New Welsh Short Stories by Author: QuarkXPress

one foot. The key slotted into the padlock in a ribbon of time that was slow, drawn out and stretched flat, like she too could be flattened by it. The bolt slid sideways in her hand. The door swung open and inside, the creature was staring at her, the one from the Florida pool of her imagination. She stepped inside and unlocked the cage.
    The creature careened over his bathing area, back legs slipping and sliding into the water. She withdrew outside and picked up a metal pole leaning by the shed door. ‘Come on then you bastard,’ she murmured. ‘You bloody, fucking bastard.’
    The crocodile charged and time shot forward, concertinering on itself. The creature’s claws slid on sawdust and it emerged from the cage door in one long, sinuous movement.
    It stopped, so close Charlotte could have reached out her leg and kicked it. Its yellow brown eyes were the most devoid of any sort of compassion she’d ever seen. Worse than a murderer even.
    She stood with the pole ready, waiting, and the crocodile’s eyes flickered like shutter speeds before it rushed her. She closed her own eyes as she was nearly knocked sideways off her feet, felt a primeval rasp against her leg. She opened them again and saw the blood on the fair skin of her leg where its scales had scraped the flesh and glanced up just in time to see a huge tail disappearing into the house.
    She followed it. Across the yard variously sized reptiles – though none as big as the one she’d just been ready to fight with – were dotted around. Some were already snapping and snarling at each other. A few just looked lost and confused. As she marched across the yard one small but wiry crocodile cracked open its jaws at her and she clanged it on the side of the head with her pole.
    Through the kitchen and down the dim passageway that smelled of bleach. Two doors opened off the hallway – old - fashioned parlour and dining room. Nigel hadn’t knocked his into one like they had. It could be in either of them. Or … she glanced up … could crocodiles manage stairs?
    By the front door she hesitated. The light from the ugly half - arch in the door fell on a pink felt hat that hung from a nearby hook. An address book was open by the telephone with spidery old person’s writing across it. Leftovers from Nigel’s mother, she guessed, things he hadn’t bothered to dispose of. Couldn’t wait probably, to get rid of her, so he could move the crocs in instead. Charlotte had a feeling she would have liked Nigel’s mother. Somewhere she sensed her ghost, chorussing her approval. Stupid boy, look what he goes and does as soon as my back’s turned…
    Charlotte looked at the metal pole in her grip. She’d almost forgotten it was there. Nigel’s mum’s voice muttered around her: You. Can’t. Just. Do. Things. Like. This. Silly boy . She gave her head a shake and flung aside the pole and it crashed into a set of golf clubs leaning against the wall. It seemed to take a long time for the tinkling to finally die away. When it did she seemed to catch Nigel’s mother’s voice, close to her head, like an escape of gas – the final expulsion from the old lady before she finally disappeared, fading and bitter: Who’d be a mother….?
    Charlotte found herself craving the sweet relief of the addict, like having blood let, the urge to take the lid off something packed too tightly together. She opened the front door and the everyday sounds, the sounds of a London street, flooded in. And the relief came, surging through her bones in an elixir. She stood for a second, listening: car engines; the ringing of a bicycle bell; two men in conversation, their voices loud and carrying.
    She paused at the door and, for a moment, thoughts of Mike, Sam – of little Fay – penetrated her mind. Soon Mike would be wondering where she was. He’d come out of the back door, leaving it open on such a