A Close Encounter

The Sidhar sat preening his elaborate moustache, staring out of the window in deep contemplation; his stature and girth took up most of the compartment. Perhaps he’s fifty five, I mused, though as strong as a bullock. He was a Sikh - a green turban and an officer’s insignia - probably of Pathan descent, those that vanquished the British and later repelled the Russians.

Suddenly he turned, ‘what country sir?’
'Ar British, good. I’m an officer in the Indian army. How do you like our India?’ He hardly gave you the chance to utter more than a few syllables before he started up again. Just then V, my travel partner, returned; quite a tall girl. His eyes shot out as he scanned her lithe torso, then addressing me, ‘she’s your wife?’
‘Yes,’ I acquiesced, unconvincingly; we kept up this charade in India.

Touching his moustache his eyes tracked V’s respiratory movements; V put on her dark glasses. His wife and teenage daughter entered the compartment, attired in colorful saris and dupatas. They began to fluster over their luggage. The officer lurched forward, dominating the frame, speaking confidentially, ‘we must look after the ladies, no pranks sir. I am just along the way with my fellows. If you’d care for a tot of whiskey …’

‘It’s only eleven,’ I managed to put in. With that he stood, stony faced, as if I’d insulted his honor. I noticed his short sword, a relic of Sikh gallantry.

Lord, he thinks he’s back in the Raj, I thought.

It was an Ac compartment, 3 tiers. We relaxed, lunch was served and we ordered an extra 300grammes of curd. V placed the curd on the upper bunk. We ate, and V went to wash up. The ladies reclined on their adjacent bunks, mother pulled her dupata over her head, for modesty’s sake, and they both snoozed.

I thought I’d take a nap myself. What combination of cognitive thought processes led me to commit such an act, I have as yet failed to deduce, though in future I will endeavor to be more considerate whilst in possession of viscous liquids on Indian railways. Placing one hand on the rail, I made an athletic leap onto the upper bunk.

The plastic bag of curd went, ‘bang!’ The curd shot up the wall, and spewed whey through the air like shrapnel. Quickly I took off my T shirt and mopped the bunk and wall. I then turned and looked below – horror of horrors – beloved daughter and mother, splattered with specks of curd. The Indian mutiny - Pathan tribes men charging into battle - stark images dashed before my eyes.

V returned, and we went into muffled peels of childlike laughter. Thankfully, the 2 ladies lay sound asleep; one strand of the girl’s fringe coated thick with curd. V saved the day, tentatively cleaning the ladies up as they moaned, and so enabling my head to remain intact.

By Steve Jones

Dawn and dusk

She had always loved getting up this early in the day. Before sunrise the world always seemed so different and so very, very quiet, like it was waiting for something to happen. She hardly ever felt sleepy at all when she got up this early. Preparing for a journey at this time always seemed to instil a hushed, business-like sense of purpose in people.

She knew that she wasn't meant to be excited but it just all seemed so much like an adventure. More so than it would have done had they all woken up at the right time of the morning.

'Did you remember to get your toothbrush, sweetheart?' her father asked her quietly, crouching down to her level in front of her to make sure of her attention. She nodded quickly.

The hushed voice that everyone put on at this time of day was another thing she liked about the time before sunrise. Everyone in the house was awake and busy gathering their things and yet they all moved carefully and hummed quiet conversation at each other only when necessary. It was as if they were already at grampa's bedside, afraid to disturb him.

'Good girl' her father said, absently touching her cheek, 'now don't forget to bring Claudia with you, it's going to be a long car ride.'

'Ok Daddy' she said quickly and ran back up the stairs to fetch her doll from beside the bed where Claudia had fallen after her father had woken her up. His voice had been all tired and sad. She hoped that they would start travelling before the sun came up. She always loved to watch the sun come up and she always saw it best from the car.

As she carefully made her way back down the stairs, step by step, with Claudia, she was delighted to see that they were already getting into the car. They'd be on the road in plenty of time for sunrise.

'Are you ready sweetheart?' her father asked reaching to pick her up.

'Daddy, are we going to going to see Grampa?' she asked wrapping her arms around his neck. Her father sighed slightly and hugged her.

'Yes sweetheart,' he said even more quietly than before, 'we're going to see Grandpa.'

By Mark Clarke

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90 degrees north

My love affairs were starting to get out of hand. My love affairs, and my drinking. There was nothing for it but to run away to the North Pole.

Johansen and I surveyed the endless icy wastes. That was our job now. All the same, we often found ourselves overwhelmed with emotion. We would sit on our snowmobiles and weep at the immense, impossible snowy beauty of it all.

“Have some coffee”, Johansen said, handing me the flask, “it has brandy in it. Like always.”

He had left behind a wife and a six-month-old baby girl to come here, to the end of the world. The money was good and they were planning, eventually, to buy a house back in Sweden.

Dr Kristina Gjenistad stalked the corridors of Ice Station B. In her native Norway she was an Olympic cross country skier, a swimmer, a runner of marathons and ultra-marathons. Ice-bound now for six months of the year, her smooth, muscular thighs still strained to escape the limitations of her tight regulation uniform and carry her, stotting like a gazelle, off across the sea-ice.

I was a little bit obsessed with Dr Kristina Gjenistad. I wanted to make love to her on an ice floe while the aurora borealis crackled and whooped over our heads. I invented excuses to go to the clinic to see her.

“My hand’s a bit sore today”, I’d say, or “I’ve hurt my ankle”, or “do you need any more medical supplies?”

Unfortunately she’d seen my kind coming a mile off all her life and would have nothing whatsoever to do with me. She recommended aspirin, hot baths, and keeping off the affected limb. I argued that these things were of little use in cases of unrequited love, but she remained unimpressed.

Polar bears were reported. We posted a twenty-four hour armed guard. First thing every morning it was my job to go out and clear the rime that had gathered on the anemometers.

Through the dark months of February and March we played cards and drank and outside the wind screamed by at one hundred and fifty miles an hour in the interminable polar night. The temptation, sometimes, to just step outside and surrender oneself to the elements was acknowledged. We watched each other for the telltale signs and waited for the spring.

There were talks on scientific subjects, animal husbandry, literature. We discussed “The Arctic as Metaphor”. The Scandinavians used their block vote and the motion was defeated.

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing here anymore,” said Johansen, as we watched the watery sun come up for the first time in three months. I took that as my cue to leave.

When I got back to England I wrote a book about my adventures and became moderately rich and famous. Your applause makes me feel better about myself, for a while.

It’s said the Inuit have no word for “memory”, but I saw nothing much to convince me either way.

By Owen Booth

Read Owen's other Shortfolio story - And then...

More useful sites for fiction writers

Automatic inspiration for writers
The blank page can be a scary. Get a head start with OneWord.com, a short story writing site that gives you an inspirational bon mot to begin with.

Got the story writing bug?
Another handy writer's resource is LanguageIsAVirus.com. As well as having useful things like writing prompts for the blocked or uninspired, it also allows you to post stories for feedback and/or posterity that are over 500 words.

There can be only one (sentence)
Also, for the truly succinct (or insufferably lazy) short story writer there's OneSentence.org. As the URL suggests, the challenge is to write a compelling short story in one sentence.

A teaser, part of the site's most popular story of all time (by 'ferdinandthebull'):

"When I was 5 or so my mom would tell me to lie down before she tied my tie..." ...Read the end of the sentence on onesentence.org