Skimmed Milk

A man goes to buy milk after receiving some bad news.

Skimmed Milk

 

One never knows how to greet bad news, particularly when it ambushes you. It was hidden in a neat white letter which glared at Simon from the floor beneath the letter box. Simon stood in his anorak rubbing his car key with his fingers. He was on his way out to get milk. He was to get red capped milk as his wife thought it would help with his health, which had been nose-diving in the previous months. Simon was due to get the results from his medical examination next week. So why was there a letter from the hospital at that exact moment as he was going out to get milk? Red capped, for his health.

                Simon stooped to pick it up. He moved like a criminal being commanded to drop his weapon by the police. He held it in his hand. His chest began to ache. He sweated. Fear. A very real fear for his life. He opened the neat white letter. He reviewed the contents with great interest. He was to read the ending passage of his life. He read it. He checked to see if anyone was behind him. He stuffed the letter in his pocket. He looked about the hallway. All of its walls lost their decoration; it all went black and grey. He breathed with great effort. Milk. He remembered that he was to get milk. Red capped, on account of his death.

                They sky was brilliantly blue. Simon looked at it with tears in his eyes. It was magnificent he thought. Too hot for his anorak. He ripped it off himself and threw it on the front lawn. At that moment, the neighbour’s dog ran through the hedge that separated their gardens. The dog had plagued Simon’s garden maintenance. Every morning it did its rotten business on his work. The dog saw its opportunity and released itself on Simon’s coat. Simon walked up to the dog, tears still on his cheeks. He stared the dog in its eyes of nature brown. Simon got down on his knees and began to stroke the creature with powerful affection. He tenderly patted it on the head and pushed his face against the dogs. The dog licked Simon on the cheek and Simon responded by kissing the dog on its nose. Simon arose and left the dog to enjoy its coat.

                Simon left his garden via the front gate and continued to admire the blue above him. Suddenly, the ringing of a small bell entered his world. The bell was almost too gentle. It rolled through him in a strong delicateness and sent his thoughts back in time to his wedding and to masses as a child. He smiled. Visions of funerals and occasions shot through his head. The bell drew closer and he exited his memories. He threw his face at the direction of the fairy noise but his eyes were blinded by the whiteness of the sun. From out of it rode a young child on an unnaturally red bicycle, ringing his bell.  He rode and rang at such an urgency to suggest that he was a messenger. “Too late” thought Simon. Like Paul Revere the child went by taking with him the sound of the bell and the redness of his bike.

                Simon opened the door to his car. He looked it up and down. It made Simon angry to see the thing. It was metal, plastic, rubber, fumes and reddish brown. He hated it. He let the keys slip from his hands and onto the driveway. He kicked them under the car and began to walk down the street. What need had he of cars? His mind was on his milk and death. Red capped milk was the only thing that he needed now. He strode down the road and past the plastic boxes of his neighbours. They did not know a thing. They were not dead as Simon was. They had their bills, their offices and their lives whereas Simon had the entire world. The wind began to blow sweetly through his thin hair and thinner face. He smelt it heartily. He licked his lips from the smell of people, city and trees.

                Simon arrived at the supermarket. He gazed over the field of hot tarmac and burning automobiles. He viewed the consumer in its million people, holding their white sacks of frozen and processed shapes, ready to be packed into the stomachs and arteries of their families. He walked among them as a rebel. A free man.

                In an image of Mosses, Simon parted the automatic doors. He was at once one head in a sea of others, being eagerly counted by a floor manager with wet lips. Simon began a voyage across the Earth. He visited flowers from the Netherlands, chocolate from Switzerland, glass from Russia, toys from China and fruit from the bounties of the tropics. He eyed each fruit with passion. To the bemusement of shoppers he bent down to smell the sweet, sticky odours of nectarines, oranges, grapes and peaches. Peaches had always been Simon’s favourite. He plucked one from its brothers and sisters and pushed it against his lips. He licked the fuzzy skin before sinking his teeth into its life giving flesh. A thousand memories erupted in his head. Thoughts of childhood mealtime with mother, summers on the sea, love with his wife and meals with the child he never had time to have.

                He made his way to the object of his odyssey. The milk stood in a hundred bottles in a hundred cages taken from a hundred cows. He picked up a bottle of skimmed milk. The red cap had become a symbol of his sickness. Throughout his struggle and his battles it had been a constant. A symbol of his defeat and now, a relic of his life. Simon retrieved the neat white letter, no longer neat, from his pocket. He looked at its words. Its condemning, forceful and incontestable words. Its horrible truth once more glared at him in its entire impartial dreadfulness. Simon uncapped the bottle of skimmed milk and poured its contents over the letter, tears on his face. He dropped both the letter and the bottle on the floor. His surroundings went black and grey. Fear. 

Author's Note

This was the first short story I wrote for my class, I'm very interested in receiving feedback.

Reviews

[LJB]

I like your story a lot. The details are great and they don't bore the reader. I love how you focus the story on milk while most writers would make the focus of the story on the letter. I have one question though, does he have cancer or some other disease? Or is he already dead?