Welcome to the two hundred and eighty-first in this series that is ‘5pm Fiction’.
Late April 2011 I discovered StoryADay.org and the project that is to write 31 stories in 31 days. Anyone who knows me or follows this blog, knows how passionate I am about short stories so my clichéd eyes lit up at this new marvel. And just a few days later there I was, breathing life into new characters. This went on to become (with some editing of course) my 31-story collection eBook Story A Day May 2011. I have since published (as eBooks) the 2012 and 2013 collections, detailed on https://morgenbailey.wordpress.com/books-mine/short-stories/story-a-day-may.
I was nearing completion of the 2012 project when I decided that I didn’t want to stop at the end of May so 5PM Fiction was born. I put a load of prompts on the 5PM Fiction page and today’s was to write a story from the following sentence start: The party was in full swing…. Here is my 192-worder.
Bust-up At The Knees-up
The party was in full swing when the first punch happened. By accident, a reveller, drunk on free booze, dancing to YMCA, arms flailing, singing, badly, at the top of his voice.
Sandra gasped as Uncle Neville rubbed the side of his cheek and stared at the best man, Trevor.
“No!” she shouted as Neville pulled back his arm, hand curled into a fist. “He-”
But Neville couldn’t hear Sandra as she sat at the top table, her wedding dress leaving little space for her father and new husband to sit either side of her. Big and fluffy, that’s what she’d always dreamed of.
“Meringuey,” her best friend and Maid of Honour, Beth, had called it but Sandra had smiled and said, “I know. Isn’t it great!”
But then as she’d lost weight, wanting to be the perfect bride, it – the dress and the wedding arrangements – had closed in on her, given her claustrophobia that only happened to other people.
The fight between Trevor and Uncle Neville had been yet another defining moment in a horrible day. Sandra looked round at her husband of six hours, Andy Farmer, and her heart sank.
***
Photograph above courtesy of morguefile.com.
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