Home baking

This piece of flash fiction was done using a five-word prompt, where I had to use five specific words in my response:

recession / tiger / ghost / cupcake / wallpaper

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Council came knocking again this afternoon. One last warning before the bailiffs are let off their short leashes and go crashing through our townhouse.

I wrapped my go fuck yourselves in the sweetest, most flowery words I could manage, polite enough to keep the sour frown on their faces from tipping down any further. Have to be nice to the miserable gits, not that you’ll ever get more than the ghost of a smile off of them. You can’t make them like you.

Telling Mum would’ve been a bad scene. Last time things got like this, she looked like she was going to sink back into the scabbing plaster, fading away into the garish jungle-patterned wallpaper to live with the tigers instead. Talk about denial.

I always do what I can to fix her up, to take her mind off the debts and the recession and the Yellow Pages. In times like this, it pays to go the extra mile, to really push the boat out in the cheering-up department. So while she was out earlier, down the jobseeking agency again, I racked my limited brains and came up with something to help her forget.

She’s back now, rattling her way to the kitchen. That place is a scrapheap of half-drank mugs of tea, charity shop paperweights, fag packets, tic tac boxes, hayfever tablets, shopping lists – and, as usual, last night’s takeout boxes stacked on the defunct microwave. The dials on it haven’t worked in years. Much faster to ring up the Chinese on Blakely Green, where we get our salt-saturated noodles and charred spring onions for Friday night’s dinner. There’s slashed duck’s breast on it too, but I pick it out. Vegetarian, me. But I always have what the lady’s having.

Here she is now, queen of the fucking castle, lounging around in our rubbish-tip kingdom. She’s gone for the stereotypical council house evictee couture, all dressed for the role in her massive hoops, lank silver ponytail and mid-autumn puffer jacket. There’s smoke on her breath and her fingers are more metal ring than skin, but I take her hand anyway.

“I’ve been baking,” I announce, sounding pretty pleased with myself.

Just for a second, the glaze is scrubbed out of her eyes. She looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. “Baking, you!” she scoffs, shaking her limp curls. “That’s a new one. A man cooking under this roof.”

Refusing to be put off, I lean over and grab the warming rack from the stove. “Look. Cupcakes,” I shake the rack slightly. Maybe I’m being too eager. “Go on, they’re not poisonous. Even if I did fancy bumping you off, I couldn’t run this house on my own.”

She laughs at that, croaky and exhausted. “Course you couldn’t,” she waves a hand dismissively, caving in and reaching for one of the cakes.

Thank Jesus. I couldn’t eat all twelve on my own. That many edibles would really knock you for six.