Vomit

 The universe was kind enough, this year, to throw a local literary festival on the weekend surrounding my birthday, for my own personal pleasure. Here is an enjoyable piece of flash-fiction produced during one of the workshops, that didn't make the cut.  This piece, in an expanded form, will make it into one of the planned but unwritten chapters of the book I'm working on. I like to call this little snippet ...

VOMIT

After falling off the fire station roof, he woke up in an isolation room in a hospital.

"John!"

"Marcia!"

"How are you feeling?"

He winced. "How do you think?"

"Tell me another story," said Marcia, aware of narrative as pain-relief. She settled back to listen.

"When I was in the boys' home, we turned over a bottle shop and stole brandy. I got so drunk that I couldn't run away when a cop car arrived. I couldn't even walk, so he dragged me into the car, then into a cell. I puked everywhere."

John sat up in bed and made realistic vomiting sounds.

"Then the cop came along and dragged me into an interview room. I said I was going to puke but he didn't believe me, so I leaned forward and puked on his uniform."

John made more vomiting sounds, really relishing the memory.

There was a commotion in the hallway, as two nurses frantically scrambled into their isolation-gear. In a moment, as plastic-wrapped as Marcia was, they burst into the room.

"He's only telling stories!" and "I'm only telling a story!" they said simultaneously.

"That's fine," said one of the nurses, "but next time you tell a story in a hospital bed, please try not to talk about vomit."

Daniel Quixote Burns