I Yam what I Yam.

Flash Fiction

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

“Cameron, stop speaking, you absolute fucking tool.”

It was always going to be an odds-on certainty that she would flip the proverbial lid of course, but this was something else. Cam started to move towards her, but she was discharging verbal hand grenades all over the place, so he stopped for a rethink. He glanced sideways at the space behind the sofa, picturing himself ensconced safely behind the floral, polyester blockade. His forward planning paid off as, without warning, she spun around and launched a coffee mug at him. It was his favourite; the barrel shape was excellent for keeping the coffee warm longer. He ducked as it smashed on the wall behind him. Droplets of warm liquid seeped onto his scalp and splashed the back of his neck.

Whoooa! Where did this banshee come from? Cara: so chilled, so yoga’d, so green juiced, such a Thai chi, bamboo socks, meditating pixie kind of girl. Where was all her woo-woo now? She was bloody raving!

He poked his head from behind the sofa to gauge the battlefield. Her words were firing into the air, exploding on the ceiling then dripping into little pools of vitriol, rolling down the walls like condensation on a window. The crackle of outrage and injustice filled the room. He wasn’t really listening because he didn’t need to. He was a liar. A fuck up. And he didn’t need to answer because it was all true. So instead, he just crouched there and observed her.

Her slender arms were pumped up like a post-spinach Popeye. She seemed taller, straighter. Her wispy voice, with its irritating, therapisty-drone - the one she whipped out when she wanted to showcase her emotional intelligence - it suddenly had fire in it, a depth he had never heard before.

“Get the fuck up. Don’t you dare hide.” She was on him, yanking his shirt, dragging him from his barricade.

He stood. She started pacing. To the window then to the fireplace, back and forth. The words had dried up it seemed. In a brave move he reached out to comfort her, saying her name, quietly, but she was deaf to him. He wanted to stop her pain, to say sorry, but to do so would be as inadequate as spraying room freshener on a pile of dog shit. He knew it. He withdrew and let his arm hang, flaccid and ineffectual.

It was then she let out a roar so loud, so intense, that he unwittingly jumped and covered his ears. It only ended when she booted the coffee table with the force of a cannonball. It flew across the room like it was made of balsa wood, curving into a forward roll and landing on its short end, balancing there like a proud sentry.

“You’re going to scratch that,” was out before he could stop it. His misplaced observation was met with a savage glare. She was breathing hard, her fists clenched, elbows slightly bent like a gunslinger about to jump for the Colt.45s.

Jesus Christ she was magnificent! Who knew this woman had all this in her. She had come alive, incandescent with vitality and passion, liberating her own honesty in all its brutal shapes and colours. And that’s when he knew, for sure, that he loved her; at the exact moment he realised that he had lost her.

Author’s note - This is an excerpt for a novel I’m working on as part of my MA in Creative Writing. I workshopped this section and when I read it on its own I thought it might work as a piece of flash fiction. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t! Hey Ho! The title is a catchphrase used by the cartoon character, Popeye - “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam.” It’s not the title of the novel, the novel is called Common People.

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