by Mileva Anastasiadou
Horror is on the menu and we take it because we’re tired of rom-coms and light dramas and coming of age narratives, but also because horror is our only option now that we’ve grown old. They don’t serve romance to people our age. The young waiter recognizes us because we’re regulars and he gently asks if he we’ll take what we regularly take, but all we hear is that we’re boring, and we’re sick of boring and comfort zones and ‘nothing ever happens’, and even when something happens it’s tragedy, grief, loss. You sit upright, straighten your shirt and say, we’ll have two midlife crises, and I pretend that I didn’t hear that but I did and I admire your confidence.
We play snipers, we play ‘hit and run’, we play smart and cool and cynical, because we’ve outgrown ‘hide and seek’ and we’ve invented games that match with our age and costumes and attitude. We sit comfortably on our regular seats in our regular restaurant and we measure each other at first and how much we can take tonight. The crowd applauds. People place their bets. You hit first and you say that if you put too much weight on a shelf, the shelf will collapse. The shelf isn’t lazy or depressed. It’s on you if the weight is too much and you offered no additional support.
Mom called before she passed away but I didn’t pick up the phone, because I was too busy laughing when the phone rang and I had to stretch my arm to get to the remote and hit pause, but I didn’t. I told you that I’d call Mom later and you kept on laughing at a stupid scene of a stupid movie, and so did I, and the phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing, but I ignored it. Nobody knows that Mom died helpless because I couldn’t stop laughing. Only I know, and you know, and I know that you now know what I’m capable of.
I sip wine and despair and guilt, before I hit back. This sniper thing is exhausting, because I’m alert all the time. I miss the old times, when we enjoyed diner without worrying about points and low blows and life didn’t need war to be interesting. I hit when you least expect it. What I say is that if you break the shelf and then place a thing on it, the shelf will collapse, even if that thing isn’t heavy. The shelf is broken for fuck’s sake and you’re supposed to fix it before you place anything on it.
A few months after Mom died, your parents called and needed a lift home but you were too tired to give them a ride. Even the taxi driver died and I thought aloud that he, at least, could have been saved, if you had been there to take them home. You said that I’m cruel and you blamed my horoscope, but I told you that Leo Moon people, like you, are cruel too, and you couldn’t prove me wrong because you aren’t into astrology, you’ve only watched a few reels. At least I answered the phone, you said, which proved my point and meant that I won a point but also I lost it.
You nod in awe, like you enjoy the game and I am an opponent worth of your time and effort. You lower your head, you hold it with your two hands, you think for a couple minutes, then your eyes sparkle like you found the perfect answer and you already congratulate yourself. You make a gesture like you expect silence from the audience, because you take the shelf debate seriously, you take it even further. You tell me that if you put a light thing on a thin shelf, the shelf will collapse and again, it’s not the shelf’s fault. Because it was built this way.
I stare and I clap but I don’t hit back. I say, exit game, and quit the game, because I find it funny how we make excuses for shelves but we can’t forgive each other. We were good to each other, what the fuck happened to us, I ask but I mean, we were good, how did we end up the villains? We raised a kid together and we did fine as parents, and we thought that was it, that we were done with caring for others, but life proved us wrong, and we proved life wrong too, because we failed big time. I didn’t do enough for mom and you didn’t do enough for your folks either, and now we blame each other and we don’t trust each other. It’s not excuses, you say.
We step out of the restaurant, and out of comfort together, because back in the 90s we swore to each other that we’d never be boring, then we decided that boring wasn’t that boring, and now boring is drowning us. We deserve more than horror, we want carefree and playful, to be those shelves that may collapse but we don’t blame them because they do the best they can. At McDonald’s we ask for two happy meals and the young waiter asks us to fill in a form, because there’s a contest running and he feigns enthusiasm when he says, the kids could win a bike, and we feign enthusiasm too, we say, yay, that’s exciting, but it’s not exciting because there’re no kids and we’re no kids either. You reach for my hand, you smile, and we’re a team again,it’s us against time against dying, against time that flies but we can’t.
Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of "Christmas People" and "We Fade With Time" by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work has been selected for the Best Mirofiction anthology 2024 and Wigleaf Top 50 and can be found in many journals, such as the Forge, Necessay Fiction, Passages North,and others.
January House Literary Journal 
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