind.
Y. Y. Browne lives in England with her family of two children, one husband, three dogs, and two cornsnakes. Her poetry and stories have appeared in Obsessed With Pipework, FRiGG, Poetry Monthly, Weyfarers, Blast, Autumn Sky, Peeking Cat Literary, and Everyday Fiction.
Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash & Telephone call vector created by rawpixel.com – www.freepik.com
This page contains affiliate links which may earn me a small commission (at no extra cost to you) should you click through and make a purchase. Please see our privacy policy for more information. Affiliate links are how I keep this blog running. Thank you!
Hello Unavailable
There are words – magic ones, like promises – that your elders are wary to pass on to you, the young. This is precautionary against the day you grow in power and learn to cast spells. With your heart you soundlessly vow that you’ll be the one who bucks the trend and is careful, that you’ll never turn their gifts against the givers. But then a day comes, and you cannot keep such a promise. On that day, you will utter an incantation so simple yet so mighty and unalterably true, such as:
“Today, I watch my mother die.”
On that day, your prognostication will slip past your lips unbidden, like the proverbial thief in the night, just as her breathing slows and her eyes rivet to a point on the ceiling above your head. Whatever she sees up there will be the single most interesting thing left in the world to see, because it’ll cost her the very last bit of attention she’ll ever pay, and you’ll wish it were paid to you. You won’t blame her, for she won’t be able to choose. Her eyes will have stopped obeying her mind days ago.
“Hey, lady,” you’ll whisper. “Do you know me?”
There’ll be no answer. And you’ll miss her already. And she’s only almost gone.
Those eyes of hers — (each a true brown, one specked with golden flakes that reflect the sun, like the time she winked at you through the rear-view mirror on that sandy-leather-seated drive along Sunrise Highway on the way home from Jones Beach) — will remain open, even as you see their light shut down.
“Dad,” you’ll call out to your father, who’s resting but not sleeping on the chair across the room. He watches you, warily, as you intone your next hex:
“Come, hold Mom’s hand.”
“Is it time?” he’ll ask, speaking more slowly than he moves to her side.
“I think so,” you’ll answer, relinquishing the seat on the guest side of the bedrail of the hospice cot that will have been wheeled into the house only hours before. Your father choosing (wisely, you think) not to have her die in the same bed where she’d loved and birthed, mothered and nursed, grew old, sickened, and got the call from that young-enough-to-be-her-grandchild oncologist who dared to conjure words that meant she had, at most, three weeks to live.
Your father’s tears will settle like a lowering mist on the face of the woman he’s lived with his entire adult life, his mouth will twitch, and he’ll say, “So, this is it.” And it will not be a question, just words: this, is, it.
And yes. Now, it is.
It’s that day. And she’s gone. You make a mental note that there’s no rasping or kicking, just silence. She’d have liked that there was nothing dramatic and that for her Death came in slippers.
You hold your dead mother’s hand and shoot a sigh to that same spot on the ceiling at which she last stared. You imagine she (or whatever spirit she is now) lingers there a moment before leaving, so you mouth up the words: I, want, more, time.
They always said the two of you were perfectly alike, twins across generations. Because that’s all she ever wanted from you (right? more of your time?), you know it’s true.
Yet you’d packed up and gone to live on the other side of the world from her. You’d phone everyday – (well, as much as you could) – you promised. You’d have a family of your own, you’d write that novel or two, get that teaching job, buy some land to care for, get a home and a life and, as you’d told both her and yourself time and again, you’d call no less than once a week. And you did too (more or less), for a while. Now you smile, underneath your quiet fall of tears, remembering all the times you’d ring through on the old landline, and her ancient and stubborn caller ID would refuse to identify you. Over and over again, it would flash up the words: incoming, caller, unavailable.
“Hello, Unavailable,” she’d chirp happily into the handset – each and every time.
And you swear you can hear her saying it now, exactly as she always did, call after call, week after week (eventually month after month, then year after year), the same old joke: “Wanna know how I knew it was you?”
You hear that voice again now, not through the phone or from up on the ceiling, but from deep inside your chest. It wells past your throat and through your tears, as the two of you switch places. You are here now, finally come back, and she’s the one gone away. In your voice you hear her chiding tone as you softly say, “Well, lady. Who’s unavailable now?”
Your father extends two gentle fingers and closes his wife’s eyes sixty years from the day he first got lost in them. And you lean down, to whisper magic words back into your giver’s ear, “Hello, Unavailable.” Then you set a kiss upon her cheek and incant your final spell:
“Good-bye.”
* * *
(end)
Thanks
Thank you for reading this blog. If you would like to submit your own story for consideration of publication, please visit our submissions page, or try your luck in one of our micro-fiction competitions. Just visit the competitions page for more information.
Don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list for all the latest news, competitions and giveaways!
