Flash Fiction 2nd Place: In the end we will always exist by Alison Powell
She dies. That’s what happens. And it should be enough, but now she’s the people’s princess and her doe-eyes are all over the papers and the city is sick with the smell of rotting lilies and rain drenched teddies and the ink from all the mournful, anodyne notes is crying into the sewers and turning the tunnel rats blue.
We are shocked. Me and you. But more than that we are enthralled: we have our JFK.
‘We’ll always know where we were.’ You touch your finger to the hollow at the base of my throat. ‘We’ll exist in this moment forever.’
‘Should we get a tattoo?’
‘No need.’
And besides, you have other ideas. A week of mourning that begins with the magnum of Moet your mother left in the fridge. We pull on silver high heeled boots and faux-fur coats and Jackie O dark glasses. You roll a pile of spliffs to get us through and pass a Mitsubishi pill from your louche tongue to mine. I come up quickly, a rush rising from my belly that chases the grief through my veins and we’re both as high as halos as we head towards the palace.
People queue mindlessly along the Mall as though their standing here might somehow turn that limousine around.
‘They’ve nothing else to do,’ you say.
We are tunnel-eyed and wired.
‘Stop all the clocks.’ You shout at strangers. A woman in a tartan jacket glares our way and you ask her what she thinks she’s looking at. Our jaws are clenching, shifting, gurning.
‘Silence the pianos.’
At Trafalgar Square, we clamber up to the lions where we say a prayer for all the women who are living lies. You stack a line along those giant paws to toast the boys they leave behind. And then we snort another just for luck.
Later, when it’s dark, we steam into a pub and flirt with men who you persuade to buy us shots. We leave them high and dry and fuckless and stagger arm in arm beside the Thames. You’ve hit a maudlin note by then. Start kicking through the flowers, tearing off the heads of teddies.
‘It’s all a fucking mess,’ you say. ‘It makes me want to die.’
I don’t hold you back when you stand up on the bridge and crucifix your arms. You are so beautiful there in that moment. Forever in the orange glow of the city, with the ink of your eyeliner down your cheeks, the smell of tequila and your rain drenched coat, your sickness at the surface of your big doe-eyes. You are my people. My princess.
‘It will never be enough,’ you say. ‘This is all that happens.’
