Trapped

Mum’s crying again. That’s how my days go now, thinking she’s talking to her comatose son, but in reality I’m right here, locked inside my own body, fully conscious but unable to move or speak. I braced myself for her routine onslaught of confessions as she wiped the tears from her eyes and adjusted the stiff hospital chair.

“Oh, Danny, it’s just so hard,” she began, her voice cracking. “I’m working night and day, and when I’m not working I’m cleaning. I love Mark dearly but I wish he would just once take something off my shoulders.”

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Lloyd x 2

Driving from Cardiff to Swansea, Lloyd found a passenger in his car.

            ‘Who are you?’ he said, slowing.

            ‘Your inner self,’ came the reply.

            The guy certainly looked like him: older, more haggard, greyer. It could be him.

            ‘You’re on the wrong road, Jim,’ the passenger said, ‘every day commuting a ton of miles to that vehicle licensing hole.’

            ‘It’s a job.’

            ‘So’s being a galley slave. How about jumping ship?’

            Port Talbot steelworks skittered by, its Meccano limbs tangled against the grey sky as if in agony. The other Jim had vanished, gone in a spurt of yellow steelworks gas.

            Work went badly. Workmates faces resembled those of ghouls. The phone calls, a hundred ways of asking the same thing about car tax, lapped in his brain with a disturbing echo. He felt outside everything.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

Helen sat down with a sigh. It was time to think of a new year’s resolution.

Why do I do this to myself? she pondered. Each year promising myself to do something useful. My spare room is filled with things from years past. The cross stitch still unopened, the exercise bike which I generally hang my ironing on. Shelves stacked with books I never get round to reading, exercise videos that maybe were watched once, and I nearly put my back out with them.

Think I must have tried every avenue to a healthy life. It cost me a fortune in gym membership, even personal trainers. They all fell by the wayside. Even tried volunteering with charities, every time finding out I couldn’t give them the time required with my work schedule.

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