Just to detract from all the doom and gloom we are all currently experiencing, a little bit of comedy from one of our new contributors. (This is a true story 🙂
Flash Fiction Second Prize – The Batty Rider, by Ann Marcial.
The island mini bus was full. The fat woman took up two thirds of the seat. At her stop she heaved herself up. She wore a burnt-orange linen batty rider; it was so tight it made her bottom look like a huge pumpkin. Slowly, she turned round and sidled past the thin woman perched on the edge of the seat before rotating again and grabbing the seat handle.
The mini bus doors were slid open and although other passengers edged forward, the fat woman proceeded first as though her size gave her priority exit rights. But her skirt gripped her elephantine legs like a vice. It was impossible for her to negotiate the steps either forwards or backwards.
Maneuvering her backside towards the door, she hitched up her skirt. Up and up it went, so far to show she was without knickers and revealing a fringe of dark pubic hair. Now unlocked, ungainly and indifferently she stepped off the bus. A hum of relief percolated the bus; she was out. “Oh lordy lordy” said the thin lady sucking her teeth, whilst the only white woman on the bus visibly paled. The fat woman successfully alighted now, in as tricky an operation as the Apollo moon landing, stood for a few moments perhaps deliberating whether to cross the road. Then, almost as an afterthought, she slowly pulled her skirt down over her large backside and waddled off looking back at the passengers nonplussed by the banality of it all.
Another great site by the Dangerous Globe
