This week’s flash:

Fallen
By Neil Beynon

There is a light coming from under the door. I can hear the sound of an engine idling outside and briefly the hope flickers in my aching chest that it is someone come to help me. But how can that be the case? I have not phoned – it is too far from where I am lying and my body will not co-operate. I have not screamed for my mouth is full of liquid copper and it hurts to draw breath too deeply.

The room is dark from where the power went out but I can see from the light spilling in from the patio doors, the neighbour’s security light fixed on the house like an interrogation light. The fallen armchair looks like some ancient dead beast of burden struck down on the edge of the light and swathed in shadow, its legs splayed in wooden rigor. No: stop that. I mustn’t think about death. Optimism is key.

I can hear it moving just out of view. It’s worse than when I could see it, its pallid skin iridescent in the artificial light and my reflection glinting back at me from its obsidian eyes. That’s when I knew how serious the fall was: things – important things – weren’t at the right angles.

I can see under the two-seater from where I’m lying and I never realised how much stuff can accumulate under there. There must be over an inch of fluff and dust on that small stretch of carpet, not too mention the inevitable collection of coins, pen tops, broken toys…Jesus how long is it since I cleaned under there? And something else glints in the gloom, something silver. It is the ring.

Mary didn’t say she was leaving. She didn’t have to. She looked back at me once from the doorway, her hands gripped white hard around the plastic handle of her suitcase and her sun-fire hair tied hard back against her skull. I couldn’t tell you whether she was crying. I couldn’t look at her eyes. I couldn’t speak.

Then she left.

When we’d got married I’d wanted a platinum ring because I dislike gold – too soft and malleable, not like me at all – and I’m clumsy: always breaking things. I didn’t want that to break too. It’s been a long time since I noticed the absent weight on my finger. I must have dropped it there that night. It doesn’t look like it has a scratch on it. Not like me.

Its standing where she stood, holding the toaster, inspecting it, rolling it in its hands, sniffing it, shaking it. It has something else now – my iPod I think – I can only just make it out; I can’t roll my head far enough to look. It’s not its fault: it didn’t mean to startle me. Its reaching for the door now, it’s going on its way. If I could just speak. If I could just make it understand.

If I could just make it see how much I’m hurt.