The Bench is a short flash fiction story which I wrote a couple of weeks ago. Flash fiction is rather popular online these days as it consists of a minimum of 500 and a maximum of 1000 words.  Flashfictiononline. com is a good site dedicated to stories of this nature!

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After sitting on the same public bench for five years it was hardly surprising that he had memorised every ingrained crack and groove. As a painter he would have done a brilliant job at replicating it onto canvas; but he wasn’t. He was just a lonely old man, minding his own business day in and day out. He enjoyed his mornings watching the ducks glide past the shimmering lake. He bothered no-one, and usually no-one ever bothered him. He liked it that way. 

So it came as something of a shock one day when, out of the blue, someone else was sitting on his bench. She was fair-haired and appeared to be middle-aged, and very pretty in that sort of well kept and ‘lived-in’ kind of way. At first he was going to growl at her or walk away in disgust, but he didn’t. He sat at the other end and cast a few sheepish glances her way. Eventually she glanced back, and he caught a brief smile. It quickened the pace of his heart and seemed to upset his nervous system. He hadn’t been prepared for this, but then again, who is prepared for something like this? 

He tried to see what he could of her in that hazy peripheral kind of way. It reminded him of his teenage years, and his lustful eagerness to eye up the girl beside him in the darkened Cinema. But that was long ago, and where he might have tried to touch a bare knee or shuffle closer back then, he knew it wasn’t something he would dare do now. In fact, he didn’t really know what to do at this sudden intrusion; it was as if she had just walked into his home and sat beside him on the settee. He couldn’t really handle having this lovely creature on his bench. 

It all felt very awkward and so he took out his sandwich and chewed it more quietly than usual, whilst she simply stared at the lake with her hands loosely resting on her lap. He thought he could feel an aura of sadness around her and there was a terrible urge inside him to talk to her, to find out all the what, why’s and when’s. But all he could do was sit there silently and struggle over appropriate words. He didn’t want to scare her off by bothering her. 

Come on do it, he urged himself. Just a small hello. Then she stood up, and he felt a panic rise in his chest. He wanted to shout, ‘No please wait, don’t go yet.’  But instead he gave a respectful nod, and with a small smile she was gone.

Dull winter days passed and the bench didn’t feel quite the same again. Sitting on it made him feel even lonelier now and he thought it was odd how a brief incident like that could change things. He felt foolish because she had only been there for a few minutes after all.

When Christmas morning arrived he saw from his window a luscious carpet of snow, and it gave him a funny sort of idea in his head. He hurried to the bench hoping to see her imprint there, maybe a message or phone number scrawled into the ice. But there was nothing.

Then he got angry with himself and the bench, and decided to change his seating area completely. Perhaps that would make him forget about her, he thought. Hopefully he would forget her face, even though part of him didn’t want to. So that’s what he did. He began to sit on a different bench.

The new one faced the road, but it wasn’t as comfortable as the other, and it irked him that he’d have to learn all the new marks that were etched into it. The good thing about it was that he felt a little less lonely seeing the cars go by. In some silly way he felt as though he had moved house, even though he could still see the old abandoned bench. It bothered him too when a frivolous young couple came along and decided to move into it, so he couldn’t move back there even if he had wanted to.

Spring arrived and he returned to the lake one morning to find two little birds squabbling together on his old bench and no sign of that canoodling couple. But by now he had given up hope of her ever returning, so it didn’t matter which bench he sat on any longer.

‘Maybe I’ll just buy a newspaper today and go home,’ he thought to himself miserably.

Crossing the busy road, he walked around the corner to a newsagent. Picking a paper off the display, he fished about for change in his pocket, not noticing the soft face smiling at him as he approached the counter. ‘Sixty pence’ please the female voice asked. He looked up and their eyes locked. 

“It’s you,” he blurted, without meaning to.

 “Yes, hello” she replied.

 “I hoped to see you again?” he said, then felt his cheeks flush.

 “Sorry, um married,” she sort of whispered under her breath, as she counted the coins in her hand.

 His face dropped. Of course! How could he have been so bloody….?’

 “But not anymore,” she said looking up at him with soft twinkling blue eyes.

 Somebody grumbled impatiently behind him. His heart beat rapidly.

 “Look, erm that bench…” he told her, “come by anytime for a chat.” 

 She nodded shyly, “Ah yes the bench! That would be lovely.”