The Rush
by Ronnie Smith
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: Two life-long friends suffer a severe attack of new shoes fever.
_____________________________________________________________________
Fiona and Alison are in a near-hysterical rush.
Alison has seen a pair of shoes in town this morning. Fabulous blue shoes with exquisite three-inch heels and killer toes. They are on sale and there is only one pair left in the shop but she needs Fiona’s opinion. Fiona is her very best friend in all the world, they have been devoted to each other for over forty years and hers is the only second opinion that Alison trusts.
There is simply no time to lose because Alison saw them and tried them on more than three hours ago and the clock is ticking, ticking, ticking. She has been home to change into her white spring coat for which the shoes may, at long last, be the ideal matching shade. Not to mention the bag she bought last year for the price of a golden arm and a leg.
The ‘girls’ are chattering breathlessly as they descend the stairs to the platform. The kind of chattering that crazed sparrows make in hedgerows in springtime. The kind of chattering that always ends in shrieked unintelligible sentences and uproarious laughter.
‘Come on ladies, out of the way! How much room do you want?’
A young businessman in a suit pushes past them and skips and leaps noisily down the metal steps. The girls are shocked and deploy the gasping laugh that women of their particular age practice to perfection, ‘Gah!’ Or is it ‘Hag!’?
‘Do you know, Alison’, says an outraged Fiona, ‘I’m so sick of young people being rude to me. So sick of it! It happens all the time now. We were never like that, were we dear?’ She continues.
Alison nods but can’t give the shocking moment her full attention. She can’t help but imagine a stranger’s dainty feet trying on her new shoes at that very moment, purse already in hand. ‘No dear, we certainly were not, sickening. But look, the train’s here so now is not the time to worry about it. He’ll get what’s coming to him, I promise you that. Come on!’
The scratched and filthy silver carriages roar out of their snug tunnel and scream to a violent halt while the girls are still tottering down the steps to meet it as fast as they can, as if on the narrow tip of a precarious ridge in the Andes.
‘Hurry up, Fi, just keep moving your legs and we’ll make it!’
The doors open with a sharp hiss and a disturbingly rickety rumbling sound and then people of all shapes and sizes, at various levels of detachment, escape their sweaty confinement to spill onto the platform just as the girls land on safe ground.
‘Come on, Fi, move it dear, move it!’
They have fifteen yards to run, fifteen yards on disjointed stone tiling and uneven concrete. They join hands for a final desperate lunge to the closest open door on the train, exhibiting the sort of eye-bulging, cheek-puffing determination that you might only otherwise see in an All Black rolling maul.
A young woman, a student, doesn’t see or even hear the girls charging toward her as she steps onto the platform, the last person to get off the train. She’s straightening her iPod headphones, perfectly happy in her very private mid- semester idyll. Her everything is under control and her feet are set neither to resist or side-step the girls as they make devastating contact and force her backwards against the side of the train. She steadies herself and just manages not to fall but her headphones drop from her weakened grasp, down between the train and the platform onto the rails and are lost forever.
A slim young man, another student, sees what has happened and runs back to grab the distressed damsel’s arm and pull her away from the side of the train. Outraged, they both look darkly at the girls, desperate to vent but their anger can have no release on this occasion. Alison and Fiona have already disappeared into the carriage and can hear nothing from behind the rumbling of the closing doors.
‘Thank God for that,’ gasps Alison, ecstatically relieved that they made it onto the train. Only Fiona is vaguely aware of touching the young woman who they ruthlessly cast aside and she turns to look back through the window at the fatefully united young couple staring in at them. Fiona smiles weakly and mouths a little guilty but unconvincing ‘sorry’.
The train starts to move off and Alison grabs her arm.
‘What’s wrong dear, what’s going on, why are all these people looking at us?’ And so they were, everyone in the carriage. Some staring, some glaring and some rougher types were even scowling. Including the middle-aged man in the checked sports jacket who had, until that moment, been hiding behind his newspaper. Even the girl with too much make-up who had stopped half-way through writing another text message.
Swearwords: None.
Description: Two life-long friends suffer a severe attack of new shoes fever.
_____________________________________________________________________
Fiona and Alison are in a near-hysterical rush.
Alison has seen a pair of shoes in town this morning. Fabulous blue shoes with exquisite three-inch heels and killer toes. They are on sale and there is only one pair left in the shop but she needs Fiona’s opinion. Fiona is her very best friend in all the world, they have been devoted to each other for over forty years and hers is the only second opinion that Alison trusts.
There is simply no time to lose because Alison saw them and tried them on more than three hours ago and the clock is ticking, ticking, ticking. She has been home to change into her white spring coat for which the shoes may, at long last, be the ideal matching shade. Not to mention the bag she bought last year for the price of a golden arm and a leg.
The ‘girls’ are chattering breathlessly as they descend the stairs to the platform. The kind of chattering that crazed sparrows make in hedgerows in springtime. The kind of chattering that always ends in shrieked unintelligible sentences and uproarious laughter.
‘Come on ladies, out of the way! How much room do you want?’
A young businessman in a suit pushes past them and skips and leaps noisily down the metal steps. The girls are shocked and deploy the gasping laugh that women of their particular age practice to perfection, ‘Gah!’ Or is it ‘Hag!’?
‘Do you know, Alison’, says an outraged Fiona, ‘I’m so sick of young people being rude to me. So sick of it! It happens all the time now. We were never like that, were we dear?’ She continues.
Alison nods but can’t give the shocking moment her full attention. She can’t help but imagine a stranger’s dainty feet trying on her new shoes at that very moment, purse already in hand. ‘No dear, we certainly were not, sickening. But look, the train’s here so now is not the time to worry about it. He’ll get what’s coming to him, I promise you that. Come on!’
The scratched and filthy silver carriages roar out of their snug tunnel and scream to a violent halt while the girls are still tottering down the steps to meet it as fast as they can, as if on the narrow tip of a precarious ridge in the Andes.
‘Hurry up, Fi, just keep moving your legs and we’ll make it!’
The doors open with a sharp hiss and a disturbingly rickety rumbling sound and then people of all shapes and sizes, at various levels of detachment, escape their sweaty confinement to spill onto the platform just as the girls land on safe ground.
‘Come on, Fi, move it dear, move it!’
They have fifteen yards to run, fifteen yards on disjointed stone tiling and uneven concrete. They join hands for a final desperate lunge to the closest open door on the train, exhibiting the sort of eye-bulging, cheek-puffing determination that you might only otherwise see in an All Black rolling maul.
A young woman, a student, doesn’t see or even hear the girls charging toward her as she steps onto the platform, the last person to get off the train. She’s straightening her iPod headphones, perfectly happy in her very private mid- semester idyll. Her everything is under control and her feet are set neither to resist or side-step the girls as they make devastating contact and force her backwards against the side of the train. She steadies herself and just manages not to fall but her headphones drop from her weakened grasp, down between the train and the platform onto the rails and are lost forever.
A slim young man, another student, sees what has happened and runs back to grab the distressed damsel’s arm and pull her away from the side of the train. Outraged, they both look darkly at the girls, desperate to vent but their anger can have no release on this occasion. Alison and Fiona have already disappeared into the carriage and can hear nothing from behind the rumbling of the closing doors.
‘Thank God for that,’ gasps Alison, ecstatically relieved that they made it onto the train. Only Fiona is vaguely aware of touching the young woman who they ruthlessly cast aside and she turns to look back through the window at the fatefully united young couple staring in at them. Fiona smiles weakly and mouths a little guilty but unconvincing ‘sorry’.
The train starts to move off and Alison grabs her arm.
‘What’s wrong dear, what’s going on, why are all these people looking at us?’ And so they were, everyone in the carriage. Some staring, some glaring and some rougher types were even scowling. Including the middle-aged man in the checked sports jacket who had, until that moment, been hiding behind his newspaper. Even the girl with too much make-up who had stopped half-way through writing another text message.
About the Author
Born in Glasgow, Ronnie Smith has lived and worked in Romania for the past eight years and is getting back into the writing of fiction after a long break. He publishes in Romania, in English and Romanian, and hopes to be published more in Scotland in the future. He is currently working on a novel set in post-independence Scotland.