“We’ll work it out.”
“Yeah, how?”
“I dunno … we’ll improvise.”
“You can’t improvise tent poles. It’s not how tents work.”
“We’ll find a tree or something and use string.”
“A tree? Look around you … can you see any trees?”
“There’s one over there.”
“It’s got an ice cream van in front of it.”
“Okay … okay. We won’t use a tree then.”
“I can’t believe you left them at home.”
“You forgot the glow sticks.”
“It’s a festival site. You can buy glow sticks. What you can’t buy are fuckin tent poles.”
“Okay, okay … you made your point. I screwed up.”
“Yeah you did.”
“We could sleep in the car.”
“You’re not allowed to. Vans only.”
“We could call Mickey.”
“We’re not calling Mickey.”
“His van’s big enough … it’s four berth.”
“I’ve slept in that van and it’s definitely not four berth.”
“Three berth then.”
“Could be ten birth and I wouldn’t sleep in it. Not with her in there.”
“Shouldn’t worry about that. She’s not coming.”
“Bullshit.”
“She’s not. They had a row.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“Nothing to tell. You’re meant to be moving on, remember?”
“Yeah …. I remember … suppose we could call him. He’s probably somewhere round here.”
“By we you mean me?”
“Yep … you … you did forget the tent poles after all.”
This fictional short story was written for a 50 Day Project organised by the artist Amanda Billing. I get 45 minutes to an hour (not the project’s rules, it’s just about the time I have right now) to write a story, sometime between 4.30am and 5.30am. After that, the day is no longer mine.
N.B. The sketch image for this short story was created using AI (at best, I can draw a half-decent stick man). The words are all mine.
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