An Old Story By An Old Friend

Fiona and Matthew

Fiona bumps her shoulder into the back door, swinging it open to let herself in, her arms full of paper bags of groceries. She drops them onto the kitchen counter with a sigh, turns to walk into the living room, and screams. "Matthew! What happened!"

Matthew's arms and mouth are covered in what appears to be blood. His small, white Donald Duck T-shirt is almost dripping with it. Matthew looks up blankly at Fiona. He is six years old."

I killed three bottles of ketchup," Matthew says, toneless. Fiona now notices the squidgee bottles of runny, possibly expired ketchup, stabbed in several places with the stained butter knife that lies guiltily beside them. "They were telling lies. They were trying to trick me." Matthew looks down at his hands, avoiding Fiona's incredulous expression, and says, quieter and graver than ever, "They were talking."

Fiona stares at the scene, trying to mask the mixture of fear and discomfort and excitement and arousal that was forming a tight knot beneath her rib-cage, that was threatening to creep into her eyes. She reaches, with a forced show of absent-mindedness, into one of the paper bags for a packet of already opened cigarettes, takes one out, lights it on the stove, smokes it. "Go clean yourself up Matthew," she finally says in as neutral a voice she can muster. Matthew picks himself off the wet, red floor and walks slowly out of the kitchen.

- KWL

This was written on December 28 2002. The story is about me. I don’t know what made me hunt it down. All I could remember about it was that it had something to do with bottles of ketchup, I remember him asking me; “Do you know which one of those stories are about you?”. I guessed it correctly. I don’t know whether I’m Fiona or Matthew. Maybe I’m both of them. Maybe he saw my future.