The Last Thing on My List ...

by Sue Blott
(2nd place winner in the NOWW Summer Flash Fiction Contest)

​Yahtzee with you is no longer fun. Drunk and blinded by the stinging smoke from your cigarette, you make stupid choices.

I cry out, “Wait!” but you roll again.

“What?” You rub your forehead, study the dice.

“You had Yahtzee! Five fives. Jeez, Larry!”

You giggle-snort and collapse back onto the couch.

I shake my head, sling the dice into the box, shimmy the lid on. I like winning but not at the expense of watching you spiral into stupidity. Together for seven years and you drink more and more until you flake out, leaving me to stub your stinking cigarette out so our house doesn’t burn down.

Time after time, you remember nothing.

I remember everything.

You exhale. “Let’s play that other game.” Smoke coils towards me like a snake about to strike. “Lists.”

“Lists. Okay.” A game that originated from counselling, a way of sharing and learning about each other. On a deeper level, the counsellor suggested.

I’m delaying going to bed. Why I don’t know. You’ll fall asleep in no time, perhaps in the middle of an embrace so I have to push the weight of you off me, your hand slapping my stomach as you roll over. Not on purpose, of course. That’s a no-brainer for me. Never physical abuse, just a gradual withering of love and respect.

When you choose a list, your favourite, I know I can’t tell you the last thing on mine.

“Hhmmm, let me think. I need tea. I’ll make you coffee—”

“ ’Sokay.” You point to the half-full scotch glass.

“So not okay,” I mumble as I walk into the kitchen, considering my list. The first things are a given. The cats. Marmalade—he’d never make it out on his own with that lame hind leg—then Tinkers and Siam. My journals, photo albums … Once you were my first thing on “A List of Things I’d Rescue From Our Burning House”. You still assume you are.

 I know I’m top of your list. I am your list. You’ve never cared much for the cats.

I pour my tea, stir your coffee, my thoughts swirling with the dark liquid. How can I tell you that the last thing on my list is you? Until I can, all we’ll do is play games with each other.

In the living room, you’re sprawled on the couch, your lips strumming to snores. Drool glistens at the corner of your mouth. The cigarette has burned itself out in the ashtray. I watch you, know the peace a mother feels when her child is asleep at last. I cover you with the woollen throw scattered with blue hearts, your favourite from our Maritime trip. I tuck in your toes. You hate your feet to be cold. Leaving your coffee on the table, I carry my tea to bed where Marmalade will have warmed my pillow.

Tomorrow, I think, maybe tomorrow I can tell you the last thing on my list.

Sue Blott just loves writing! She is a member of a few Thunder Bay writing groups. Although Sue writes in many genres, she particularly delights in the challenges of flash fiction: how to convey so much in so few words. Not unlike this bio.
 

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