Shopping

‘Shopping’ a piece of flash fiction, appeared in Issue 82 of Mslexia, May 2019

A bell above the door jangled as they entered the pet shop. Small animals scratched in rows of cages. The place smelled of musty straw. Beside the till, a hairless Sphynx cat glared. Rosie clutched her mother’s hand, staring at the pink wrinkled skin around the cat’s neck.

“Will Daddy come to my birthday tomorrow?” Rosie had asked her mother earlier that morning.
When Rosie’s father had gone to the corner shop for cigarettes and never returned, Rosie’s mother had not been surprised. In fact, she’d been relieved, feeling that the inevitable had finally happened. That had been ten months, two weeks and four days ago.

“Let’s go to the pet shop,” Rosie’s mother, master of non-sequiturs, had answered. A hamster in place of a father. Maybe a bunny, maybe a cat. A weak substitute in some respects, but no doubt more affectionate. Certainly, more devoted.
Rabbits snoozed with their ears tucked around their faces.

“Aww, aren’t they cute,” said Rosie’s mother.

Rosie watched chinchillas sniffing around with their funny flat faces. She frowned at hamsters running in wheels, their tiny legs all a blur.

“Look, Mummy, look.”

At the back of the shop, a wall of aquariums, stacked to the ceiling. Vivid as televisions, with salacious black lights that glowed through the fine wisps of Rosie’s blonde hair. Rosie pointed to a tank where a single fish patrolled back and forth. Around its svelte body, huge delicate fans of colour floated weightless. Unnatural colours, blue and purple like ink dissolving into water. Siamese fighting fish, read a laminated sign beside the tank.

“Can we have him Mummy, please?”

The beautiful fish hovered, watching them with one bulbous eye. The giant fins flicked, threat or warning or challenge.
Rosie stomped her little foot, scowling. “Mummy, you said I could choose.”