by Alice Kettle
I walked you all the way back to my house early in the morning. It didn’t feel real. I brought you into my kitchen and it didn’t feel like my kitchen, it felt new and exciting. Someone told me once about an ice bar where you have to wear big fur coats because they keep the temperature so low. My kitchen was more exciting than any ice bar right then.
I took you into my garden because I wanted to and like I said, nothing seemed real so I felt like I could do what I wanted. I kissed you but with my eyes closed I remembered where I was.
You were the sensible one, you said we should go inside. I would have stayed in the garden all night. We could have stayed standing next to the washing line until the sun came up and then it really wouldn’t matter any more.
It felt more real in the morning. Reality started creeping back with every hour that went into the new day and I started to remember all the things from my normal life that I needed to do. I kicked you out, I gave you money for the bus. I walked around the streets in the blinding sunshine. My kitchen felt like a kitchen again.
–
Alice Kettle feels guilty when she writes, and guilty when she doesn’t write.
The Pygmy Giant 
#1 by John Ritchie on May 23, 2011 - 10:02 am
Hi Alice
I like the way you use the familiarity of the kitchen suddenly being unfamilliar to heighten the sense of detachment that comes from this liasion dangereuse and how your MC knows that any grounding in reality will destroy the illusion, which of course it does.
Good stuff
John
#2 by Sinosheila on May 23, 2011 - 5:26 pm
When she kicked him out I felt she’d kicked me in the teeth. Ouch.
#3 by Fiona Glass on May 25, 2011 - 10:48 am
Interesting that you can’t tell the gender of either of the main characters from the narrative which raises all sorts of fascinating possibilities. ;)
#4 by John Ritchie on May 25, 2011 - 10:13 pm
That is a very perceptive and interesting point, Fiona, which as you suggest lifts the whole thing onto another plane.
Best
John