Jane Doe

I sit alone in the café, my legs are crossed under the small round table. It is snowing outside and all the birds have gone south for the winter. I watch the flakes settle leisurely on the windowpanes. After a while I pick up the menu which has been left for me by the waiter, his sweaty hand imprinted on the black, plastic spine. I scan over the poorly printed pages and sigh. Nothing.
The man on the table next to me laughs loudly as he pushes a forkful of sweet, dark chocolate cake into his mouth. His wife sits invisibly next to him, her grey hair pulled tightly into a bun. The third member of the table is a man with plum red cheeks and hair to match. His form didn't fit the chair, his sides spilling off like an overfilled bath.
I'll just have a salad I suppose.
The room is hot and I can feel my brow getting a little sweaty. One small bead of sweat slips down my face and hangs on my chin before dropping into my lap.
Has Madame decided? Of course, a salad would be lovely. I watch the waiter shuffle back to the kitchens and then glance around. The café is small. Tiny windows framed with damp let in little light, dusty cushions sit on matchstick chairs and a fire roars in the hearth under the large portrait of a wiry man. He is in the process of unsheathing a large sword from his hip and stands next to a regal looking horse. As I gaze at the painting I begin to absentmindedly crack my knuckles, earning me a reproachful glance from the grey-haired woman. For something to do I reach into my handbag and pretend to search for something. My hand closes over my diary and so I take it out and start to read it.
Saturday 3rd September: Bake cake for Lou- Visit Mum
Sunday 4th September: Recycling bin- Clean out birds- Visit Mum
Monday 5th September: Early Shift- Complete forms for H.W and C.N
Tuesday 6th September: Visit Mum- Food shopping

Your salad, Madame. The waiter clunks the bowl on the table and walks swiftly away. I lift my fork and look at my meal. Mottled brown lettuce leaves, shrivelled peppers and oily black olives. I sigh, pushing it around my plate, not wanting to eat it. I look up and see the waiter watching me from the kitchen doors so I press my fork into the salad, smiling hesitantly at him. I slide it into my mouth, trying not to think of what was going in. I bite. My teeth slip over the lettuce and press into something gelatinous. An olive perhaps. I push harder and the outer flesh suddenly gives way and my teeth sink right through. It explodes in my mouth, runny and stringy all at once. I gag as I swallow, feeling as though it were half in my mouth and half in my throat. I press my chin to my chest, eyes closed as I feel it slip down.

I breathe when it's gone. I open my eyes slowly and lift my fork from where I dropped it on the table. I pick over one of the salad leaves and my stomach lurches. The salad rests on a bed of live slugs. My eyes begin to water.

I look up and try to shout for the waiter but my mouth won't open, the waiter is showing a young couple to a table across the room from me. I bang my fists hard on the table but with each strike the room seems to elongate, the waiter now seemingly in the distance. My chest fills with a scream that can't escape and when I feel I am about to burst the window behind me flies open. A strong wind slices through my body and flakes of snow litter my table. I stand and turn to close the window, my jacket is ripped off by the wind and my shirt blown open. Goose pimples cover my bare skin as I reach in vain for the window, my arms keep being blown back, my shoulders start to ache. I lose my balance and my back smashes onto the table. I lay there sobbing as the light swings above me, making the shadows dance.

My body has gone numb, I can only hear the rushing of the wind now. Even the slugs, as they slide over my naked stomach, only exist in my eyes. The tears are frozen on my cheek, the cold is so bitter that my legs feel like a dead weight. I try to close my eyes, to block it out, but the tears have frozen my lids open.

My hand closes around the fork again, it feels warm, inviting, a part of me. I lift my hand above my face, still lying on the floor, an examine the fork, perhaps if it were inside me I would feel warm? I lift my other hand up, skin touching metal, metal caressing skin. I trace the prongs of the fork against the veins in my wrist. Don't veins lead to the heart?
I press the fork harder and harder with each sweep up my wrist until the warm blood begins to spatter on my blue cheeks.

Oliver Pilcher.
890 Words.