The Very End of the Affair

By David Vernon

"So here I sit, yet again, at the end of another day wondering how on earth this happened. Why? No seriously, why? Did I sit on a fairy godmother with PMS? Why is this happening to me again? And as I stare at my bleeding knees and the strange mutated pulp of once fresh and really quite expensive vegetables in the beaten and leaking remains of my shopping bag, I think two things: Will she believe me this time? and I should have taken the L90 bus." — from "Yes... yes... yes..." by Louise S Allen

"When my brother and I started belting each other in the testicles with sticks, as young Aussie males are destined to do, my mother would shout “Stop hitting each other in the Googlies.” Now, obviously, she meant ‘goolies’, since this is the well-known slang term for testicles. But she was a new Australian and, as mentioned, wielded linguistic fabrications like a machete in a crowded elevator." — From "Learning the Spin" by Peter Court

Twenty-seven award-winning short stories from the Stringybark Humorous Short Fiction Awards will make you smile, snigger and guffaw. Navigate your way through a collection of clever and witty tales, via celebrity chefs, carpet snakes, iGods and other bizarre and not so bizarre plots to the very end of the affair.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Vernon
• Release date: Mar 25, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301589449

David Vernon

I am a freelance writer and editor. I am father of two boys. For the last few years I have focussed my writing interest on chronicling women and men’s experience of childbirth and promoting better support for pregnant women and their partners. Recently, for a change of pace, I am writing two Australian history books. In 2014 I was elected Chair of the ACT Writers Centre.In 2010 I established the Stringybark Short Story Awards to promote the short story as a literary form.

Book preview

The Very End of the Affair

Twenty-seven award-winning stories from the

Stringybark Humorous Short Fiction Awards

Edited by

David Vernon

Selected by

Judy Brooker, Grahame Krisenthal, Margie Perkins and David Vernon

Published by Stringybark Publishing

PO Box 464, Hall, ACT 2618, Australia

http://www.stringybarkstories.net

Smashwords edition first published 2013

Copyright: This revised collection, David Vernon, 2018

Copyright: Individual stories, the authors, various.

These are works of fiction and unless otherwise made clear, those mentioned in these stories are fictional characters and do not relate to anyone living or dead.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this editor and the authors of these stories.

Contents

Introduction — David Vernon

Fifty Shades of Green — Lorraine Jones

The Job Interview — Susan K Sutherland

The Trouble with Patrick — Peter Rondel

The Many Roads to Joy — David Campbell

Above and Beyond the Call — Rusty Hunt

Windows — Chris Ringrose

The Slop — Harold Mally

I’ve Had a Terrible Day — Stephen Atkinson

Life Changes — Kay C. Lane

God with an i — Harold Mally

Classroom Heat — Catherine Cooper

The Bard and the Bodies — Carmel Bendon

Lost Meditations — Wendy Gunthorpe

A Weekend to Remember — Alan Cornell

Yes… yes… yes… — Louise S Allen

That’s Inappropriate — Sarah Poloski

Lady, Keep Your Hat On — Stephen Atkinson

Fantasy Hotel — Rita Swain

Tech-Know — Holly Bruce

The Very End of the Affair — Martin Lindsay

Not Always the Bridesmaid — Desley Allen

Zippedy-Do-Dah — Barbara Stackpoole

A Letter to Lettuce — Chris Curtis

The Conquering Powers of Vegemite — John Ahern

His Perfect Obituary — Roger Wagstaff

Vampires of Happiness — Harold Mally

Learning the Spin — Peter Court

The Stringybark Humorous Short Fiction Awards 2013

About the Judges

Acknowledgements

Introduction

— David Vernon

Running a humour competition can be just as fraught as running an erotic fiction competition. What you find funny, I find crass and what I think is hysterical, you find mildly amusing (on a good day and completely and utterly mind-bogglingly tedious, on a bad day). To overcome that we employed four judges with very different senses of humour — their only similarities being that they are Australian (which of course tells you something about the choice of stories you will read here).

From 180 entries we have argued and debated ourselves to a stand still and with delight and admittedly some amusement, we present to you the winning and highly commended stories of the 2013 Stringybark Humour Awards.

Some of these stories will raise a small smile and leave you feeling like you have just eaten a freshly baked croissant with zesty lime marmalade and a hot coffee. Others will leave you gasping for breath after a good belly-laugh. Have a great read.

David Vernon

Judge and Editor

Stringybark Stories

March 2013

Fifty Shades of Green

— Lorraine Jones

I was making a ‘rapaciously ripped’ salad for tea tonight. I’d watched Nigella on the telly that afternoon and wallowed in the seductiveness, not only of her flirtatious manner but also the language she’d used to describe the ‘glorious’ food she was cooking. How could anyone not yearn for a rapaciously ripped salad, especially if it was slathered in a lovingly whipped, perky little egg dressing of divine piquancy, adorned with hot, crispy, magnificently marinated Mexican chicken and tantalizingly tossed with crunchy warm nachos. It was Saturday night. I had to make some sort of effort. Right?

Taste buds alert and salivating, I headed for the pantry. I’d need nachos and ingredients for the dressing. Now was the time to prove my ‘on special’ purchasing had not been in vain. Everything I could possibly need would be there — I just knew it. I opened the door and cast my eyes across jumbled shelves packed with tins and packets of possibility.

Crisp, alert soldiers of pasta stood stiff and ready in their packages. Ingredients for ‘made in a moment’ meals leaned seductively against the walls, clustered and conspiring together in little groups, confident in their ability to wonderfully enhance the banality of meat, chicken or vegetables. Ribbed cans, cloaked in coloured sheaths, glinted in the shadows, beckoned and whispered. Take me… think what we can do together… hold me, squeeze me, let me fill you up. I pulled myself away from their siren call. I was making a rapaciously ripped salad.

I pulled my favourite glass bowl from the cupboard and ran my fingers appreciatively across its slippery, silken sides. My thumb pressed itself against the perfectly rounded lip. Nigella was right — preparing food was such a sensual activity. So many textures, tastes and smells. So much to titillate the imagination. I thought with regret of all those wasted years, night after night when I could have come home from work and indulged myself in an orgy of culinary foreplay before dinner. I pulled out the egg whisk and slid its lithe, springy tines across the palm of my hand adoring the way they moulded and pressed themselves against me.

Accessories leapt willingly into my trembling fingers — sieve, knife, jug, platter. I was alight with anticipation. Heaven’s gates were trembling as I drew nearer. All I needed now was lettuce so I could start rapaciously ripping and chicken for an orgy of shredding and chopping. Roughly, I tumbled the succulent, bite sized offerings across my wanton bed of rapaciously ripped salad. Already my tongue could taste and feel the warm, crisp texture of nachos willingly urging me on — take me… hold me… suck me… I was gorging myself on sensation. Never again would I let someone else into my kitchen. I wanted to glory in this feast of hidden pleasures. Only now did I understand how I had been deprived. This was what was really meant by culinary delights. Woken at last to the earthy pleasure of such sumptuous foreplay I could only shudder with anticipation.

Instinct took over, I whisked, stirred, slathered, tossed and tumbled, pressed my willing fingers into the juicy folds of yielding flesh. Sunk in an ecstasy of anticipation I didn’t hear the click of the front floor and the patter of little feet.

Spent, replete and appreciative I gazed with gratitude at the source of this wondrous earth shattering experience of rugged, raw sensuality — my rapaciously ripped Caesar salad. I wanted to do it again. Nigella had gone on to make toad in the hole. Now I could see why.

Still feeling glazed and limp I turned toward the freezer. Of course I’d have sausages there. Defrosting them would take only minutes. Already my fingers imagined themselves pressing firmly along their smooth yielding sides, coaxing their filling to spill across my workbench, ready to be mixed with freshly picked herbs from the garden. My fingers itched to shape this pliant mix into lovingly rounded, mouth sized bites which, when cooked, would be perfect to bunt my tongue against and gently sink my teeth into. Lost in this world of renewed anticipation I jumped and let out a startled exclamation as something slammed into me and wrapped itself around my thighs.

"Grandma! Granddad said I can stay for dinner and watch Dennis the Menace on the TV! And The Wiggles!"

I gazed longingly at my rapaciously ripped salad as thoughts of toad in the hole slipped quietly into the trash bin of suburban family life. Catching my eye, Frank shrugged. Told the kids we’d keep him overnight. Let them have some time alone.

I sighed, turned back to the kitchen and reached for the Gladwrap. Consuming my rapaciously ripped salad would have to wait for later.

Glumly, I returned to the pantry and stood staring. Until, out of the shadows, shyly hesitant in its plain orange sheaf, stepped a can of Watties spaghetti and sausages.

For years Lorraine Jones’ creativity was subverted by the need to write endless business reports and look attentive at boring business meetings. At last, she has managed to unpick the locks on her gold-plated handcuffs and can now be found hunched over nondescript tables in cafes all over town furiously scribbling stories in her green hard covered notebook. She is much happier but fiercely protective of her newfound freedom. Approach with caution.

The Job Interview

— Susan K Sutherland

Same shit, different day. I sucked on my cold coffee as the day crawled on, like a multitude of others. What was it this time? Oh yeah. Interviews. Five in the morning, five after lunch. I shuffled through the papers on my desk, lifting up the one titled Interview Questions. Unbelievable. What was H.R. on about? Records Information and Systems Manager. The job was filing clerk and cleaner in the dungeons below. A no-brainer really. What was all this palaver about education, qualifications, initiative, health and safety, anti-discrimination, teamwork and so on, rambling in excruciating depth, complete with fancy charts and bell curves? Bullshit really, I thought. Job creation, that’s what it was.

Each applicant appeared like clockwork. I went through it all with each one. Faces and names blurred into obscurity. Their answers, bland, politically correct, sanitized and polished by countless Centrelink approved courses, were notable only by the incessant singularity of sameness. I sighed and scratched S.S.D.D. in the comments column. Let them work that one out. Now what about lunch? A nice hot pie to warm the stomach. A cup of frothy cappuccino to drown the boredom. One more to go.

Next please, I called. I looked down at the names on the applicant’s check list. Mr Paul Zee, please.

What followed is written below. But please, oh colleague and friend, oh fellow inmate of the zoo; this is for your enjoyment only. Destroy it after reading. We really don’t want H.R. to get a hold of this, now do we?

Take a chair, please, Mr Zee.

Thank you. Just call me Paul, he said in his strong Oz and Cockney blend, a melody of Dickensian notes and absconding prepositions.

Now Paul, just to settle in, can you tell me a little about yourself?

"Right, well I come from London originally. Wasn’t always named Zee.