Clearing Ivy

Flash Fiction Piece

Here’s a new flash fiction piece, written from a prompt at my writing group. I shall try to share more frequently, I have a dozen of these types of pieces sitting in my ‘pit’ of stories.

I’ve nearly finished the current edit of my third novel. I have to then go back to input more and get the location details and characterisations correct. It shall then be ready for beta reading in October.

I remember a time when you had to walk down to the hardware store to buy yourself a pickaxe. My pop took me. I was old enough to hack and dig and tear out the ivy roots that crept up over our fences. Both of us wore our working dungarees: him in a pair of hobnail boots, me barefoot. We had some money to buy me a pickaxe, but not my first pair of shoes: not that I needed them. My feet were as hard as leather and blacker than sin.

I remember the time when my grandson said he needed a pickaxe to dig up the roots pulling and tearing at his fence. He only lifted a finger, and then tap, tap, tap. ‘It’ll be here tomorrow, Grandpa.’

I shook my head. The boy’s soft hand would get torn apart in five minutes. If he ever put that phone down.

Six years later, and I’m closer than ever to being dug under. Or burnt—if they had their way. There’s probably one of those thing’ums…an app! An app for cremation, and another one for funeral music and another one for ordering the food.

Hmph. I ain’t having no half-thawed chocolate eclairs eaten at my wake. No, sir. Not with them scoundrels squabbling and bickering over my inheritance. No, sir. I’ve found my own order. Forget the pickaxe; I can order someone to wield it. And, instead of roots and leaves, he’s going to clear the debris from my family. All the loafers and blaggers and skivers. Coming to me for money to help them out, driving up to my old house in their 4-by-4s and wearing gold chains.

What do they think I am?

No, sir. Dorothy at the health and community centre told me about these men for hire. Real tough types: ex-soldiers from the third Gulf War. All messed up in their heads from the chemical attacks and eager as hell to follow orders.

‘Just point them in the right direction, and off they go,’ Dorothy said. ‘They took care of the hooligans who were spraying dirty-words graffiti on the underpass.’

Dorothy showed me the website with the telephone number. It was aimed at people of a certain generation. I know the young people can’t work phones for phoning. None of my grandchildren ever ring me. Except Alice. She rings me to tell me about her latest boyfriend troubles and to ask if I need anything. God bless her. She lives three miles away and cycles to see me every Sunday. She’s not on my list.

There’s a knock on the door. I rock back and forth in my chair to get some momentum to stand, then hold onto my walker for balance.

Rat-a-tat-tat.

The impatience of youth. ‘I’m coming,’ I mutter.

I can see a shape outside the porch. The silhouette is wider than the glass door. I unlock the chain and see a dark-haired man with a tattoo of a snake coiled around one wrist. He’s clean-shaven and wearing sunglasses. He takes them off and reveals black, unblinking eyes.

‘Mr Ellicott?’ His voice is harsh, as if sand-blown.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m here about your ivy. I’m told you have some to be cleared.

I blink. He doesn’t.

‘Ivy? Ivy? I don’t have any ivy. I cleared that years ago.’ I’m fed up with these tradespeople knocking on my door.

The man tapped a finger onto his other forearm. A tattoo of a pistol and knife crossed over a naked woman. His forearm muscles flexed, and the woman’s breasts heaved.

I realised my mouth was open. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, come on in.’

The man looked up and down the street. The only unusual thing was his grey estate car outside my house. An anonymous-looking vehicle. It looked a bit like a hearse.