All stories

Her Happy wedding

by Dan

“A stranger has sent a mysterious gift

the best man and bridesmaid cop off in the lift

Your uncle is drunk and a pain in the arse

And your mate shags a monk in a room swapping farce”.

No arse. Someone would complain. It was a family wedding.

Arses.

Fuck. Cole Porter never had to write poems for the weddings of old friends from school he could barely remember. Did he?

For free.

It was too Pam Ayres, too Victoria Wood.

She’d burn all internal type rhymes if she could.

Shut up….Shut up….Shut up….

The tone is wrong, too cynical. Write it properly, write it happily, show them the love…. Except she didn’t love them, she just didn’t want to be left out and wouldn’t be invited otherwise.

“Oh Hannah’s brilliant with words!” Julie had said.

And because that was her thing, her distinguishing factor, a way of elucidating praise, Hannah had duly volunteered. Now she was regretting it. Why was she writing a poem for Sonia McAfferty anyway? With a stupid name like that she wouldn’t be out of place in a fucking Val Doonican song or as one of TS Elliot’s cats. She’d sat here so long she was now bloody pissed through no fault of her own. The empty wine bottle stared back at her quizzically.

Ok maybe just a bit of fault of her own. But the wine bottle had put her up to it.

Having wisely refused to bring the singer of Baker St into the already fraught situation she gave up on rhyming McAfferty and tried the married name to be, but that was even worse! Mrs Jens-Peter Durchenwald-Heissels barely fitted into an iambic line let alone suggesting anything lovely and witty for a poem. And teasing the name would just be cruel and sort of racist.

Not wanting to give away how little she could remember about Sonia, who she’d always suspected found her annoying, she’d begged Julie for clues. “Oh just school memories, that sort of thing!” her friend had prompted. Helpfully.

The only clear memory she’d had was that Sonia had been good at sport and had sneered at her once when she’d fallen off a Gym beam.

“You were a star at Gymnastics

Even though you were quite sarcastic!”

This was going very badly indeed.

Besides she hated the institution of marriage, she’d tried it once with disappointing results. Eventually she dropped off to sleep in her chair, still uselessly fretting.

She was the next morning woken by her phone. It was Julie, who told her they didn’t need her poem as they now had enough speeches from “real friends”. But she could still come to the wedding if she wished. Amidst her relief was a sense that she needed to be less needy for future. She felt her hungover head, said “No thanks I’m feeling a bit ill tbh,” went back to bed and spent the rest of the day writing a genuinely funny poem about her schooldays that made her feel a whole lot better about the escapade of life and prouder of the way she didn’t quite fit in.

The poem later won her a £200 prize in a competition.

From the heart

by James

It was the best day ever.

No. It was the BEST day ever.

Not even the fight between a drunken uncle and a hat stand, or the drunkle who sat down where there wasn’t a chair and squashed a mysterious gift could spoil things.

It was, quite simply, perfect.

He was calmness from waking, right up until about twenty minutes before the ceremony. It was being stood in front of a room of eighty people that did it, stood up front with no escape. It wasn’t as if he could dash to the toilets to relieve this feeling of terror nausea that had risen within because if the groom dashes from the room ten minutes before the wedding, people talk.

Two minutes she was due to arrive and the nausea was gone. In its place was a great trembling build up of moisture behind the eyes – at any moment she would be walking down the aisle, and it would be the two of them together, husband and wife. What if he messed it up? What if he tried to sign his own name and couldn’t? What if an old lover crashed through the French doors on the end of a rope?

Her beauty drove all these thoughts from his head. He was glad she took his hand because he needed the feel of her hand inside his to remind him that he wasn’t dreaming. He was glad the registrar made the two of them face each other because he got to look into eyes gazing back at him with love.

And of course, he messed up his own name. It turns out that if you are stood for twenty minutes under the gaze of eighty pairs of eyes your whole throat turns to sandpaper and all you can do is croak. This was the moment when the soppy souls in the audience began to blub. Once upon a time he would have rolled his eyes at hearing that, but after today?

His one regret was that he could not rewind time and then slow it down. He blinked and they were outside in the hard November chill having confetti thrown in their faces. Blink, blink, blink, and each time that he opened his eyes they had moved on to the next stage of the photo farce, swapping from one room to the next, look left, look right, look at each other, look at the camera, look, look, look! Oh, and smile. Gurn. Put your arms around each other, arms at your side, hands in your pocket, hand on her side.

Another blink and he was croaking his way through his speech of thanks. Blink, he was a loon on the dance floor. Blink, fireworks were soaring, blink, the dance floor was mostly empty and it was almost pumpkin time. Blink, her dress was coming down.

Blink, and time did slow and now they were together for a lifetime.

Into the fray

by Jenny

The lobby is full; fizzing with nervous laughter and prosecco and the mingling smell of winter flowers and perfume that Cerys could not afford, even working three straight double shifts. The tray trembles in her hand, but her face is a mask of pleasant willingness. Marilyn is watching and this is a test Cerys can’t afford to fail.

The happy couple beam at the guests, fresh and cold from their time outside with the photographer. Like synchronised swimmers, Cerys and the other staff circulate around the room with flutes of fizz and fixed, friendly smiles. Uncle Geoffrey is laughing too loudly already, face flushed, nose bulbous. Cerys swerves to avoid him, but he plucks his fifth flute from her tray and knocks it back in a single gulp.

On the floor near his feet Cerys spots it - a shining flash of silver, a room key, slipped from Uncle Geoffreey’s pocket. Neatly she swoops to retrieve it and turns to hand it back to him, but his face, already alarmingly red, has turned almost purple as he leans unsteadily towards her, sausage fingers outstretched. A cousin intervenes. Geoffrey is righted and guided gently away for a lie-down until he’s feeling better.

By the time the cousin realises Geoffrey’s key is not in his pocket, Cerys is flitting back and forth from the kitchen carrying trays of vol-au-vents, the weight of Marilyn’s judgemental stare. The encounter has fallen to the back of her mind, buried under thoughts of chicken or fish, red or white, this allergy or that.

Later, when the food has been eaten and the free wine drunk, Cerys sweeps around the lobby to collect glasses. The tables are filled with mysterious gifts in shimmering bags. They draw the eye, forbidden and alluring.

She catches the eye of the cousin who saved her from Uncle Geoffry’s lecherous lurch and gives him a smile. Tipsy himself now, more than tipsy, the cousin sways and grins back. The small pretty girl on his arm gives a delicate yawn and extracts herself, holding her hand out for the room key that he blearily hands her. She heads slowly, sleepily up the wide staircase to bedfordshire.

It is then that Cerys remembers the key in her pocket. Geoffrey can’t be asleep in his own room, if his key is in her pocket. Had the helpful cousin put him to bed in his own room and forgotten?

The room where the small pretty girl is tiredly heading right now...

Horrified Cerys searches for the girl, but she’s nowhere to be seen and the battleground of the dance floor stands between Cerys and the steps.

She dives in, recklessly, dodging flying elbows and stabbing stiletto heels. As she nears the centre, the maelstrom, the current suddenly changes as the DJ throws on YMCA and Cerys is nearly swept up in a wave of flailing arms and drunken cheers.

Then, somehow, she surfaces, free and clear, the steps are ahead and she charges up them at full pelt. She realises she has no way of knowing which way the cousin’s room is.

Cerys turns this way and that, caught in a net of indecision, when suddenly she hears a horrified scream, followed by a confused and drunken bellowing. Without thinking, Cerys plunges once again into the fray...

The Omega Message

by Jon Peters

The Omega Message

It was the day of our wedding and Reba was nowhere to be found. I was in my deep blue suit, Uncle Doug, drunk and stupid, adjusting my tie. We were in the groom’s room, waiting for news. Uncle Doug had just returned the bride’s suite, confusing the two rooms in his drunken state. He was blathering on about seeing the best pair of tits he’d ever laid eyes on.

Reba’s bridesmaid, Tana, burst through the door with a pained expression on her face. She shot daggers over at Doug, instinctively covering up the cleavage above her blood red dress, before turning her focus on me, her face softening from anger to worry.

“This isn’t like her. She should have been here two hours ago. What do I do?” Tana dabbed a tissue at her eyeliner, trying her best to keep the tears from ruining her makeup.

I couldn’t tell her the truth. Not with Doug here. It was too dangerous.

“You’ve checked the hospitals, news reports of crashes, all that?” I said with practiced alarm.

“Everything. We don’t know what happened.” Tana said as she pushed Doug out of the way and grabbed me by the shoulder. She stood so close I could smell the vanilla soap on her skin.

“I swear to you, Rory, she never said anything about having cold feet. She was—is—in love with you.” Tana squeezed my shoulder reassuringly.

“Oh, I know. We’re soul mates.” It was all I could say.

“You sound too calm, like you’re not surprised,” Tana said suspiciously.

Sharp woman.

Uncle Doug staggered out of the room. I breathed a sigh of relief. Now I could be honest. Slightly.

“It’s work related, Tana.” I gave her a reassuring smile.

“Oh no. Today of all days?” The tears began to flow. She understood now. Not everything. But enough.

“Bad timing. But until I get the official message, I must pretend like everything is normal. This stays between us. Got it?”

“Of course. But where are you guys going this time?” Tana's face turned from worry to relief to curiosity all at once.

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“So much for a happy wedding, Rory. I’m so sorry.” Tana hugged me. I was glad to have her support. This life wasn’t easy.

“Are you kidding? It’s the best wedding I could possibly have! As soon as Reba confirms, I’ll be off. We’ve waited a long time for this!” I tried to sound reassuring to Tana but I knew she would never truly understand.

My burner phone buzzed.

“Is it her?” Tana asked, peeking at my phone. I carefully pulled away from her so she couldn’t see the text.

“It is. Call off the wedding. Tell them Reba and I were called into work. Her mom will be pissed but we’ll reschedule the wedding. I’ve got to go. Take care, Tana.” I gave her a hug, knowing I wouldn’t see her again for a long time.

Maybe never again.

The text Reba sent contained only three words:

Omega 8 Confirmed.

No one told me he was coming

by Claire

Uncle Toby couldn’t have been better named, he looked like a corpusculent, bearded and ruddy nosed jug. If he wasn’t pissed then it was a day without a “y” in it. Ruby hated him. As a little girl she had found his avuncular bonhomie faintly entertaining and he did always arrive with some kind of gift. Her favourite had been a small purse covered in various shades of small plastic bead, glued, not sewn. Inside had been a 5p piece, the first money she had ever spent of her own volition, on 4 fruit salads, 4 black jacks and a Bazooka Joe bubble gum.

Now as he stood by the buffet, dropping sausage roll crumbs down his front, holding forth about “immigrants” and “poofters” and “the disabled” like he was trying to win a game of twat bingo, she felt a desire to kill him with his own tie pin. To cap it all, it was his fault that she had to spent last night on an air bed in the box room at her parents, because of the ridiculous room swapping involved in Uncle Toby’s requirements for ease of access to the loo.

The wedding itself had been a standard wedding type arrangement, although Ruby’s sister did look beautiful. The little grey stone church was brightened by sprays of yellow and purple irises with an occasional burst of sun through the coloured glass of the alter window. Even Ruby's god forsaken soul was leavened. Standing now in the 1980s splendour of the chain hotel, having survived the toe curling embarrassment of her fathers speech, Ruby wasn't feeling that same spiritual glow, despite several glasses of warm Cava. Every gob of spit that launched itself from Uncle Toby's mouth, every particle of food that lodged itself in his beard was another nail in the coffin of contempt she held for him.

By way of distraction Ruby went to join the group of middle aged women on the dance floor, an act of desperation indeed. Her mother and friends were “Vogueing” to the Madonna tune currently playing and the spectacle was outstanding. Ruby was aware of becoming overwhelmed and the dance floor started to swim slightly, her head felt like it was floating several feet above her neck. She wobbled out to the hotel car park where the sudden blast of cold air knocked her for six and she crumpled like a discarded dressing gown across the bonnet of Uncle Toby’s Ford Kuga, and slowly slid down it, her buttons gouging paint and metal as she went.

After what could have been thirty seconds or five days, Ruby opened her eyes. Slowly she raised herself and in doing so saw the damage she had caused to Uncle Toby’s pride and joy. Many scenarios played out in her imagination, all of which ended badly for her. Except for the one where she crept away and told no one what had happened, just leaving the paint marks and minor denting as a mystery gift for Uncle Toby in special recognition of his services to world twattery. “It’s been a lovely day” she said a little later, as she kissed her sister farewell, and at least now she could mean it.