Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

A Conversation in a Cafe: Epilogue

A random follow-up to my short story series, A Conversation in a Cafe. The hero of the series meets with one of her uncles, who is struggling to adjust to the new world order.

“I am not the person I used to be.”

I throw my hands up in exasperation. What a lame excuse. A lame excuse for a lame man sitting opposite me with his hands folded in his lap, not even bothering to make eye contact as he fobs me off. The cafe is silent around us, but for the building crescendo of an eighties ballad and some off-key singing from the bloke in the corner. It’s not the location I would have picked for this conversation, but he had spoken to my father and apparently this is where gods go to meet now. Cafes. Innocuous and so very human.

This cafe is a little different than the one that continues to be favoured by my father. It’s quieter, an independent with a pleasant warmth to it. My companion has a dog sat between his feet, a tiny thing that doesn’t fit with the stature of the man it’s accompanying. But then the man is stooped, trying to be small. He is not the man I was expecting to meet.

As he said, he is not the person he used to be.

Bullshit.

“Look,” I say, leaning forward, “My father tasked me with helping you transition to the new world. I’m trying to do that. Let me help you.”

The man shakes his head. As he shakes, his appearance changes – one moment an old man, the next barely out of his teens. “I am lost.”

”You aren’t lost, you’re sulking,” I snap. The man looks at me. His eyes gleam gold, just for a second. “Don’t give me that, I’ve faced off worse than you and I’ve still got the sword if I need it.” 

“You would kill me?”

“I’d teach you a bloody good lesson.” The singer has stopped his off-key notes and is looking at us with curiosity. I lower my voice. Not that it matters: the world almost ended, gods and goddesses are a fact rather than a myth. But it doesn’t do to advertise my companion’s identity, nor mine for that matter. I saved the world, but can’t tell anyone. “You told me you were happy to retire, to be a human. Said something about going into politics. What happened to that?”

He sighs. “Politicians aren’t tricksters, they’re just evil.”

“And a trickster isn’t?”

He levels me with a golden stare. “I am both cruelty and joy, humiliation and togetherness. I am more than your human mind can understand. I am -”

“Unemployed, and a real pain in my arse.” The dog jumps up my leg, looking for attention. I pat it on the head absentmindedly as my companion sinks into his chair. He looks tired. He’s no longer shifting his appearance but just sitting there, somewhere in his mid-thirties, truly lost. “Look,” I say, softening my tone, “The twins have gone off into the rainforest, Death has locked itself off in its own domain. Maybe rather than trying to be human you should do the same.”

”I have no domain. Earth is my domain.”

”Then you need to learn to be like us.”

“Like you?” He meets my eyes and smiles. “The girl who saved the world by killing the gods?”

There’s cruelty in his tone, deliberate and sharp. I don’t even blink. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that weakness isn’t acceptable when dealing with these creatures. “You will either fit in, or you will fade out,” I say, keeping my voice level and calm. “One way or another, the world moves on. You have to decide if you’re going to be a part of it when it does.” I smile and add, “Apollo,” stressing the name.

An inside joke. He told me to call him Apollo, once. Before that he was an old man with a distinctive tattoo who sold me a fake map of the Underworld. He has been a pain in my arse throughout my journey, and somehow I don’t want to see him suffer.

He sighs, reaching down. The dog comes to him, tail wagging. 

“I will adjust,” he says softly. “I will have to. It’s just … hard.” His honesty shocks me into a moment of silence. I’m not sure what to say to an honest god, especially a trickster. He’s looking past me now, looking at the cafe around us. “Perhaps I will work somewhere like this. With people. Become a human. Your father says it is hard, but worth it.”

I reach across the table, and clasp his free hand. He looks up at me. His eyes are blue, not gold, as human as they get, and I smile. “It is worth it,” I say. “And if I taught my father, I can teach you.”

Posted on by Emma Radclyffe

The Waiting Room

A man meets a child in a hospital waiting room, and is given a choice. 

There is nothing quite so terrifying as the realisation that there is nothing left to fear. The idea has a certain hopelessness to it, a sort of defeatism that corrodes the skin and seeps into the veins. Nothing left to fear is synonymous with nothing left to lose.  What is there to fear when the worst has already happened? 

These are the thoughts running through David’s mind as he sits in the hospital waiting room with his head in his hands. The worst has happened. There is nothing left to fear. But still he sits there with his head in his hands in the hospital waiting room, waiting for nothing.

People come and go. They don’t disturb him. They don’t even look at him. Grief and despair can have that effect, especially when you yourself are clinging to hope. No one wants to see the man who has lost everything, so no one sees him and he is left to sit there, his fingers pushed into his cheeks so his wedding ring leaves an indent.

There is nothing left to fear. 

“Would you like a lollipop?”

David lowers his hands. A small child is sitting next to him. They could be a boy or a girl; in his current state he can’t make sense of anything. But the child is smiling, and holding out a lollipop, the sort of hard candy one David used to buy for ten pence at the corner shop.

He shakes his head. “Thank you, but no.” He looks past the child. No one is looking at them; people continue to ignore him, and the child. “Where are your parents?”

“Gone.” The child shrugs. “It happens sometimes. Are you married?”

The child is watching his hands. David looks down and realises he’d been playing with his wedding ring, an old nervous tic. “I am,” he says. “I was.”

“Where is she?”

He smiles sadly. “Gone.”

He can see her though. She is walking past just as beautiful as the day he married her, and he can see her as clearly as he can see the other people walking by. He knows she isn’t there. Not really.

“What happened?”

”There was an accident,” he says. He glances at the child. “It happens sometimes.”

”Did it hurt?”

David shakes his head. She is crying, he realises, and he wants to go and comfort her but knows he can’t. “No,” he says softly. “Not as much as this.”

”Would you like to go?”

He turns his attention to the child, even though every inch of him wants to watch his wife, to steal these last few moments with her. The child is staring straight ahead. They don’t seem interested in the world around them, not as interested as they are in the lollipop and David. He had thought perhaps they were waiting for their parents to join them, but he’s beginning to realise this child has no parents, no family to watch over. 

“I have to stay,” he says. “To make sure she’s okay.”

”She will be.” The child smiles. “The worst has happened, but then that’s the amazing thing about people. The worst can happen but people will find a way to live.”

“You’re not a child, are you?”

“I am, in many ways.” The child holds the lollipop out to him. “You should really take it. Things will be easier.”

”Easier doesn’t mean better.”

His wife is sobbing. People are ignoring her, but not in the same way they ignore David. They look right through David; they look around her, averting their gazes.

“But it will be kinder,” the child says. 

“What is there? If I go?”

“I don’t know.” The child smiles. “Perhaps, when you get there, you can tell me.”

David sighs, and reaches for the lollipop. The child passes it into his hands. The world shimmers around him but he takes a moment longer, just a moment, to stand and walk to his wife and kiss her lightly on the cheek. Then he is gone, and his wife is left standing with fingers to her face and wide eyes.

The child stretches, and yawns. An old woman is sitting two seats down staring into nothing. There is much work to be done in this limbo. They can hear the conversations and buzz of a thousand different hospitals around them, but the child’s concern is for the people sitting still in the seats, waiting for the child to come to them and offer them the choice.

The child moves to the next seat, and smiles. 

“Would you like a lollipop?”