Winner of Field of Words 500 word short story competition 2016
At the end of days there was table service. You could sit and watch at bars as the wind grew stronger, and the surroundings, slowly, blew away. There were so many cheap cocktails that the customers didn’t notice the dust growing around their shoes and the waiters kicked it into the corners quietly.
We started with frozen daiquiris while the freezers still worked. Then mojitos, piled high with the ice that was left. This was followed by Pina coladas, while cows at the back of the bar gave milk until their grass turned to dust, then the earth beneath, then their
hooves. They managed a few plaintive moos, before they disappeared.
We had arrived there on the last boat, or at least I heard no further horns in the bay. Rob had somehow managed to get tickets, I didn’t ask how. When the word finally got around, we had already unhooked ourselves from the jetty. Some tried to swim after us but we
didn’t stop. Some even followed in makeshift rafts but were doomed when they
reached the turbulence of the adult ocean.
We didn’t look back. The ferry glided in. There was no panic, no one to challenge us. Cobwebs and rot had already begun to form in the terminal,but the squares were still sundrenched and pretty.
Rob held my hand as he helped me ashore. We followed the crowd to the bar in the ancient Plaza de Arms, where previous governors had ruled while imprisoned on top of a tall fortified tower. I wondered if the current ruler made it to the bar for Happy Last Hour.
A five piece band played songs in an unknown language and shook maracas.
Rob steered me to a corner table.
He pretended he could protect me and I pretended to believe he could. He
couldn’t hold back the dust, so we didn’t see it. This had worked well for us
in the past. He managed to blurt out his standard question, ‘what would you
like?’
By the seventh round it was only a four piece band, the bongos had disintegrated. Then the bass went, then the guitar, as they glasses piled up around us. The maracas kept shaking until the end, even after the last musician had disappeared. The final sounds at the end of the world were seeds awash in a rumba rhythm.
Rob raised his head with difficulty, and managed to swing it to left and then the right. A dust cloud had enveloped the sky, turning it mud brown. Squinting, he looked at me.
‘Should I say I love you?” he asked.
‘Do you?’ I had to be a little difficult, even then.
‘Ah,’ he opened his mouth, and fine grains of sand, escaped from under his tongue, then his tongue became the grains, and his jaw fell away, before the rest of him collapsed into a level plain.
I sipped the dregs of my warm Bahama Mama. The ice had run out several rounds ago.