Unintended Consequences

He pulled the cork from the bottle unmindful of what it contained. The situation called for alcohol. He bent to take glasses from the cupboard, trying to avoid sight of the body that lay on the carpet. His hand shook as he poured red liquid unnervingly like the viscous liquid slowly seeping towards his leaden feet.

Others could ring the police, call an ambulance, do whatever they thought the occasion demanded. His part was to pour the wine and hand it to the others, the others who were equally paralysed except for the person who had draped a mantilla over the dead woman's face.

She was dead presumably. Only to be expected really with that carving knife stuck upright in the body, glinting in the odd beam of sunlight that ventured through the window.

There were five people in the room and one dead body. Best not to think of that now. He looked around for a tray until memory told him of the one on the table. If he could retrain his feet to put one in front of the other he could retrieve it and serve the reviving beverage. He winced at the thought. Wrong word choice 'reviving', a little indelicate with a corpse at one's feet.

He glanced at the table and at the measureless miles stretching between it and him. Best to start off now. In slow motion he traversed the space, taking care to avoid the blood and step over the pen that had fallen from the dead woman's fingers.

"How appropriate" he thought, removing the CD of Mozart's Mass from the tray, "or do I mean ironic"? His hands, seemingly of their own volition picked up a ring and placed it on the CD. That was that then, the tray, the mantilla, the glass, the ring, the carving knife all accounted for. A grim smile fleetingly crossed his lips - or was it sardonic?

All in all there was very little spillage when he proffered the tray with its re...re...refreshing contents. If a little wine had been spilled on the floor it hardly mattered when weighed against the glistening pool of blood. His four companions each avoided his eye but raised a glass in silent tribute - was that the right word?

"I have never written anything" the woman had said.

She was in safe hands said the sympathetic smiles flitting across faces around the table.

"What I'd like you all to do" the mentor had said "is look at the objects on this tray and write a story incorporating one or more or indeed all of them. You have ten minutes".

Pens had been wielded, foreheads creased, imaginations mined until time was called. One by one they had read their piece and listened to the resultant appreciation, supportive constructive criticism, word change suggestions gently offered.

2

"I wouldn't approach it like that" the woman had said, her delivery authoritative and stage holding.

And

"It would have been considerably more effective if..."

Also

"Had a broader, less banal vocabulary been used..."

Again

"Eliminating the quotidian should surely be uppermost in our..."

And again

"Should I be the mentor..."

It was at this point that the carving knife had absented itself from the tray and had appeared in the woman's chest, effectively cutting off all hopes of her ever mentoring the Creative Writing Class.