Jake invented a prescription glass windscreen for his car so that he could drive without wearing his corrective lenses. He enjoyed the feeling of freedom - no plastic pads digging into his nose - and it had the added advantage that car thieves couldn't drive the vehicle unless they happened to have the same degree of myopia.
Jennifer needed a lift. However, she soon began to complain. She couldn't see, everything was blurred, and to stop herself being sick she had to stick her head out the window like a dog.
'You idiot,' she said to him when he dropped her off.
He wouldn't ring her again. A permanent relationship would mean grinding the windscreen to suit two different people and he could imagine the arguments – it would be the self-cleaning bed-sheets saga all over again. He went to bed, turned up the shipping forecast and drifted to sleep.
The bin-men laid out the recycling boxes and pressed play. Latin beats spluttered out, and from a wheelie-bin sprang a woman in floaty clothes. She danced as she demonstrated how to recycle. A bin-man battered hell out of a bongo.
Within every bottle are pieces of all the bottles you’ve ever used, they sang.
The dancer had long ochre hair. Freckles. She hated newsnight, and laminate-flooring. She liked celeriac. And ferris wheels.
She was my ex-girlfriend.
My insides churned with recalled desire and when she’d finished I gripped her arm. But she pointed at the label on a tin. DO NOT REHEAT.
When we lived together I dealt with the rubbish; a monstrous heap of unloved packaging and decayed food. We threw away more than we ever had. It was better when everything got burnt. Ash-men came with an ash-cart and grey flecks wheeled in the air, getting in your eyes.
He hated grocery shopping, hated the time it took. But he came up with a method. People bought the same things, more or less. So he would look for someone of his type, sneak up behind them and roll their fully-laden trolley off to the checkout.
It made life interesting. Often there were things he would never have bought; once there was a fat orange pumpkin.
But today he was in trouble. He had been stealing mostly from women because he liked the sense of order to their selections, but his victim had spied him and was stomping over. There were women's products in the cart, so it was going to be difficult. He decided to pretend he knew her.
'Darling, I'll just get eggs'
'We’ve got eggs' The woman chirped. 'Listen, do you want to go out to the car? You look stressed. You can listen to your tape'.
David Gaffney has been published in Ambit, Modart, The Illustrated Ape, Bored Mag, Ephemera, Rant, thephonebook.com, The Stand (2006) Index, Skive Mag, Somewhat, Blowback Mag, Transmission, Cautionary Tale, FACT Mag, Papercut, Word Riot, Stand Off, The Quiet Feather, Mooch Mag, Revolve, Defenestration, The Ugly Tree, and Cent, and in the States Modernfix and Juked.