One minute I'm a skinny-arsed ten-year-old boy playing with my action man figures in the sweltering back garden after school's broken up for the summer holidays and I sneak indoors to pinch the matches from the kitchen drawer even though I know I'm not allowed to touch them but today my mum's too busy to notice what I'm up to because she's laughing in the front room with that man who keeps coming round with his daft blond Teddy Boy hairdo.
So I take advantage of my mum being distracted because I need matches to light the pyre of dry twigs I'm going to pile up behind the shed so no one will see me from the house when I set light to the action man with the blond crew cut because I hate him but I won't be burning the brown- or ginger- or black-haired ones because I like them and they are my toys after all plus my dad's really tight—I'm not spending my damn beer money on any more toys for you Colin—so that's why I only wrap the blond one in an old paint rag that I soak in some turps I find in a decorating crate in the shed.
The next minute I'm a forty-year-old hairy-arsed man with a beer belly driving a platform vehicle for a motorway maintenance company and it's the middle of summer and for the last thirteen days straight the weather's been as hot as my overheated cylinder heads and I could fry a full English breakfast in thirty seconds on them blighters and for every one of those airless days I worked twelve-hour shifts with stinky armpits and sweaty balls sticking to my legs driving up and down the same motorways putting up and taking down the same traffic signs to pay for all the stuff my out-of-work and always-getting-the-sack missus keeps piling onto her store and credit cards and now every card is overdrawn or pushed close to their limits like me and her.
For the first time in months my boss lets everyone knock off work an hour early and as soon as I get home I see piles of mugs and dishes in the sink which means that once again my missus hasn't been arsed to wash up after herself all day or bothered with the pans from the dinner last night that I cooked for us both after yet another stifling day stuck in my vehicle with its broken air-conditioning and when I walk into the front room my missus throws me a look—I hate you baldy why do you even have to come home—and I wonder what happened to the lusting looks we used to give each other way back when we were first married.
I hear the toilet being flushed upstairs and then this bloke with a full bonce of blond hair saunters down my stairs and walks straight past me all cocky-like into my front room and chucks my missus the same guilty look that I saw the blond Teddy Boy give my mum way back when I was a skinny-arsed kid on the day when my dad surprised them by coming home from work early which was when my dad beat the man up and had to be taken away by the coppers which was also the same day I accidentally burnt down the shed when the pyre I built for the blond action man figure got out of control after I added more turps and twigs.
But today unlike my dad I don't want to fight for my cheating lazy-arsed missus because her and the blond bloke are welcome to each other and instead I take a chilled lager from the fridge and go outside into my back garden and undress in the sweltering heat carefully folding my work clothes and underwear and stacking them into a neat pile before lying down naked on my front on the warm parched grass that only I ever bother to cut and my soon-to-be ex-missus acts all sarcastic—What are you doing you loon—when it's obvious that I'm relaxing and toasting my hairy arse in the sun and dang! it feels damn good to finally be doing nothing and that for the first time in years I feel free and that her and blond bonce guy should shut the front door behind themselves on their way out and keep walking.
BIO: Julia Anderson is a flash fiction and short story writer based in Cambridge, UK. Currently, she’s challenging herself to write mainly happy or humorous fiction instead of writing about her usual sad, bad or mad characters. She feels sure that many competition judges will be grateful for this. This is her third competition win.