Red and gold, green and yellow. Riotous explosions of colour, searing through the night skies against a backdrop of the universe.
“They’re beautiful, Momma,” she whispers, bundled up in her best winter coat, with mittens keeping her fingers warm, holding hands and staring in wonder.
“I know, baby,” I say, checking my comm bracelet, anxiety spiking. It’s linked to his.
“Where’s Daddy?”
Thinking back, we should have expected it really.
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“How was it?” Alfie screwed his eyes in concentration and anticipating the usual sotto voce response, leaned forward in his riser-recliner. He had declined the invite to the Council’s Annual Fireworks Display. Storm Ciarán was rolling in.
“Brilliant!; not the wash-out expected.” Fiona’s explosive response caught him unawares. Hovering on the remote (retaining maximum control over his environment was important), his hand reacted in a surprised tremor. The chair, rented courtesy of his son, responded to the manual “rise” command; Alfie slid to the floor, pinned under the strategically placed wheely frame, a gift from his daughter.
“Fuck Me… Save me from this hell.” On his back, glasses dislodged, Alfie surveyed the intricate cornicing and central rose of the “small lounge.” The tantalising mistiness of detail recalled to mind that entertainment he and his late wife had so enjoyed at the Couples Parties before any of the seven veils had been removed. Sporadic pyrotechnics of private parties continued outside; Roman Candles, Peonies, and Diadems were corralled in raindrops as they burst across the uncurtained picture window.
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I am feeling like a pupa, all wrapped up in blankets inside a sleeping bag, a thick furry hat and all to watch the fireworks. At ninety, my granddaughter Lucy is taking no chances with me. It’s years since I last saw a display, but feeling the raw air around me fills me with joy. Living in a home after my husband passed away, means I never get out in the chilly weather,
I’m sitting above the playing fields in a lay-by and the fun is about to start.
My word what a show – loads of flash-bangs, crackling, starbursts, so different from anything I’ve seen before. Lucy tells me they are not called fireworks now but pyrotechnics, whatever they are.
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It is notoriously difficult to swim through pancake batter, so Emmie settled for floating on her back. Her eyes opened briefly after a staccato rattle, followed by a piercing whistle, a loud bang and a cascade of spitting bright star fragments. A war must have started. Emmie was dimly conscious of being shot in the middle somewhere; blood everywhere, lots of pain. Best get back to the pancake batter. She re-submerged.
Her eyes crept open again on hearing voices.
‘She’s coming round. Are you OK love? It’s Mum here. You had us worried’
Emmie was pleased to hear this because she too was starting to be worried.
‘What’s the fighting about out there? I think there’s a bullet in my belly. It really hurts a lot and I keep falling into a thick lake. And…’
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The locals of East Hardwick made a habit of not burning a certain Catholic terrorist come the fifth of November as expected, but instead set alight whomever they disliked.
Mrs. Monks burnt a copy of her cheating husband, Charlie Lanker burnt a dummy modelled after his schoolteacher, who in turn set alight a many headed hydrae, bearing the faces of her worst students.
On this Guy Fawks night, Kevin Warick had built, a perfect likeness of the dreadful Mr. Samuel Linklater, down to that self-impressed, almost snarling smile.
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Nov 23 TASK: ‘Fireworks’. Write 500 words or fewer about ‘fireworks’. Title isn’t included in the 500 words. Stories to be in by midnight, Thursday 23rd November 2023. Meeting at 1.30pm, Sunday 26.11.23, Discovery Room, 1st floor, Central library, Swansea. Finish at 3.30pm.