Sipsworth

by Simon Van Booy

Helen Cartwright was old with her life broken in ways she could not have foreseen.

Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle⁠—as though even for death there is a queue.

Those who in life had held back in matters of love would end in bitterness. While the people like her, who had filled the corners of each day, found themselves marooned on a scatter of memories. Either way, for her as for others, a great storm was approaching. She could sense it swollen on the horizon, ready to burst. It would come and wash away even the most ordinary things, leaving no trace of what she felt had been hers.

Its eyes are like two currants, but bright with something she has seen before, in the faces of those who now haunt her.

“The only consolation of being the last to go,” she admits, “is knowing the people you loved the most won’t suffer the way you do in their absence.”

Helen notices her hand trembling⁠—not because she’s holding a live mouse, but because it’s the first time she’s been touched by another living thing for over twenty years.

“There should be a golden mouse statue outside every hospital . . . every time we take a pill or get a vaccination it’s all because of mice. Billions must have died over the years in labs, billions! If only people realised,” Helen goes on, “that their loved ones are most likely alive or not in pain because of mice.”