The Answer to Everything: A Short Story

My recent entry into a short fiction writing challenge

I had another crack at Australian Writers’ Centre’s Furious Fiction writing challenge, a monthly event for contestants to submit an original short story of 500 words or fewer with the given prompts. If you’ve been following my last few entries, you’ll notice that I try to explore a different tone, tense and character each time to keep things interesting. Surprisingly, I had a number of ideas for this one, but decided to go with a more emotive story for something new.

In the April edition, the prompts were as follows. It had to be set in, on or around a bed; it had to open with no more than three words; and it had to include the words (or some variation of) “shape,” “enter,” and “question.” My first instinct was to go darker and perhaps have somebody held captive in a cell with a mattress on the floor, or stay at a hotel then come home to find their partner in bed with somebody else. But this was much more wholesome.

Amour (2012)

It was late. Claude lay propped up in bed with the covers tucked under his armpits and a crossword book in his lap, chewing the end of a pencil absentmindedly. He yawned and dipped his head to eye the time on the nightstand over his glasses. Minutes to midnight. He clapped the thick book shut then placed it beside the lamp with his glasses and turned it off.

Claude rolled over gingerly with creaking bones to embrace his wife, Kay, who was already miles away, her chest rising and falling like clockwork. Though he couldn’t see her face, he knew that she would be smiling in her sleep. Her shape slowly came into focus as his weary eyes adjusted to the darkness and he marvelled at her grace, even after all these years.

As if for the first time, Claude kissed Kay on the cheek before letting his head sink into the pillow. His mind wandered, stopping to turn over stones in his memory and see what might be living under there. He wasn’t sure when he entered the moonlit forest, but he continued on without a worry. It was quiet and still yet he didn’t feel completely alone.

Trees stood like sentries along the path and comforted Claude as he listened to the chirr of insects. Something pulled him like a magnet in a certain direction and he understood that he had to follow it, but he was content to take his time.

A soft white glow in the distance captivated Claude until it became so bright that he had to shield his eyes. His pupils pinpricks, he squinted at the blurry silhouettes of… what? He thought that they were people, but he didn’t have his glasses with him. They seemed to be beckoning him deeper into the forest.

The light intensified and enveloped Claude when he sat bolt upright in the dark. He was back in his bed with Kay beside him, who didn’t even stir at his violent start. Struggling to catch his breath, Claude put a hand to his chest to steady his hammering heart but felt nothing. As his eyes readjusted, he saw that the large mirror across the room only framed his wife’s body.

Claude turned to his nightstand for the time and saw that the clock, along with everything else, was gone. He rolled over to see the glowing red numbers on Kay’s side of the bed read 10:43 pm. The pale moonlight bleeding through a break in the curtains revealed something else, too. A clutter of flowers and cards around his wife’s dentures.

Perplexed, Claude slipped out from the covers, nursing his stiff back, and crept around the bed to turn the lamp on. It illuminated Kay’s beautiful face, sleeping peacefully with that smile. On the floor was his crossword book, open on the page with the same question that had stumped him earlier: What is blind yet still conquers all?

At once, he knew that the answer, to everything, was love.