Exercises
“Cyril wriggled his left thumb experimentally”
Cyril wriggled his left thumb experimentally, the tingling hadn’t quite gone away, but the pains from around his forearm were quite absent.
Strange, that he’d only just finished visiting the doctor for a complete health check (ok, if you excluded the sunburnt pate that was now half frozen off in the doctors benign attempts to save his life). A sigh escaped his lips. Three weeks ago to the very day Cyril had been employed, married and growing the prize marrow for the Surrey Horticultural Society.
Now, his wife was somewhere, crepe-ridden neck tanned to a carotene hue in the Costa del Sol, and his job was shot. Added to that was his incapacity to operate without the stentorius bellow of the ward matron.
In a way, the heart attack was a fitting gesture to the end of his old life: Janice would have managed to fuss over him dreadfully, all the time bemoaning her discomfort, distress and unflinching sacrifice. Sodding cow.
Better off by far, Cyril thought. There was a slight problem with the finances of course; a technician’s wages and redundancy package in post-Thatcher Britain was hardly what Hollywood gosip mags reported in the divorce columns.
If he could only get back to the bus seat and find that scratchy he put behind the bench just as the first pains struck his arm.
by Angela Brady
Cyril wriggled his left thumb experimentally. It was ten minutes since he had experimented with his right and failed dismally. This time he had more luck. From the seats above him came a soft, low collective outake of breath as the recalcitrant digit responded.
“Yes ladies and gentlemen, if you look closely you’ll see the subject’s left thumb just underwent a thirty degree rotation to the northwest.”
There was a frantic scribbling on clipboards.
“Incredible! If I’m not mistaken we had five millimetres upward raising of the right eyebrow just then.”
The atmosphere was not exactly reaching fever pitch, but since Cyril had been lying inert on the sandy floor for close to three hours, there was definitely excitement from the spectators.
Cyril had been staring at one of them for two of those three hours. A woman clad in a pristine white labcoat, immaculately groomed save for a single hair that fell on the rim of her black spectacles. She had a hair lip and a vaguely green complexion.
“I can't believe it ladies and gentlemen,” the voice that persisted in coming from behind him exclaimed, “if that wasn’t a persistent muscle spasm in the upper manatonal then I’ll hand in my membership right now.”
Cyril found he could raise his eyes to the woman behind her now. She looked exactly the same. The same hair rested on the same glasses.
by Peter Gifford
Cyril wriggled his left thumb experimentally. It was still numb — and pins and needles shot up his arm and tickled his elbow. But sensation was slowly returning, and before long it would be as good as new. He’d have to learn not to sleep in that position.
The sun was just rising as he left the town-house, for what would probably be the last time. If all went to plan — this time tomorrow he'd be on Business Class QF 301 to Buenes Aires. But several things had to fall into place first.
Jemima was the first. He’d rehearsed this moment time and again in his head — enough so it had kept him a wake most of the night. She was getting older — and more and more fishing for compliments to reassure herself he still found her attractive. So much did she draw attention to her previously non- existent flaws that this was all he saw. She’d have to go. It would be better if he told her personally — let her down gently. there might even be time for a brief farewell ... Cyril brushed his few remaining ginger hairs over his bare scalp. There was no time — no time for distractions.
He left a note under her door.
Then there was Jordan P. Barclay of Barclay Barclay Barclay and Co P/L. Cyril had ben working there for the best part of twenty years: snivelling, crawling, favouring and trying every angle until he himself would be made a partner. But last week — at the meeting in the Brown Room — they'd rejected him yet again. Well ... today ... this morning ... he’d show old Jordan a thing or two about rejection. Lock the door — strip him down to his underwear — plenty of packing tape and wham! Reject!
Finally — his mother. Cyril trembled at the thought. He’d have to see her — have to tell her that he was leaving. That he was no longer available for her nagging, her droning, her one-upmanship. It would kill her. It would kill him. But — there was always a but — he would offer her a special which would be quick and painless.
Then all he had to do was rob the bank.
by Karen Goldrick
Cyril wriggled his left thumb experimentally. It moved slightly, so he smashed the hammer down again, harder than before. This time he couldn’t move it at all. The pain he felt dully but he ignored it. Fumbling with his right hand he opened the drawer below him and pulled out Selby’s letter. He held it up to the dim light from the basement window and turned it slowly, this way and that, reliving the words as they twisted in the sun. He wrapped it around his thumb.
“Now see what you’ve made me do,” he whispered.
Slowly he turned from the desk and groped his way through the jumble of old furniture and boxes to the cupboard beside the door. He pulled at the handle but it was locked. Of course, he always locked it afterwards. How could he have forgotten.
With a vicious movement he ripped the beading off a nearby table and held it deliberately in his left hand, laying his crippled thumb against the grain. Grinning at the pain he battered hard at the cupboard door hinge — once, twice — and it splintered off with a crash. He reached inside for the thing that always made this worthwhile.