The Pygmy Giant

by Nick Allen

I’m in the doghouse with Matron again. I say ‘Matron’, ‘Commandant’ might be more appropriate. ‘I think we should revisit the swearing issue Mr Brown,’ she tells me. I tell her that the ‘swearing issue’ all started in France sixty odd years ago when I spent my time avoiding having my arse shot off.

But she doesn’t listen and starts reminding me to change my underpants everyday. Where were you in 1944 when this was just the kind of advice I needed I ask her, but she just tells me that she knows best now and is highly qualified.

Not perhaps in diplomacy, I think to myself.

‘And while we are discussing things, I notice you are drinking again,’ she tells me. Drownin’ me bloody sorrows I tell her.

We revisit the swearing issue again briefly.

Then she spots my fags and I know I’m in for it. ‘We have discussed this before, Mr Brown,’ she says. Does she think I’d forgotten? ‘They will kill you in the end,’ she tells me.

‘Does that mean I’ll have to leave your delightful emporium, and be denied your scintillating company?’ I ask while lighting a fag…

Nick Allen is a Mental Health Nurse from Manchester, England. He has short fiction published by a variety of ezines including Bewildering Stories, Ink Sweat and Tears, Flask and Pen and The Linnet’s Wing.