Tim Frank


Constant Mourning

Sure, there’s one-minute silences for dead celebrities, honoured by football fans in jam-packed stadiums, broadcast live around the world, with flags at half-mast. But shouldn’t we spare a thought for the outcasts who live and die in obscurity and pay them a sombre farewell too?

No, instead the masses wear pins and black armbands, and grieve for weeks, shedding tears for people they’ve never even met.

There’s the Vice President who plotted the demise of Scotland and sold Tupperware on the side to spinsters with BO. Yes, he runs charity organisations, and, yes, he supports his local community with bipolar-like spending sprees, but does that mean we have to butcher a minute because he fell off a ski lift and froze to death on a deserted mountainside?

Of course, there’s the infamous socialite’s dog who did nothing but sit on plump cushions and zone out like a stoned teenager listening to synth wave. The dog was run over — so what? There are plenty of dogs in the pound, and let’s face it, most of them have charisma.

Surely, we should think of people like Kaylee, an unknown waitress who quit her job after weeks of customer abuse and then toiled away on minimum wage stacking shelves in Walmart, shoplifting miniature bottles of booze and leftover pain au chocolates. She was run over by an ice cream van and the siren howled so loud no one could hear her scream.

But then there was a chink of light. A little-known YouTuber named Jay, who reviewed aftershave from the fifties and wore no less than four haircuts at a time, died from colitis. Strangely, an underground movement to keep his memory alive began in earnest. People tracked down his bedsit and laid cheap bouquets and notes scrawled in pencil on his doorstep. Neighbours made sure their dogs didn’t piss on his wall.

Jay’s death created a domino effect. The forgotten dead — even those from the hidden corners of social media — were recognised for the first time.

Finally, the misfits of society — the bin men, the night watchmen, the ravers, the touts, and the shifty-looking milkmen, who all died of innocuous, sometimes mysterious deaths, were treated with the esteem of Nigerian chieftains at a traditional burial.

Teenage girls, science professors and Russian gangsters gave tributes on their phones, sending memes across the internet in swirling, swelling waves of restless pixels.

The deaths inspired some unusual behaviour too. Emo bands played Mozart at deserted bars then spent their evenings sobbing into their grandmas’ Caesar salads, rappers dumped the Autotune and howled songs of madness, strange poems trended on Instagram garnering millions of hits. So, it was a sad time, of course, but you couldn’t say it was a complete disaster. Maybe that’s enough.



Kiss, Marry, Kill

In cookery class Gina stirs whipped cream into a bowl of melted chocolate and gabs to Christine, the girl with big hairy hands—known as Man Hands—about who she’d kiss, marry, or kill and the question really gets me thinking.

Call me crazy, but I take games like this pretty seriously, so as I ponder the question I take a sudsy steak knife from the sink, rinse it and slip it into my back pocket.

After careful consideration I decide I don’t want to kiss Linda or Tina. Yes, they have sharp shoulders and lovely bloodshot eyes but they are both undergoing serious dental surgery and have grungy bits of yellow pulp lining their braces. Plus, Tina has long Covid and wears a constant look of horrific fatigue.

My choice is to kiss Anna Jane from biology class—even though she’s a loner who sits in the playground nibbling on pineapple chunks like a demented rat, chuckling at non-existent jokes. But her lips are all red, chapped and puffy and I wonder if they taste of raspberry chewing gum.

I’m happy with that choice, but who do I want to marry? There’s Jasmine who likes to roughhouse—she has scabs all over her elbows and knees. I like the way she stomps about school hallways beating up boys, but in the end, I don’t think I could marry a girl with bigger biceps than myself.

So, I choose to marry Simone because she’s always so sleepy and calm—taking naps in class, humming Miley Cyrus with her cheek pressed against her desk. Once she sleepwalked home, arms outstretched, sighing. I love that kind of nutty shit. Kids call her Zombie. Neither of us are that chatty, so we could compare tales of our dreams when we’re on our honeymoon in my attic, where my grandfather’s occult memorabilia are carpeted with dust. I’ll ask her to marry me on a cold November morning by the sea, having smashed our phones on the shore, and as the temperature drops below zero and our bare feet turn blue, we’ll truly be free. It’ll be the happiest day of our lives.

Anyone that’s anyone gathers in the mall after school and shoplifts candy from the Pick n Mix in the cinema foyer. Then everyone spills outside into the skatepark opposite and perches on the lip of the concrete bowl, sucking on Chupa Chups. That’s where I’ll try and kiss Anna Jane, propose to Simone and kill Billy Bonesman with the stolen steak knife. I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’m pretty determined, so bring on the shit-show.

Billy’s not your typical bully—he’s creepy—always giving me the stink eye in gym, blowing kisses at me in the pool, even whispering in my ear about my soft skin when we’re paired up in physics. Sometimes he’ll blow in my ear. Boy, do I hate him. But before I can slice him up, I feel hands around my throat—not just any hands, but Man Hands. As she throttles me, she squeals, “You keep calling me Man Hands, for that you’re gonna die!”

“Let go, Man Hands!” I cry, dropping my knife. Billy wrestles with Man Hands and sets me free. He says to me, “Will you do me the honour of being my husband?”

I feel queasy and strange as Man Hands shuts her eyes and aims a kiss at Billy who promptly ducks out of the way.

“I didn’t know you felt that way, Billy,” I say.

Then I notice some kids kissing under a Mulberry tree, some on their knees proposing by the park gate as skaters swoosh by, and another preteen chasing a girl with a hammer under an international flight path. It seems kiss, marry, kill has gone viral.

God, it’s hard being young.



Tim Frank's short stories have been published in Wrongdoing Magazine, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, Rejection Letters and elsewhere. He was runner-up in The Forge Literary Flash Fiction competition ‘22. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions ’23.

 
 

previous page     contents     next page