Another Night of Drudgery

I’m considering chucking my bloody mobile at the wall. It would crunch against that fucking cold Welsh bluestone, and even in a thousand electronic turds it would be as useful as it is in perfect working order.

The Carlsberg clock seems to be stuck at ten to two, over the heads of the last bums left in the pub. I’ll have to hike up to the stone circle if I want even half a bar of service that’ll give me a couple of minutes of connectivity, barely enough to publish this post, much less talk to anyone.

“You goin' to hang about all night, lookin' sour?” My grandfather just tapped me gently between the eyes, smiling. “That mug o' yours flattens the lager.”

“Nothing happening here, Taid,” I reply, swiping at his nicotine-stained fingers (and keep typing — I can at least pretend I’m connected to the outside world).

“Nothing's happened here since your mama flew off to South America, Amelia.” He pours an umpteenth round for the craggy bastards at the end of the bar. “Ever since then, the mams and dads keep their children locked away at night—”

“—and their secrets they whisper only to the stove in the empty first light of morning,” I finish, rolling my eyes. I dump a sack of peanuts into the empty bowl. “I'm not my mom.”

Gwyn Jones downs half his pint in one gurgling swallow. “Too right. Your mom were the sweetest thing ever walked the shores of Anglesey.”

I grab his glass and tug it out of his reach. “Gwyn Jones, you tell me one more time how you snogged my mother in high school, and you'll not get another pull from this bar so long as I'm behind it.”

He has the presence to look abashed for a moment, his graying hair falling over his soft pale face. Then he lurches for the pint in my hand, yanking it away like a triumphant child. He eyes my grandfather. “Nope, not a drop of yer mam, but you sure got a bucketload of your granddam in you, chit.”

Taid Gwion laughs behind me, joining the rest of the middle-aged peckerheads in the place. I mutter in my native Spanish, knowing none of them understand a curse word unless it’s filled with the ratcheting sounds of Welsh, and my grandmother isn't here to thwack me on the back of my head. She's sharp in any language.

I slump back on a stool, tapping my smart phone next to a soggy beer mat on the bar. “Taid Gwion, I believe these old buggers have had one too many, and are in danger of committing acts of public drunkenness, drunk driving, or being just plain unmanageable unless we cut them off and send them home to their wives and children.”

Taid raises a white eyebrow as the drunken idjits spew beer-frothed protestations in my direction. “You sure you want to inflict them on their innocent wives and kids?”

“Better them than me.”

Taid Gwion sighs, pulls me back through the bar to the tiny kitchen, where he fries fish and chips and not a damn thing else, no matter what the fancy pubs closer to the mainland serve. “Take the rest of the night, hey?”

I drop my head and start to stick my phone in my pocket, a strand of purple hair covering my eyes. “Sorry, Taid. It's okay. I'll close up.”

“I'm 63 years old, not 90. I don't need you here every night.” He pats my cheek and kisses me on the forehead. “Go on, go wherever you go when you're ready to scream your little Latin head off, and come back fresh tomorrow. Maybe plan a weekend in the city soon, huh?”

I nod. “Thanks, Taid.”

So now I’m off, up the hill, to those three precious bars of mobile service, to broadcast publishing capabilities, IMing, and Tal.

Hasta pronto, sheeplovers.

Freaks and freaks

Step right up, folks, see the oddity. The oddity that has astounded entire villages from here to Penmaenmawr, from the North Stack to the South Stack, from that old Roman brick in the ground to this one over here. Just two quid gets you five minutes to stare, to gawk, to judge this freak, this human personification of what is wrong with our children — and speaking of your children, best keep them away, lest they become freaks themselves.

“What made you do that to your face?” Gwyn Jones says to me today. I kept pouring his pint, trying to figure out what was wrong with my face. “You ain’t got yourself enough holes, you have to poke more, do you?”

I should know better. I should shrug. I should wipe down the bar somewhere else. But instead I said, “They help me pick up the signals from my mother ship.”

Like a UFO, it flew right over his head. “Your mother didn’t need decorations, did she, Gaz?”

“Sure didn’t,” Gaz agreed. Gaz would agree if Gwyn commented that England sure was an all right place, and Wales did all right by losing to them.

“How many you got on you, anyway, girl?” Gwyn drained his dregs, froth clinging to the stubble dirtying his droopy face. He elbowed Gazzer hard enough to make him dribble. “I hear they put metal in all kinds of places the sun can’t reach.”

“Nor you, either,” I snapped, yanking his new pint away. I ignored his stupid face, with its candy-less baby expression, turning to pour the grog down the bloody drain.

“Look at this, a homeless pint.” Taid Gwion lifted the glass from my hand and returned it to Gwyn. “Last one. Bron’ll be callin’ for you if you don’t get home soon.”

I scowled at him, hoping my mascara was still black enough to make me fierce. I hate thinking I’m fierce, then looking in the mirror and discovering my makeup has melted in a pathetic wad down my face.

Taid winked. “He’s less troublesome on the soup than off.”

He patted me kindly, as though I were still fifteen, still needed that fatherly comfort I lost when my parents’ car went into that mad tumbling spin on a deserted road in Peru. Two years gone, and the only things that’ve changed here are the colors of my hair and the number of decorations I've managed to sneak onto my body.