Catrin Kean is a Welsh writer who is working on her first collection of short stories. Her work has been published in Ripside Journal, Bridge House Anthology 2015 and The Ghastling. She has been awarded a Literature Wales mentorship and a Literature Wales bursary, and in 2016 won a place on the Literature Wales/Hay Festival new writers' scheme 'Writers At Work.' She currently lives in Cardiff.
I was at the bus station throwing chips at the seagulls. They screamed and spun around my head and the dog howled and people stumbled away from us all hunched like the sky was too low. A long time ago a charity lady came round with presents for everyone and mine was one of those glass snowstorms that you shake, and it felt like that now only better because now I was inside it with the seagulls and the dog and all of us whirly and blurred. But then Chappy came striding through and it was like bursting a pillow, the birds all blown into the sky. Chappy is big and loud with a face hairy as a coconut and he has that effect. The dog growled and slunk under a bench.
Chappy went, 'Hey girl, where you been all my life?' Which was what he said when I first met him,
only then I was thirteen and I'd run away and I wasn't laughing, I was crying.
I don't cry any more.
I like it when he calls me girl.
He went,"'Wanna come to a party?" That's what he
said the first time I met him as well. I wished I had something better to do,
but I'd ran out of vodka and I didn't, so I went with him. He held my hand and
the dog dragged behind, a bit sulky.
We got on the bus and the driver went 'You'd better keep him
on the lead,' about the dog and a woman glared at me and wrapped her arms
around her baby hard enough to squash him which made me cross, making the baby
scared for nothing because the dog's never bit anyone since I had him. But I
didn't say anything because the woman was the type to talk back which would
make Chappy have a go and we'd end up getting kicked off the bus.
Read more:
Read more:
0 comments:
Post a Comment